We read the word of God this evening in Romans chapter 12. Romans chapter 12. The great reformation book is the book of Romans. It was this book that Martin Luther was reading when he was converted to the Protestant faith from Catholicism, because he saw in this book the clearest light of the gospel of the righteousness of God. But the book of Romans is often understood well at its beginning, but not at its end. And we're going to begin reading at the end of the book of Romans, the beginning of the third part. Romans chapter 12. This is God's Word. I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. For I say through the grace given unto me to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and everyone members one of another. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith, or ministry, let us wait on our ministering. or he that teacheth on teaching, or he that exhorteth on exhortation, he that giveth let him do it with simplicity, he that ruleth with diligence, he that showeth mercy with cheerfulness. Let love be without dissimulation, abhor that which is evil, cleave to that which is good. Be kindly affection one to another with brotherly love, in honor, preferring one another, not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing instant in prayer, distributing to the necessity of saints, given to hospitality. Bless them which persecute you, bless and curse not, Rejoice with them that do rejoice and weep with them that weep. Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things that condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits. Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men. If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him. If he thirst, give him drink, for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. That's the reading, the text is found in verses one and two. Verses one and two, 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, and be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Let's ask God's blessing on his word preached. Father in heaven, thy word is truth. Sanctify us by that truth. Thy word is power. Work in us by that power. and open our hearts so that as Lydia, when she heard Paul, was able to give heed to the things that he said and work that in us. So bless this time now that we spend together under the ministry of thy word and receive all our praise. In Jesus' name, amen. Noah, if someone would ask you what it means to be a Christian and you had just become a new Christian, it would not be wrong to begin by saying a Christian is different from the world. A Christian rejects worldly thinking. Well, you're not a new Christian and your confession of faith tonight was not a testimony that Last year you weren't, and this year you are. Your confession of faith is a testimony that you are a reformed Christian. But if someone would ask you or any of us, if we had just become a new Christian, what it means to be a Christian, I say it would not be wrong to use the language of Romans 12 that we have before us. Don't be conformed to the world. Be different. Reject the world, don't be worldly. People of God are a separate people and we live antithetically and that's what it means to be a Christian. And that's why Paul says in Ephesians 5, have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness. Not only with the workers but with their works. And why John said in 1 John 2, 15 to 17, love not the world nor the things of the world. If any man loved the world, the love of the father is not in him. and why Paul said in 2 Corinthians chapter six, be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers because what fellowship does light have with darkness and righteousness with unrighteousness. Come out from among them and be separate. To be a Christian is to be different. Be not conformed to this world. Which means that if there is any church that you are inclined to join that does not sound that message to its people, you must not join that church because this is the word of God. A Christian is different. A Christian rejects the world and worldliness. But Noah, if that's all that you said to someone who asked you what it meant to be a Christian, you'd also be making a mistake. If we testify to others that the main part of the Christian life is that we're not like them, that we reject their conduct, then we don't see the important part of the Christian life which comes out in our text also. Present yourselves a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And not only don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. The main part of the Christian life is that we are devoted to God, consecrated to him, God-like, which is simply what godly means, God-like. And so if you are tempted to join a church, whose only message to you is you must not be like them. And the pulpit is always being pounded to say, don't do this and don't do that and don't think that way and live that way. You mustn't join that church either because that church is imbalanced. The true church of the Lord Jesus Christ understands what Paul is saying at the very beginning of this third section of the epistle to the church at Rome. He's established all the groundwork of the depravity of man and the grace of God in Christ and the foundation of all of that in election and the testimony to you and me that everything works together for our good. And now he comes to what it means to live a Christian life. And he's not one-sided, he's not all negative, he's not all positive, he's balanced. And we must be balanced and realize that what it means to be a Christian is to think like God and to act like God. So let's look at this text tonight at the occasion of the confession of faith of this brother under the theme, The Christian Life, A Living Sacrifice of Self. And then see three things, what generally that life is, and then specifically how that life is lived, and then in the third place, ask who in their right mind, and I use that language deliberately, who in their right mind would ever be willing to commit to that kind of life? Why, why? So the Christian life is a living sacrifice of self. We're gonna see first what that life is generally, second, what it is specifically, how we live it, and third, why anyone would. Now Paul uses a figure of speech that most are familiar with in the text. Present your bodies a living sacrifice. Sacrifice. Now everyone, non-Christians alike, know what it means to sacrifice. It means to give up something, and maybe give up something that's very painful. But what non-Christians don't know is that the apostle is alluding to the Old Testament where the people of God were required to give sacrifices. And they took out of their flock a lamb, or out of their herd a goat or a bullock, or out of the grain that they had gathered in at the end of the harvest, a bushel or a sheaf, and brought that animal or that offering to God and gave it to God, the whole animal. It was His, given to Him. And Paul is alluding to that when he says, now in the New Testament, the sacrifices that we present to God are you. present yourself to God a living sacrifice. To avoid misunderstanding here, it's very important to see the difference between the Old and New Testament sacrifice and to see the difference between different sacrifices in the Old Testament. There were sacrifices that we call propitiatory sacrifices. That is, sacrifices made to propitiate an angry God. and to turn his anger away, to atone for sin, to make a payment for iniquity. That was the animal sacrifice whose blood was shed, put on the altar, and it was consumed under the fire of God's wrath. That was one kind of offering. But there was another kind of offering, and that was the grain offering or the fruit offering, which was an offering of gratitude, not a payment for sin, but an expression of thanks to God. It's that kind of sacrifice that Paul is referring to here. And we know that for a number of reasons. That the sacrifice that we offer to God of our bodies is not a payment for sin. We know that generally because the word of God makes that very, very clear. We can't pay for sin, someone else did. And that comes out, as I said, first of all, that there were distinctions between sacrifices of the Old Testament, propitiatory sacrifices and thank offerings. It comes out in the second place in the text because this couldn't be a payment for sin, it's a living sacrifice. Not a sacrifice in which our blood is shed and sin is paid for, but a living sacrifice. And then we know that in the third place because we're in chapter 12 of the book of Romans, And the first 11 chapters of the book of Romans have already established how payment for depraved, helpless sinners has been made by the one sufficient, once for all, sacrifice of Jesus Christ. determined in all eternity in the council of election for God's people, it has been made. Now, now, you wouldn't expect Paul to say, he's done some, you must do the rest. He's paid for most, you need to pay for some. It's finished, finished. And so this sacrifice is a sacrifice of thanksgiving, conscious, willing gratitude for what God has already done. It's not insignificant that the Apostle does not simply say sacrifice yourselves, though that's what it means. He says sacrifice your bodies, present your bodies a living sacrifice. There were a couple of reasons probably why Paul did that, and they're important today too. One of them is that in the Apostle Paul's day, the pagans and some who had their own religions, and even some who confessed to worship Jehovah, had the wrong idea of our bodies. And that was that the body is the problem that we have. The spirit and what's inside us is good. The body and what's outside that you see and touch and feel is bad. What you need to do is get rid of your body. That was a part of Greek philosophy. They despised the body. And in the light of that, the Apostle Paul teaches us that God is interested in our bodies. Our bodies are not what's evil. We're all evil. present your bodies as sacrifice to God. That's a mistake that we may make today, too. We imagine that's what is inside, is what's important, and what's outside isn't important. And then we Don't take care of our bodies. We abuse our bodies. We eat too much, or drink too much, or don't exercise, or exercise too much. And excuse that misbehavior by saying the bodies are gonna go down to the grave and rot, and what's important to God is our soul. Not so. Not so. God redeemed us by Jesus Christ, body and soul. were his in our bodies and his in our souls. One of the other reasons why this is important to emphasize the body, what the apostle is doing here is pointing out that our whole life is lived in service to God, not just our soul, but our body. And by making that, he was not being dualistic. He's simply saying all of you, Not just soul, but body. Not just some of your life, but the whole of your life. Not just one day of the week, but every day of the week. Our work and our home, our studies at school, they're all to be offered to God. And that leads to the point that the apostle is saying that when you do this, it's worship. Offering your bodies as a sacrifice to God, is as much worship as in the Old Testament when they brought an animal to the altar or grain to the priests and Levites was worship. This also is worship. Which is why the apostle at the end of verse one says, which is your reasonable service. And that word service in the text can be translated liturgy. Liturgy, some of the newer translations of the Bible translate this, which is your service of worship. And that's striking. We might be tempted to think that the only worship we give to God is for a couple of hours in the morning and a couple of hours in the evening on a Sunday, and maybe added to that what we do after the meal or in the evening when we open up the word of God and read it and talk about it, and maybe sing and pray. that the worship of the child of God is limited to these few times. The apostle is teaching us here that the entirety of our life is worship. When I present my body tomorrow morning and go to work in the factory or at the office or I go to school and study or stay home and wash clothes, do dishes, care for the children, everything the child of God does is an act of worship, worship of God. And then don't lose sight of the fact that in this figure this is really a giving up of ourselves. I said that this is a living offering but it is an offering. A sacrifice where you lose and what you lose is everything you give yourself to God. How much? The non-Christian neighbor asks you, when he asks, what does it mean to be a Christian? What do you have to pay? Everything, you say. Everything. I am God's. The life of a Christian is altogether different. Look at the Old Testament. They took the animal, they gave it to God. They didn't take it back. They took the grain of the fruit and gave them to God and didn't take them back. And now we take our bodies and the whole of our existence and give them to God and we don't take them back. We belong to God. That explains why if two marry when they're not Christians and one of them converts to Christianity, and is a genuine Christian, their spouse will probably say about them, describing them to you, that's not the woman I married. Or that's not the man I married. And that's not an exaggeration because there's something fundamentally different about a person who becomes a Christian. They're different. How different? The apostle makes clear when he speaks of being transformed. Let me read the text again in verse two. Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. Be transformed. I don't know when those toys first came out, but I remember kids being so excited if for their birthday present or their Christmas present they got a Transformer. And whether the original Transformer toy was based on some foolish and maybe wicked movie or not, I don't know. But what a Transformer was was simply something that with a few twists and turns and pulls became something different. A car became a soldier. That's the word that's used in our text and that's the idea we need to think about. as non-Christians become something very, very different when we become Christians. A better figure of speech would be the word itself in the Greek that comes into the English in the word metamorphosis. Your children in school learn about metamorphosis. You learn about that fuzzy caterpillar that hangs on a branch on a tree, spins something around itself, and after some time, opens up and appears as something altogether different, a beautiful butterfly. Fundamentally different. It was one thing when it entered that cocoon or chrysalid. It's another thing when it exits. Metamorphosis is the word in our text. Or think about the word used in the ministry of Jesus Christ. Remember when he took Peter and James and John up to the top of the mount? That's called the Mount of, we could call it the Mount of Metamorphosis. We call it, because the Bible does, the Mount of Transfiguration, but it's the very same word. The man that they thought they knew, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, went up to that top of the mountain and was transfigured in their sight so that they said, he's not what we thought he was, he's something altogether more than he was. Transfigured. And that's the word that's found in our text. Transformed. Transformed. I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable worship. Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed That's the calling that we have generally, but now let's look at that calling specifically and how very concretely that life is worked out. So we ask the question, how do we do that? How do we do that? And when I ask that question, how do we do that, I don't mean to imply that you can. And you mustn't imagine that you leave here tonight and say, I have to do something apart from God in order that I can be transformed and transfigured. You can't transform yourself. so that you make yourselves different persons in that radical sense of the word? This is the work of the Spirit, as Paul says in Titus 3, when he refers to the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit. The renewing, that's what this is. By whom? By the Holy Spirit. I'm underlining a point, you can't do this on your own. And since this is nothing less than the work of sanctification, We're making confession here that sanctification is the work of God that I can't do on my own. I can't do that. And yet, without denying any of what I just said, sanctification, that's the teaching in the text, is a work of God in such a way that it always involves our activity. It always involves me thinking and willing and doing Why, it's a call. Paul says, I beseech you. You have to do something. Present your bodies. Really? How does that work itself out? Well, this way. Don't be conformed to them. Be transformed to God. Be God-like. Here's a command. It requires obedience of us. In fact, the matter is that this command itself, like every command God issues, let there be light always accomplishes what that command says. In the hearts of the people of God, when they hear this command, they transform themselves. They go to work, they get busy, and they do things. So this is a call to activity, and the rest of the second point tonight is a description of that activity. Now if I were preaching through the book of Romans, and I'm not, then I would point out what I need to point out now, too, that the practical outworking of this general exhortation comes in the rest of Romans 12, and 13, and 14, and 15, and 16, so we're not going to be able to make all those concrete applications. We're gonna begin where God begins. How do we live this life? How does this take place? That we are transformed by, the apostle says, the renewing of your mind. Now we park on that part of the text for a little while. By the renewing of your mind. Your mind needs to be changed. How you think needs to be adjusted. You need to have a renovation of up here and in here. So radical, you have to have a different mind. Let this mind be in you, Paul says to the church at Philippi, which was also in Christ. Not your natural mind, another mind. Now the mind represents the whole of our inner life, even though it's the word that means mind, mental, thinking. The apostle isn't limiting us to that, though we're gonna focus on that. He's reminding us that What needs to be renewed is everything inside you, everything within you, your soul, your will, your heart, your affections, your desires. But now we're going to focus on the way you think. Renew the way you think and reason and know. And the apostle begins there by inspiration of the spirit simply because what's outward will never change truly unless what's inside us changes truly. And even the world knows that. If you have a criminal, they send him to rehabilitation and they give him a psychologist or a psychiatrist if they can afford that, and they try to change the way he thinks so that when he gets out of prison, he acts differently because acting is based on thinking. That's the point in the text here. If we want to be different, if we want truly to live as Christians, we have to begin with how we think. And that's very practical with regard to you and your personal problems or me and mine. If we have marriage problems or parent problems or children problems or personal problems with regard to how we act, then let's change first how we think. And how we think will determine, under the blessing and by the grace of God, how we act. So think differently. There are four things that the text points us to with regard to how we ought to think differently. It all starts here in answer to the question, whose are you? To whom do you belong? Or easier for children to understand, whose are you? And I bring that up because if the text calls us to this obedience, that we take everything we are, body and soul, mind and will, heart and affections, including our body, if we are called to take everything that we are and give it to God and not take it back, implied is the reality that we are not our own. We've been bought with a price. We have another owner. and that is God in Jesus Christ. That's why we need to think differently, first of all, about ourselves. Whose are you? And what a difference that's going to make in the life of a child of God. That explains why a man whose non-Christian wife becomes a Christian, he says about her, she's a different person. She's not the same woman that I married. Well, of course not, because she realizes now that she doesn't belong to him. Ultimately, she belongs to her Lord, and she ultimately is going to serve him. in heaven and not him, her husband, though she submits to her husband in all things lawful. But what a difference that's going to make in the life of the child of God if, first of all, he thinks differently about whose he is. Second, we need to think differently about our natures. What kind of people are we? Well, what's your answer to that? What kind of people are you? What kind of person am I? And that comes out in the text when the text says that you need to become very, very different than what you were by your first birth. So you learn something about what you got from your first parents in your nature, your flesh. and what you need from God in your second birth, the new life of the Lord Jesus Christ. Look now at what you got from your parents in your first birth. You need to be transformed. You need to become something altogether different. God needs to go to work on you, and as it were, twist and turn and pull and push so that what you were from that first birth now is changed into what you are by your second birth. Think about who you are. And when you look at that first birth, this is what you have to say, wrong. And you still have that nature with you so that you always have material in yourself to say, wrong, wrong, I'm wrong. In my nature, there's something fundamentally wrong. And I need a work of God in me to give me another nature which will go to battle against that wrong nature so that I live as a Christian. But until the day I die and I put my body in the grave, I'm wrong. And what a difference that's going to make in the life of someone who becomes a Christian. First he says, I am not my own. I am not my own. I belong to my faithful savior. That's how I think. And then he says, I am wrong, fundamentally wrong, in my nature. What I got from my parents is evil, and what I give to my children is evil, and we need a renovation and a renewal by the Holy Spirit of God, but I myself, in myself, am wrong. And now I say, what a fundamental difference that's going to make in the life of a child of God. How? If that work of God has truly worked in me so that I realize that about myself, the way I deal with you is going to be very, very different than the way I did. I want to live humbly. And then I reminded what the apostle says immediately in verse three, the very first verse after our text, which gives the introduction, the very first word he says, don't think of yourself more highly than you ought to think. Think soberly, be careful, don't be proud. In my relationship to you, things are going to be different if I'm a Christian. And then in my own private life, without any of you looking or seeing, I'm going to be very, very careful because I know that I have in me the material to do awful things. And that material to do awful things will stay with me till the day I die and my body goes to the grave. I need help. It's going to make a big, big difference in my life if I think properly, first of all, about whose I am and think properly, in the second place, about what kind of person I am naturally. In the third place, we need to think differently about the world. And that comes out in the text when the apostle says, don't be conformed to this world. Well, that is a confession that there's something wrong with the world. What's the world? That we must not be conformed to. It's everything there that's under the dominion of Satan that's fallen and disobedient and unrighteous and polluted and corrupt. You know that. As a Christian, you recognize that. The world is evil, and I need to think about that, because if I conform myself to what's worldly, then I'm not a Christian. And insofar as being a Christian, I conform myself to the world, I contradict what it means to be a Christian. Devastating influences of the world on the child of God. Whereas I say with regard to the first element, I am not my own, I am not my own, and repeat that as it were a mantra. And secondly, I am evil, born in sin, God desires truth within, danger, danger, danger with regard to me. Now in the third place, we say danger, danger, danger with regard to the world out there. I'm afraid of the world and worldliness. I don't want to be influenced by it. But there's another reason that the apostle speaks of the world in another way we need to think of the world. Not only in that the world out there is corrupt and depraved, but that that world is temporary. This world is going to pass away. The apostle John says, the world and the things of this world pass away. And that explains why Christians always describe themselves as pilgrims. I'm just a passing through. This is not my abiding place. It's not my home. I live, as it were, in a tent, ready soon to pull up stakes and go to home with God. So there are two reasons that we need to think about world and think differently about world. Number one, because it's corrupt and it's fallen state. And number two, because it's temporary and it's going to be destroyed someday soon. What a difference that's going to make in my life and your life as Christians. If we didn't recognize that the world is corrupt, And if we fail to remember that the world is temporary, I don't need to finish those sentences. We all understand. We need to begin and continue thinking differently about the world. And in the fourth place, we need to think differently about life itself and the purpose of life. in that it is to serve God. Here we get to the heart of the matter. We can talk about whose we are, what kind of people we are, what the world is like, but here is the heart of the matter. We ask the question, what is the purpose of life? And the answer is that we take ourselves and we lay ourselves on the altar of God. in the service of him and to the glory of his name and his son. That's what life is all about. And if for me, life is all about eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage, and my life is all about fun and making money and getting gain and engaging in sports and hunting and everything else, then insofar as that's what my life is, I show that I am not a Christian. or I must ask myself if that's the fundamental part of my life, am I a Christian? What pleases God? I get that from the text when the apostle says at the end of verse one, present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God. This is what pleases God, this is what makes him happy as it were. This, that the child of God redeemed by his son devotes himself to God. What a difference that's going to make in the life of the child of God. You spell that out now tonight. when you get home and you talk about the sermon, the Word of God. What a difference that's going to make in your life. First of all, whose I am? Secondly, what I'm like? Thirdly, what's the world like? And most importantly, what is life all about? Serving God, that pleases Him. What's not in the text, I want to mention just briefly, and that is, if you ask the question, how do you renew your mind? I've answered by thinking differently about yourself, your nature, the world, and life, but how does one do that? And the answer is by the word, by the word of God itself. Give yourself to the word then, because it's the word that's going to tell you whose you are, It's the Word that's going to describe your nature, depraved and corrupt. It's the Word that's going to explain to you what the world is like under the influence and dominion of Satan. And it's the Word that will explain to you much more fully than I did tonight what life is all about. Go to the Word. The Word. Read the Word. Hear the Word preached as you're doing tonight. Study the Word at home privately and in family worship. Get together with other Christians as the brother did at his workplace with some of his friends who are here tonight and explain and apply the word to your lives. Well, one thing is true, scrolling through Facebook and Snapchat and all the rest and watching endless loops of videos that may be interesting and not wicked but inane is not going to renew your mind. We need to be a people of God who renew our minds by reading the word, the word. And then finally, why? Why? And I like to put it that way, too. Who in their right mind, and now you know the answer to that, who in their right mind would ever give themselves to someone else and sacrifice all of the fun that other non-Christians are having? Who would devote themselves to Jesus Christ, who said to his disciples, if you want to follow me, this is how you need to do it. Take up your cross and suffer. If you want to be my disciple, that's what it's going to be. Who in their right mind, you have to ask, would ever do that? Well, the one whose mind has been renewed by the word of God that preceded the text before us tonight. And the text that we have before us is linked to what precedes by the word therefore. I remind you, it says, I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice. There's an old saying among Bible students that whenever you see the word therefore in the text, a very important New Testament word, you need to ask why it's therefore. Well, the word therefore in this text is there because it links to everything the Apostle said, not just what ends chapter 11, but the whole of the book of Romans. And what is it that the whole of the book of Romans teaches? Mercy. pity, sympathy, and compassion of the good God in heaven who looked down from heaven to see if there were any that did understand and seek God and found not one. They're all corrupt, they're all depraved, their throats like an open sepulcher and their words are like the poison of asps. That's what God sees when he looks down from heaven. And then God in his goodness takes some men and women and renews them by his spirit by giving them Jesus Christ. This is the point of the book of Romans. It's all mercy. It's mercy writ large over 11 chapters. God in heaven takes pity on the people who can't save themselves and he saves them. He justifies them and says, you're righteous. Even though you don't deserve it and you've done everything to merit everlasting damnation, I'm going to declare you righteous, justified, not by your works, but by your faith in my son that I gave to you. What a beautiful expression of mercy. And then having explained all that, he comes to chapter 8 in the book of Romans and says, because you belong to God, everything is yours. Nothing is against you. Everything is for you. Not one thing, principalities, powers, will separate you from the love of God, and everything works together for your good. Can you hear mercy any more clearly than that? What a good God we have. Mercy. And then when he, in chapters 9, 10, and 11, explained that he chose you to be the recipients of this mercy, not because of anything in you, but simply because the potter decided to choose you, it's all the more a manifestation of the goodness and the utter grace of God. Why me? There's nothing in me that makes me the object of God's favor. Mercy. Paul comes to the end of the book and says, I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God. Think of the mercies of God. Don't think of the judgment of God. Don't think of the anger and the wrath of God. That's there too. It's one of the Bible's teachings. But what motivates you to godliness and transformation is not that God's coming to judge, And he's angry with sinners every day, but what motivates you to be godly is when you get up in the morning and sit on the side of your bed and you think, mercy, mercy. New every morning. What a good God we have. He showed that mercy to me. Why me? And then I put my feet on the floor and I get up to go about my work with that in my mind. Mercy, mercy, mercy. And that means, people of God, that if we aren't living godly as we ought, and that's always true, don't ask for the minister to pound the pulpit harder and warn sinners about the coming judgments of God. That may be a part of the message that needs to be heard. But hold before the people of God, who you know are believers, mercy. The good God in heaven who doesn't deserve, we don't deserve anything good from him gives us good because he pities us in our misery and he lifts us up out of that misery and causes us to taste that he's our God and we belong to him. That is what drives me and that's what fuels me to live godly and want to be different. even if it means that I die to myself, I want to live for him. I beseech you, not just you, Noah, but I beseech you all, and I beseech myself too, by the mercies of God, present yourselves a sacrifice to him that pleases him. Amen, let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank thee for thy word. We pray that it may be a means to correct our thinking if it needed correction, to encourage us to live godly because of the goodness that comes to us who are undeserving. Use that word to illumine our minds and soften our hearts and bend our wills that when we leave this building tonight and we go about our activities in this coming week, others may know that we are Christians by the love that we have for thee and the love that we have for each other and the kindness that we show to others because we have been the recipients of that kindness first. Forgive, Lord, all our weaknesses. There are many. Omissions and sins of commission have been exposed tonight. Pardon us and declare to us righteousness in thy sons so that we may live then as grateful people. In Jesus name we pray, amen.