The Bible is the book of Romans at the end of chapter 11. Romans at the end of chapter 11, we're going to read from verse 33 on as far as chapter 12, verse 2. So Romans, reading from 11.33 to 12.2, please give your attention to the Word of God. Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments! and how inscrutable His ways. For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor? Or who has given a gift to Him that He might be repaid? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen. I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. The transition that we have just read should remind us of a crucial point about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The religions of the world typically say, do this and live. Perform this work and receive the blessing. do this path, keep these noble truths, perform these pillars, do this Torah, and you will receive whatever salvation is pictured there. Not so the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel of Jesus Christ says, God has done, so that you may live. That is why it is gospel, an announcement of glad tidings. God has done so that you may live. Now you say, well surely there needs to be a little more. Surely we do need to know how to live. Yes, there is. And so we just began reading it. Yes, there are things to do, a life to live, a way to walk before God. So yes, we are getting to that. But that does not come first. What comes first must stay first. God has done that you may live. That is the announcement. That is the gospel. Why are there so many churches around here? Well, in part, because of this gospel order. The Roman Catholic Church knows that there's some good news around Jesus, but they don't keep it properly apart. That first, you have the announcement of what God has done, so that you may live. And then following on that, we will hear how to live. No, they jumble it all up together. And then the one who first greatly opposed it is Martin Luther. He is so afraid that you may get lost and forget the main points, if we talk about how to live, that often they don't want to get there. And so they simply say, God has done that you may live, full stop. to be a grammar nerd. Roman Catholics blend up the indicative statements, the statements of fact, what God has done, with the commands of God, the imperatives. Lutherans are tempted to so lean on the indicative that they never get to the imperative. But here, as so often is the case in Paul's letters, Having spent the first half, or the first two-thirds of the book on the indicative, now he transitions to tell us how then we shall live. How we shall live. He begins now to command. Beginning here at chapter 12, he's going to say, God commands you to do this, and to do this, and to do this. You will get many commands now over the next four chapters. But even in the midst of all that, you must remember, this is not part one, it's part two. It's the shorter part. It's the less important part. Because what God has done for us is infinitely more important than whatever we can do. So bear that in mind. Bear that in mind as we spend some time on the imperatives, on what we shall do. that all this is based on the first 11 chapters, that is, it is based on what God has already done for us. And so you see that in verse 36, that everything is from God and for God. Or as he puts it there, for from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. Everything is from God. This gives God a certain priority over us, that He made all things, that He sustains all things. Everything is coming from God, both the creation and the providence, the upholding of it. In terms of time, we begin with the beginning, with the past, the origin. It is from Him. And then it says, through Him. Now, as it says, through Him, we are to think especially of God the Son. Because it says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things that have been made have been made through Him. And without Him was nothing made that has been made. It says of the Son, in Hebrews 1, that He upholds the universe by the Word of His power. And He is the exact inference of His nature. So God, the Son, you could say, God, all things are from God, and part of the role of Father and Son is that the Son is the mediator for us, and so things come to us from God through the Son. All the promises of God find their yes in Him. We should think not just of the creation and providence, but also of our salvation, that it comes to us through Jesus Christ. We speak here, you might say, of the now. Now it is that all things that come to us from God come to us through Jesus Christ immediately. But this still hasn't quite told us how to live, and so we have to come to and to Him. All things are going to Him. All things are for the glory of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. All things are for Him. All things are aimed at Him and will be wrapped up in Him. It says in 1 Corinthians 15, Jesus must rule until every enemy is under his feet. He must be the king over all things. All things are to him. And so this tells us something about our lives, that our lives are to be to him for his glory. They will be to him for his glory. Let us be gladly to his glory. Let us be positively to his glory. And we see this at the end of what we talked about last week. God has consigned all to disobedience, that none may boast, that He may have mercy on all, that He may have mercy on every one of us. And so He gets the glory, because we don't. He has saved us. So we see here, first of all, that everything is from God and it is for God. And this gives us a basic framework of meaning. What is the meaning of my life? Well, here is the big frame to it. Everything is from God and for God. There's a basic meaningfulness to all things. There's a basic truth to everything. Now, does that mean that we understand why everything had to happen to us? Well, no. As he goes on, as we see here as well, God rules everything in ways that are beyond us. Verses 32 to 35. Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable His judgments. How inscrutable. Inscrutable means that you can't figure it out. That you can't search it out. It's a synonym of unsearchable. How inscrutable are His ways. Now, someone might say, well, here's a dodge. You tell us that there's meaning, because God, all things are for God. But then you tell us that we can't understand it. This is a dodge. The answer is, it is not a dodge. It is unavoidable. because we're so limited. We only live a brief time. We only get to perceive a few things. We can only focus our attention on one thing at a time. And God is almighty. Of course he is beyond us. How could it be otherwise? Of course he is far beyond us. But you'll notice how his goodness is clear to us. Paul here is praising God. And he's praising God, having said a couple chapters earlier that he was broken up with sorrow. Broken up with sorrow, because so many of his countrymen did not believe in Jesus. And so that's been the issue for chapters 9, 10, and 11. And so as we've talked about the last several weeks, the answer to this is, God at first worked among his people Israel. God then hardened them partially to work among all nations. But in the end, he will turn back and bring his people to believe in Jesus the Messiah as well. We notice the sovereignty of God, and we notice the justice of God. It ends up he has mercy on all. We see this justice there. And so he's able, even while he doesn't understand everything, to praise God for what he does understand, and the goodness in it. And then as he praises God, you can tell why it's indented there. He begins quoting from the Old Testament. He quotes first from Isaiah and then from Job, which, of course, is why we read from Isaiah and then from Job. He quotes from Isaiah. Now, Isaiah had a very similar experience to Paul in some ways. That is to say, Isaiah must have had grief in his heart and unceasing sorrow. Because when he had a vision of God's glory, and he said, woe is me, I live among a people of unclean lips, and I have unclean lips. And the angel came and touched his lips with the coal and said, your sin is atoned for. And then when God said, who will we send to Israel? And Isaiah said, send me. God said, good, I send you, and you will speak to people who will hear and not understand. People who will see, but not perceive. And Isaiah said, well, how long will I do that, Lord? And the Lord told him, until cities are desolate. In other words, he will have sorrow in his heart, as he is a true prophet who is not listened to. And yet, in the second half of Isaiah, we see Isaiah promising us that God will restore his people. There will be greater things. There will be salvation and righteousness. Like Paul, Isaiah had to live through difficulty and sorrow and hard hearts, but do so knowing that God had promised something better later. Now, do you always know about the good in the future? Well, we don't all have the same particular calling of Isaiah and Paul, do we? So we also quoted Job. Now here it's not Job who was speaking, it's Elihu. And as far as I can tell at this point, Elihu was saying something true. Job, of course, famously had everything going well for him and was honoring God. And then, without dishonoring God, he had everything taken away from him and was filled with misery and wanted to know why. And God said to him, Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? That is, Job had to learn to rest in God without knowing the ins and outs and the whys of his own suffering. And in the end, God blessed him again. But he didn't know that. And he never, as far as we can tell, knows what we know as we read the book, the whys. As God rules everything in ways that are beyond us, it is unavoidable. He is the Creator and we are the limited creatures. And so, yes, we have meaning. Everything is from God and for God. We don't have mastery. We don't get to say, and I know why this happened, this happened, this happened, and this happened, and everything happened. You don't know why everything happened. Well, you know the big picture. You don't know the details. You don't have that mastery. You have meaning. And what Paul is praising God for here is that God's mercies are deep and rich and wise. Remember, Paul's sorrow gives way to joy as he considers and understands God's plan. And Isaiah's sorrow gives way to joy as he understands the larger plan. And Job's sorrow gives way to joy at last as he rests in God. And what are God's mercies towards us? You're not Paul, you're not Isaiah, you're not Job. What are God's mercies towards us? Well, that's the first eleven shallows. That is to say, God's mercies towards us are that there is an event. God has kept His ancient promises and He sent the Son of David, who is actually also the Son of God. He has sent Him so that we can be saved. It's a message of salvation for everyone, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile. It's not something beyond our reach, for we lay hold of it by faith. And this is God's mercy to us, because for us we were lost in sin, not interested in God, not giving Him thanks, not giving Him praise, turning aside to worship things, even His own people. misunderstood the word that was given them and thought that they could prove something from the word given to them. But God sent Jesus. And Jesus took away the wrath of God against our sins by paying the price upon the cross. Jesus, at God's plan, turned away God's wrath so that God might justly and mercifully forgive us. This takes away our boasting. And this is always how God has acted. This is how he acted with Abraham. Abraham was counted righteous when he trusted that what God said was true and would be true. Yes, in Jesus, our relationship with God has changed. And if your relationship with God has changed, your relationship with all things has changed. So that even suffering is something you can rejoice in when you trust that God has a good purpose in it, a purpose for our character, our endurance and our hope. Yes, this is what we see when we see that Jesus is our representative. That while we have disobeyed, He obeyed. And He suffered that we might not suffer. So that Jesus is our new representative, replacing Adam, who had been our representative and led us into sin. And so we are no longer slaves to sin. In Jesus we are no longer slaves to sin. You do not have to keep sinning the way that you have been sinning. Perhaps you had to before, but not when you believed in Jesus Christ. You are no longer slaves to sin. You are no longer slaves to God's law. Because Jesus died to the law, and you in Jesus died to the law. It no longer is what rules in your life. And so we have peace with God. There is no condemnation for us in Jesus Christ. We must have eternal life, because the Spirit of life lives inside us. We must have eternal life, because we are God's children. Now we must inherit from God. We know that we will be with God, and that nothing can separate us from His love, because He has given us His very own Son. We know that He has chosen us to be conformed to Jesus. And so we are assured that nothing in heaven on earth can separate us from His love. Yes, because we know that the reason He chose us is in Him and not in us. And so it is secure, because He is sovereign, in whom He has mercy. Yes, it is for us to respond with faith and thanks and confession. Knowing that God has worked in Israel, God is working among Gentiles, God will work among Israel, that He may have mercy on all. These are the mercies of God. I just summarized Romans 1 to 11 for you. I was going to name the chapters, but I hope that you can find the chapters. I just summarized the mercies of God for you. And I want you to remember the wisdom of these mercies. When He justified us by grace, he forbade us to despise others. Because we're justified by grace, we cannot look down our noses as if we are better than another. We must say, there but by the grace of God go I. And when he justified by faith, he excluded our works. This was to keep us from despair. Because even the dullest person must eventually realize that he has sinned against God and can't make it up. Some understand that early, some late. But we would despair if we were to be justified by works. But he keeps us from despair when he justifies us by faith. And because Christ represents us, we have peace with God. You know, your work is unfinished, and my work is unfinished. And so if it depended on our work, we couldn't have peace with God. Who knows what we're going to do tomorrow? Who knows how our abilities will be impaired tomorrow? And what will we do then? But because Christ's work is finished, and he is our representative, we have peace with God in Jesus Christ. Notice the wisdom of how God has operated. He takes away all grounds for despising others. He takes away all grounds for despair in ourselves. He takes away all fear of the future. This is the wisdom of the mercies of God. And all this is the indicative. All this is what He has done. God has done these things so that you may live. So, Given that you now will live, how shall we live? How shall we then live? And that is the pivot point at the beginning of chapter 12. Having laid it all out, the mercies of God, how then shall we live? We still need directions. And he proceeds to give us directions. Imperative number one, glorify God with your mind. When I was 18, I was the counselor at White Lake Camp for the high school boys. And I was the head presenter for family camp. And then they couldn't find anyone to lead the high school discussion group, so they figured they'd give that to the counselors as well. And the counselor in the girls' cabin said, go for it. I'll back you up. And the speaker, Christian Ajemian, said, I don't have any prepared questions for you. I want you to just listen to my talks and then lead discussions on them. Fortunately, I had an in with the adult discussion leader. I would huddle with dad for five minutes after the talk was done and then try and lead a discussion on it with all the young people who were 12 months younger than I was. Christian of Damien was speaking on Romans 12, 1 to 12. He spent most of his time really on verses 1 and 2. And what I remember is how much time he spent on the first word of verse 1, which in the Greek is the therefore. In Greek, it's only a three-letter word. This tiny little word. And Christian said, this is a thinking word. Therefore. This is a rigorous word. This is an intellectual word. Therefore. That is, every time you read a therefore, you have to find out what it is there for. Why is this word here? It is connecting what came before with what comes after. So you have to think, what came before, what comes after, and what is the connection between the two? It is a thinking word. Which means that our Christian faith is not simply to be drifting away with happy feelings. Emphasized the former professor, Christian Agemi. This is a thinking word, it's a thinking book. Therefore, what's it there for? Well, because of all the mercies of God. He says, I appeal to you on the basis of all the mercies of God. That's what comes before everything he said that God has done for us that we may live. On the basis of all of that, therefore, Love the Lord your God with your mind. Glorify God with your mind. Now he says that explicitly in verse 2. It's already implied in verse 1 simply with the word therefore. You have a Bible that says therefore frequently. We are told that we are to love God with our minds. We are to remember things and we're to process those things Figuring out what the natural outflow is. That right there means we need to be loving him with our minds. Now, I also want us to notice something here that I don't remember Christian including. Maybe he did. And that is, notice also the emotional intensity right here. I mean, he's just gone through a doxology, all right? how unsearchable his judgments, how inscrutable his ways. To him be glory forever, amen. That's a very emotional doxology. And then he launches into, I appeal to you brothers. I beseech you. I exhort you. What a way to translate that word. Parakaló. That's please in modern Greek. Please. And so he's bringing together here the intellectual and the emotional. In our American lingo, which is not the Bible's lingo, in our American lingo, He's bringing together the head and the heart. It's a very intellectual thing, but it's also a very passionate thing. Which tells us that we ought not to try to divorce these things. We're to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength, mind. Oh, Jesus said that. See, Paul again is simply applying the words of Jesus Christ. Now, what in your life calls for hard thinking and also deep feeling? A few very nervous students might say, calculus, because I'm really nervous I'm going to fail. For most of us, yes, our math will require some thinking. The emotion is somewhat less. What requires this much thinking, a lot of thinking and a lot of emotion? I came up with war. Especially if you're a commander. You're going to send guys in to face fire and bullets and die. You better be thinking about the best strategy. You are a derelict of duty if you just do it without thinking. You better think, and boy is it important. You better be feeling with your men that you send in. War is both thinking and feeling. And if you're smart, love is too. You know love has got the feeling. But if you want to win her heart and keep her heart, you better be thinking about it. So love would have those two things. And here we have a third thing, for which we are called upon to use our minds to the fullest and to apply ourselves to it in a passionate kind of way. And it seems to me that I have not come up with three separate things here, but rather two, war and love, because the gospel is God's answer in this war. The gospel is God's approach to how he is going to win the war against evil, and how he's going to win us in the midst of this war against evil, even though the evil is in our hearts. This, you could say, requires a plan that God has executed in Jesus Christ. And why has He worked so hard to come up with this plan to save us in Jesus Christ? Because of His love for us. And so, you see, the Gospel is the fruit of war and love. And so, like war and love, we are to apply ourselves to living the Christian life with all of our heart and with all of our mind. So, first commandment, glorify God with your mind. Second commandment, glorify God with your bodies. If we were to just speak of our minds and gnostics, you'd be imagining that what God created us, how God created us was somehow faulty, or not for long. You'd be denying the goodness of this creation. All things come from God, including your body. So he says, present your bodies to God as a spiritual sacrifice. Now, sacrifice is such a big topic that we'll save it for next week. Like Mr. Gemmian, I'll spend more than one talk on these verses here. But you'll notice that the first point is we are to respond to the mercies of God as whole persons, not mind only, not feelings only, not body only, not leaving out any part. Glorify God with your mind. Glorify God with your bodies. And glorify God with your mouths. Now, if you look here, you will not see mouth listed separately. So why am I listing it separately? Well, first of all, because Paul had been so obviously using his as he praises God at the end of chapter 11. He is using his mouth to praise the Lord. He is an example to us. We should do the same thing. Secondly, back in chapter 10, he talked about the importance of the mouth. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, you will be saved. So let's not forget the mouth. And also, let's just remember what a powerful force in our lives the mouth is. As it says in the book of James, the mouth is a fire, setting fire to the course of our lives, and set on fire by hell. Sometimes it seems nearly independent. We say, I spoke without thinking. Yeah. But out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. So we must glorify God with our mouths. And where would you put it? Do you say the mouth is part of the body, or that it's part of the mind? Well, it's obviously part of the body. Yes, there it is. It gets operated on. Certainly part of the body. And yet, it is the way that we know your mind. As it says in Proverbs, even a child is known by his words. So glorify God with your mouths. the part of your body that expresses your mind. As I've been going through the Book of Romans, I've been using a book by a man named Charles Hodge. And Hodge says repeatedly throughout the book, truth is an order to holiness. Which is his old-fashioned way of saying, God has saved us to change us. He has saved us so that we would be different. He has saved us so that we would be whole. And He does this out of compassion and mercy for us. Because what is it that messes up our lives? Our sin messes up our lives. So He does not leave us in our sins. He saves us. And then the further secondary part of saving us is to change us, that we may not continue in the same sins, continue digging deeper into the mud, the ruts of our relationships, spewing mud around and not moving forward. Now, he saved us through two changes. And so we are to glorify God with our minds, with our bodies, with our mouths, not as a precondition, not a work you must do first. This will not make you acceptable to God. No, this is what God saved you to do, that you might glorify Him and know the peace of God in your everyday life to a much greater degree. And what he's saying here is this is your reasonable response to God. This is really the only way to respond to His mercies. When you understand who Jesus is and what He's done, how else would you respond to Him other than dedicating yourself to His service? Yes, soon we will pray, hallowed be your name. We only pray that with sincerity, when we are also earnestly praying, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Let us pray that with integrity. And then we're praying, hallowed be your name, with integrity as well. Let us pray together. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you come to us in mercy and in power. That You come to us as whole beings, made in Your image, body and soul. And that You deliver body and soul from hell. We thank You that You have delivered us by Jesus Christ's suffering, by His person and His work, that we might live before You. And so Lord, we thank You that You have restored us to the place where You created us. that we are your image, and that we are to walk before you. Lord, build us up in your Spirit, that we may overcome these sins, these habits, these ruts in which we walk. Help us, Lord, out of these ruts, that we may walk the straight path that you lay out before us, always keeping our eyes on Jesus, our Savior, who goes before us. We pray this with this day.