Be Transformed By The Renewing Of Your Mind

I've been thinking a lot lately about just what it means to be a pastor, a pastor of this church, and having talked to a number of other men pastors and the burdens they carry, the things that they have to deal with, not just in evangel, in our presbytery, but outside of that. And the thing that I have felt, and if you were to ask my wife, I don't often express, is a lot of gratitude for this church and for you. It's a pleasure to be your pastor. You're not always the nicest people in the world, but neither am I. And if you've been around for a while, you know that. But it's a privilege to be able to stand before you and to preach and to bring God's Word to you. And I hope that you'll receive it with gladness and with open hearts. We've sort of been on a break from our typical habit, which is to preach consecutively through a book. We finished the Sermon on the Mount. It's probably been six weeks ago now.

And because of the way the schedules have worked out and my intermittent preaching lately, it seems like it's a week on, a week off, a week on, a week off, I've delayed starting our next book until November. And so I'm preaching today, and for the next two weeks, Pastor Eric's going to be preaching, and then I'll be back, and we're going to start the book of Deuteronomy. It's a long book. It's a book of the law. I'm actually very excited about it. preaching that to you. And what I hope is that you don't hear it and go, oh, do you know how long the book of Deuteronomy is? There's a lot in the law of God that is good for us. And I'm looking forward to it. I think that we're going to realize as we work our way through the book of Deuteronomy is that the law of God is not the caricature that we have in our mind of it. But it's actually quite interesting that it's instructive, that it's helpful.

Both in its teaching and in its warnings. But I have felt the need for us to receive back something that has been left on the shelf to collect dust, which is the law of God. And so I'm looking forward to it. It's a long book. I don't intend for us to take like 10 years to get through it. But we're also not going to get through it in like one year either. We take a little while to get through books here. I think we took five years to go through Luke off and on. So I'm looking forward to that. We'll be starting that up in November. But today, I've been thinking about what we need and where I think we could grow and what texts have been helpful to me and pushing me personally to grow, to consider, to...

question my own understanding and my own thinking. And so the text I've come to for us this morning is Romans chapter 12, verses 1 and 2. Some of you may be familiar with it, others may not, and that's okay. I hope by the end of it, you'll have a better understanding of what it means to live like a Christian, or rather, more particularly, how to grow as a Christian. It's one thing to say, you need to do this. It's another thing to say, if you don't do this, this is what's going to happen. But there is a positive expression in Scripture regularly. about why we should do the things that God requires to us. And his burdens and his law are not meant to be a heavy yoke around our neck, but they're meant to be the gentle leading, the kind leading to green pastures, the sort of place we would want to be as Christians. And so the question this morning, as we work our way through the passage, will be to come to, how do we grow? Like, how do you actually grow as a Christian? What's the lever that gets that work accomplished?

As I said, our text is Romans chapter 12, verses 1 and 2. Would you please stand now as we read the word of the Lord? This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. Therefore, 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 do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. I think by nature, when we want to motivate somebody to do something, we use two things primarily. We use force. We just make them do it. And when that doesn't work, when your kids get too old for that, or when you're not able to...

use force to motivate. We end up using anger to motivate people or frustration or fear. We try to make them scared so that they'll do what they're supposed to do because they're scared. Each one of those things has its place in motivating us. I'm not arguing that we shouldn't have any fear of the Lord or that we shouldn't feel compelled to do the things that God requires. But in our text, there's a different motivation. There's the mercy of God. Our passage starts out and it says, Therefore I urge you, brethren, By the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living and holy sacrifice. And so Paul urges us, pleads with us, begs us to consider not the fear of God, not the fires of hell, not the blessings of heaven, but the mercies of God as motivation for us to change. This is not punitive, but...

meant to encourage us. It means that it's the sort of thing that we pass over. Have you ever had kindnesses extended to you and then you forget about them? It's much, much easier to focus on the things you don't have or the kindnesses that you've not received as opposed to the ones that you have. And so Paul says, hold on, guys. As you live your life as a Christian, I want you to stop and I want you to consider the mercy of God to you. If we could write down a list, if we handed you a yellow pad right now, and I drew a line down the center of it, and I said, on the one side of the line, write the mercies of God, the good things he's done for you. And I said, on the other side, write the hard things that you're doing and the questions that you have and the things you've gone without. I think most of us would be able to fill out the second list more thoroughly. I don't have this. I haven't gotten that. I'm not sure if this is going to happen. I'm worried about the other. And so Paul urges us.

To stop with all of that and to consider mercies of God. It's easy as a Christian to forget what God has to deal with in you. We do it in our relationships with other people. We often take for granted the bearing with that they have to do with us. Through all of this building project and all of the good fruit that's been born of it, gotten to look in the mirror a little bit of what people have had to bear with me. My wife bears with it constantly. Some of you bear with it more regularly than others. But I've had to look and see what I make people bear with. It's hard. What I'm saying is there are things I'm not good at. There are things that I have shortcomings and failures and faults of all kinds. And other people just have to bear with them and make up for them and backfill for them.

And it's good for me on occasion to be reminded that I'm hard to bear with. Because by nature, we don't think that about ourselves. We think we're easy to deal with. In fact, it's the other people who are hard to bear with. And so why would I call to attention a look in the mirror? Well, because when you look in the mirror, you won't only see your shortcomings and your failures and your weaknesses. The other thing that you'll see, and this is the mercy of God, is you'll see the bearing with those weaknesses and sins that other people do, but ultimately that God does. That he bears with us and is merciful to us when we don't deserve him to be merciful with us. That's the kind of thing that we pass over. And we come to just take it for granted that God doesn't deal with us the way we deserve to be dealt with. If you were in the Garden of Eden as Adam or Eve,

And the Lord came to walk with you as he did and they hid themselves. What were they hiding for? Why were they hiding? They were hiding in fear of death. Because God had told them, in the day that you eat of that fruit, you'll surely die. And so they were hiding in the fear of death. I don't know, maybe there is someone in this room who's truly hidden in the fear of death. Afraid that if they were found, they would be killed. But there is nothing more terrible than to hide in the fear of death. And then God says, Adam, where are you? Where are you? And he comes out and he's expecting the death that God promised to him. And God doesn't kill him. Not as Adam thought he would. Did Adam expect any mercy from God? I don't think in that moment he expected any mercy from God. He expected God to do what God said he would do, which was...

In the day that you eat of it, you'll surely die. He expected to be put to death, whatever his conception of death at that time was. And what did God do? He did curse them. He did kick them out of the garden so that they couldn't get to the tree of life. The other thing God did was he covered their nakedness. Before the fall, Adam and Eve were not ashamed of their nakedness. They walked around in the garden and did their business, and there was no awareness or even shame. about being unclothed. But as soon as they ate the fruit, they were aware of it and they became ashamed of it and they hid themselves. And what God did was cover their nakedness. He was merciful to them. Have you ever been embarrassed and had someone come and cover up your embarrassment? It's really, really sweet. It's really, really sweet, especially when you weren't expecting your nakedness to be covered. You were expecting something completely different, to have your nakedness exposed.

That's the mercy of God, and that's constantly the mercy of God toward sinners, toward you and toward me. Every day, God is covering over and hiding our sins and withholding from us the things that our actions deserve. Sometimes you might be tempted to think if you fall into sin, well, I got away with it. Great. No one was watching. But many times in the Christian life, That's not the feeling. That's not even the sense you get after giving into sin. You just have kind of this momentary pleasure or joy, and then you're like, oh, no. What's going to happen now? Isn't the testimony of your life that what happens now is that the mercy of God is extended to you again and again and again for days and years and decades?

These are the mercies of God that Paul's calling us to remember. These are the mercies of God we forget. They're so constant in our lives that we just presume upon them and we think that it's always that way. That nothing proactive is going on. But God, each time we fail, is merciful to us in looking to his son Jesus and having our sins paid for. And so because of that, brothers and sisters, Paul tells us we ought to present our bodies as living and holy sacrifices that are acceptable to God. You might think, if you're like me, that that's not possible anymore. That you've sinned so much or failed so long or are so weak in some area that it's not actually possible for you to present to yourselves, to God, as an acceptable offering or an acceptable sacrifice. Do you look on your life and think, God could not be pleased by this?

How can you present yourselves to God as an acceptable sacrifice, acceptable in his sight? By the mercies of God, you're able to. And you have to be careful. We have to be careful not to judge more scrupulously than God does. And what I mean by that is he was satisfied to be merciful to his children. His arm's not twisted behind his back. He's not being compelled to do something that is against his nature or his desire when he's merciful toward us. It's his desire and his intention to be merciful constantly without fail to all of his children. And the more and more we see our failures and we see our shortcomings and we fall into the same sins over and over and over again, the other part of that story is that there's a merciful God being merciful to you each and every time.

And one of the things, the outworkings of all of that is that you're able then still to present to yourselves by the mercies of God an acceptable sacrifice, an acceptable life. Something that God looks at and says, that's my kid. He does the things I want him to do. And I love him for it. What does that require of us? Well, it requires that we change. That over time we grow. That we become more and more like God as we live our lives. We would like for that to be a quick process, but it's not. We would like that to be a linear process where it's just a consistent growth in that direction, and it's not that either oftentimes. If you zoom far enough out of it, it looks like that, but if you zoom into it, there's all these ups and downs and twists and turns and failures along the way. But what it requires of us is that we change from what we are by nature to what we will be in God's presence. Change in our lives is inevitable.

you will not be the same man that you are now in five years or in ten years. You will change. And in another ten years after that, you'll have changed more. And even now, if you think of your parents and your grandparents, you could probably point to the ways in which they've changed in the last five years. Maybe they're more content. Maybe they're more grumpy. Maybe they're more worried. Maybe they're more cheerful. But the fact is, they, like we, are always changing. It's inevitable. And so the question is not whether we'll change, but what will you change to? What will you become? Because it's not a foregone conclusion that everyone gets better as they get older. Some people get better, more godly is what I mean, and some people don't. And that's the question that this passage puts before us, is as you change, as you live your lives, as you grow, what will you grow into? What will you become? We're not what we should be yet.

Will we become what we should be? And how will we get there? Well, Paul tells us that the way, the motivation to us becoming what we should be as Christians is to consider the mercies of God. And having considered them and remembering them, we should press on to present ourselves as living in holy sacrifices to God. There's a comparison also in this passage. The thing that's held up in comparison to this growing toward being godliness or being conformed to godliness is being conformed to the world. This is the question. Which direction will you grow? Will you grow in the way of godliness? Will you grow in the way of worldliness? You will grow in one way or the other. Which one will it be? It can't be both. It will be one or the other. The world wants you to change, and God wants you to change. And they both exert their pressures on you to change in much the same way.

They say to you, consider this. When the serpent came to Eve, he came to her with an observation. Consider this. Doesn't this look like it's good for food? And the world comes to you in the same way saying, have you considered that you'll be happier over here? You'll be more likable over here. You'll be more beautiful over here or more wealthy. What are some of the things that would define conforming to the world these days? What do you feel pressure to do or to be? Do you feel pressure to be inclusive? Meaning, do you feel pressure to be affirming of other people's life choices and decisions? Whatever those might be. Inevitably, you do. You feel like, I'm not supposed to say no to that. Do you feel pressure to approve of certain lifestyles? Homosexual lifestyles, transgender lifestyles, fornicating lifestyles?

childless lifestyles, lifestyles that reject marriage and the sorts of things that God's given to us as the very foundation of society. Those are the things that are being told, no, no, no, no. Don't do those things. Don't like those things. Don't want those things. Don't disapprove of those who want to live that way. We could look around and we could say, I think I know what the world's putting pressure on me to be. And it all amounts to saying, we want you to be quiet and inactive when it comes to living or believing or speaking about the things of God. Those are the things that are off limits. And so there's the tension. That's what the world demands of us. That's the pressure we feel. And we feel these pressures at work and in our extended families and with our other parents on our kids' sports teams and what have you. You just think, I don't know that I'm going to fit in.

So how do you avoid that? Well, first, by considering the mercies of God. God's not merciful to everyone. And in the end, will not have been merciful to everyone. Not in a way that saves them from hell. But to his children, he is merciful to. And he does love them and does care for them. And so he warns us gently to not be conformed to this world, but to be transformed, to be changed, to be shaped and sculpted. By the renewing of your mind. And this is a place that I want us to spend a little bit of time considering. What does it mean to have your mind renewed? A lot of what we talk about with regard to becoming a Christian or living as a Christian has to do with your heart. You need a new heart. You need a changed desire. But here this passage brings in our minds. Our minds and our hearts are not the same things.

Our hearts are the seat of our affections, but our minds are where we process and reason and rationalize and think about stuff. And so what this passage teaches us is that our minds are necessary to gain access to our hearts. If someone were to ask you, do you know how to change a tire? I suspect a number of you could answer and say, I think I know how to change a tire. I've heard the facts. Then if they asked you, If your tire was flat on the side of the road and your family was in the car and it was your job to do it properly, would you have the same level of confidence that you know how to change a tire? You see, now there's cost associated with your knowledge. It's not a theory anymore. Do you know how to do it? And I'm not saying, are you strong enough to break the lug nuts loose? I'm just saying, do you understand the process? Do you know that if you try to change a tire on a hill,

Bad things can happen to you and to your car. Do you know that if you tighten the nuts at the wrong time, the tire might feel tight until you're driving down the road, and then you might realize that it wasn't tight. There's a difference between having a theoretical knowledge of things and having confidence in that this is how to do it. And I would put my family's lives on the line that I know how to do it the right way. I bet many of us would say, we understand the facts of it, but... We might want someone to look over our shoulder as we do the actual changing of the tires. These things are on my mind because I just changed the brakes on my van last, in the rain on Friday night. It's not a pleasant experience. My oldest son sat out there and held the flashlight in the rain while we sat in the street and tried to compress our calipers. And I came inside and Vanessa said to me, she knows we're soaking wet, miserable, greasy.

tired, hungry. And she's like, is that safe to drive? Because if there was a corner to be cut, it would happen when it's dark and you're wet and you're angry. And I don't know how many times I said to you, at least it's a warm rain. It was the only comfort there was. It was a warm rain. And she's like, did you do the job well enough? And the question is, how confident are you that this thing will stop with your family in it? And I was like, I'm confident that it will stop. Well, then it turns out that the caliper was leaking, and it didn't want to stop the next day. So then I got to do it all again yesterday. I got to replace the caliper and put a new one on so the car will stop, because we're going to Florida at 3 o'clock in the morning, you all know. We need brakes that work. We have to drive through mountains. All of that's to say, my confidence in that scenario, my confidence that that thing is fixed is not because I watched some video or someone told me how to do it once. I've come to believe and to know how.

it works and whether it's correct and right. And I'm willing to bet on it, if you will. That doesn't all happen in my heart. A lot of that has to happen in my head. I have to understand how a brake system on a vehicle works in a way that some of you don't. And that's okay that you don't unless you think that you do. And so if we're to change and as we're to change, the access point to our change is going to be through our minds and what we think. And it's not simply just putting facts into our brains. That's a part of it. We need to have the information. But what comes along with that information is an analysis and a conclusion. Because facts by themselves don't motivate us. Knowing a bunch of facts and being able to spit them back out, that's not thinking. That's not wisdom. That's not helpful. Have you ever talked to someone who can just spout off all these random facts about stuff?

Are they enjoyable to talk to? I don't find them to be enjoyable to talk to because I can't orient to what they're saying and try to understand, like, but what's it mean? Why are you saying this to me? What am I supposed to be learning from what you're saying or understanding? And to that person, and to the extent that we are that person, the facts have simply gotten into our minds. But then what comes with that information is pressure to conform to what those facts mean. I joked in Sunday school about carbon footprints and carbon emissions and about being a vegan because of cows' damage to the ozone through their living and breathing and existing. And what is the point of all of those facts and all of that stuff being said to us? Well, you're supposed to draw the conclusion that it's bad to eat meat. There are people who would say it's bad.

bad to do that. It's bad for the society. It's bad for the environment. It's bad for you. There are other people who say, no, no, no. We don't interpret the facts that way. And you realize that both sides are trying to compel you to do something. One side's trying to compel you not to eat meat, and one side's trying to compel you to eat meat. You're constantly living in pressures where facts are being put at you, and then pressure to interpret those facts in a certain way is being put at you. That's what's going on in this passage between the world and godliness. Facts are not enough. Knowing the stuff is not enough. Acting on it, having a why is necessary. Some of you guys might listen to Dave Ramsey, and he often talks about having the why. People will call in and he'll say, do you guys, are you familiar with our baby steps? And the people say, well, I've been listening for a while, and they've gotten the facts down, but they're calling in because now they're actually starting to

try to do what he's saying and they're realizing that they're having some sort of problem. And so what comes along with the facts into our brains is an interpretation of those facts that's supposed to motivate us to move. Facts don't do that by themselves. Being able to regurgitate the facts doesn't make you act. People could call into Dave Ramsey and say, we know the baby steps. You say this and then this and then the other. And if we do that, then this is how it's going to all work out. But the question that remains is, are you doing it? Have you been compelled to do it? And many times the answer is no, not yet, or not really, or not fully, or my situation's different, or there's a story. And so our minds play a big role in our actions. To be a Christian is not to simply do what feels good or to do what seems right to our minds, but to consider what God has said and to think about how our actions

are going to turn out. And the question in this passage is, as you live your life, as you try to serve God, are you becoming more like the world or more like Jesus? We have facts and we have interpretations of those facts. Which one are you persuaded by? Which one makes sense to you? Which one is compelling? This is the question that we all have to answer. This is the pressure that the Romans were feeling. This is what it means to be a Christian. To become a Christian and to live as a Christian and to grow as a Christian is to have our minds engaged in the things that God has said, not just knowing the facts of them, but understanding why he said those things. Here's one thing, an example of it in our own home. If your kids are in Awana or their Sunday school here, you know that they're always getting Bible memory stuff to do, right? And if your kids go to a Christian school, they're going to come home with more Bible memory stuff to do.

Lots of Bible verses to memorize. I'm for Bible memorization. It's good. It's not nearly as good if all we've done is memorize the words so we can get a piece of candy. So one of the things that I try to do with my kids as they're, and this is not like, and we have a lesson and then they figure it out and then it's all taken care of. But one of the things I try to get them to do is stop with the words for a minute. And think about what they mean. You will have a better chance memorizing what God has said if you understand the flow of what God is saying or why he said it. Words need to have meaning to us. We understand when we learn language that that's all of what's going on. We teach kids words. They speak nonsense words. And we're saying, no, honey, don't say it like this. Say it like this. No, that's not one of those. That's one of these. We're filling their worlds with meaning.

and interpretation and priorities and boundaries. And all of that's happening in their head. Oh, that's not what that color is. Oh, I'm not allowed to do this. Oh, I'm supposed to do that. Oh, this is what God meant when he said. This is why he said it. That will aid us in Bible memory. If a child can win the Bible bowl and can recite their dozens of passages, and if you were to ask them at the end, why did God say that to his people? And they were like, I don't know. then who cares if they won the Bible Bowl? What help is that word to them? It hasn't become a help to them because it hasn't taken root. It doesn't have any meaning. It hasn't put any expectation or pressure on them. We teach our children Ephesians 6. Children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. Honor your father and mother. And on and on it goes. Verses 1 to 3. Every kid should just know it, be able to rattle it off. If you don't teach them what that means and bring that to bear in real life, they're just words.

You have to teach them what those words mean and why it's important that they obey them, not just that they know them. And we don't outgrow that as adults. We don't get to a certain age and then all of a sudden it's like, well, we don't have to think anymore because we've just got our patterns of life. Because our patterns of life shift and change. That's what this passage teaches us. As our lives change, we're going to be trending this direction or that direction. We're going to be coming more godly or we're becoming more worldly. I want to become more godly. I want you to become more godly. That requires that your mind be engaged in the things you do and why you do them. You can't simply live your life doing what you want to do and think that it's going to go well with you. Because Jeremiah warns us that our hearts are desperately sick and deceitful. And so we can't simply trust what we want. It's not a faithful guide.

Well, a bunch of people are doing it. I'm sure you've all had your parents say or have said or heard it, said, well, if everyone jumped off a bridge, would you do it? Everyone's heard it. And what's the implication of it? Just because the mob's doing it doesn't make it acceptable or wise. And whatever the world thinks about it, our question as Christians should be, is it acceptable to God for me to do this? Because twice in this passage, it says that we ought to do what's acceptable to God. At the beginning, in the middle of verse one, it says that we would present our bodies as a living holy sacrifice, acceptable to God. And then at the very end that we're to prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. And so we should learn our objective as Christians is to live a life that's acceptable to God, that he looks at and says, I will, yes, I accept that. I see that these are my children seeking to do my will. And when they fail, they've trusted in my son for their forgiveness of their sins, but they desire and are pursuing a life

That's acceptable to me. And so do you ask yourself, is what I'm doing, is what I want, pleasing or acceptable to God? I think we always ask whether it's acceptable to us. We're always doing what's acceptable to us. You don't have to think about that. That's just our nature. We do what we want, what we enjoy. But we would be foolish to think that just because we want it, that God wants it. Or because it gives us satisfaction, that it gives him satisfaction. And so we have to learn to ask the question, is what I'm doing or wanting or saying or feeling acceptable to God or not? However acceptable or unacceptable it is to us, is it acceptable to him? What you'll find if you do that work is that it's not always acceptable to him. And then the question that we've begun with is, how do you change? How does this area grow toward godliness and not toward worldliness?

What Paul teaches us is you have to go back regularly and often to remember the mercies of God to you. And your mind has to be engaged with it. You have to consider it and think about it. You have to be able to say, I don't deserve that kindness from God. And so if you go through life entitled, thinking that everything that you have that's good, you got by your own wisdom and strength, you'll never think that God has given you anything. And then when things get taken away from you or don't go the way you want, you'll feel as though God has stolen something from you that you earned with your own hands. And that's a recipe for bitterness and apostasy. Apostasy just means a walking away, a rejection of the Lord, a denial of the faith. And so there's danger in these waters that we need to be careful of so that we're able to grow in godliness and to become more like Jesus.

As we live our lives as Christians in this world, we recognize a few things. One, that not everybody around us, and probably most people around us, are not Christians. And that part of our job in this world as Christians is to represent to everyone who watches what a Christian is, what a Christian loves, what motivates a Christian. Your job, whether you accept it or not, is to testify to the truth about your God. And we're either willing to do that and trying to do a good job of that or we're stiffening our necks against it and doing a poor job of it. But we are doing it. At the end of verse 2, it says that we're to prove what the will of God is. How do we prove what the will of God is? By our actions. And a good metric of it is what do other people think being a Christian means based on their observation and interaction with you? Do they think that being a Christian is the same as...

being not being a Christian? Can they discern any difference? Do they understand that there's a change in the way you live when you become a Christian? Or do they find that there's no friction between their life and your life? If they do, then we're not communicating to them accurately the will of God. We're not presenting to him an acceptable sacrifice. We are becoming conformed to the world. It means that as you live and as you grow, if you're being transformed through the renewal of your mind, you're going to become more and more out of sync with the world. And that's not just because you've gotten old and you're out of sync with the young people, because that does happen even with unbelievers, but that the things that you love and the things that you give your time and energy to and the things that you pursue are going to be diverging, changing, growing further apart.

So that in time to come, you're not going to look like the world because you've made different decisions along the way. And you've done them because you're a Christian, not because they were convenient or popular or easy or you saw some great advantage in the world by doing it, but because you said, I want to be like my Lord Jesus. So I'm going to do the things that his word calls me to do. If someone were to look at you and if they could, outside of your hearing, say, Based on my observation of Bill, your Bill, this is what it means to be a Christian. Tell me the three things that are most important to Bill and that motivate Bill the most. We should be able to look at ourselves and say, what would they say if they were honest? And they knew I would never hear what they said. What would they say? Are those things godly? Are those things things that you do because you're a Christian? Or is there some other motivation?

This is how we begin to sort out whether we're on the trajectory of being conformed to the world or whether we're on the trajectory of being transformed by the renewing of our minds. The longer we live, the better equipped we should be to explain and understand our lives, the way we live. And we shouldn't be ashamed of saying to people, I do that because God says so. And I love God because he's been so merciful to me. Why would I not want to do what God says when look at all of the good things he's done and given to me? It's a nice thing to talk about. It's a hard thing to do. I still get like the hair on the back of my neck stands up if I realize I'm going to say something like that to an unbeliever. When I realize that there's a disagreement and I'm going to say to them, but the reason I've done the thing I've done is because I love God. And actually, that's the difference between you and me. Here's one of the blessings that I've observed about...

serving God. The goal never changes. The goal never changes. When you are to conform to the world, the goal is forever a moving target. It's very hard to make progress when the goal posts, the goals are always moving and changing, and you're almost there, but now you're not, because now there's a new thing that you're supposed to conform to. One of the comforts of being a Christian is you only have one one person so to speak God to please and he never changes and so you can make a lot of progress toward that goal because he lays it out for us clearly and shows us how to get there and then he doesn't change and move it and say not good enough for you or it's over here now as we make progress we can see this principle applying in other places in life if people are always changing jobs over the course of a lifetime that will have an effect on their their life

If you want to make progress, you have to ride it out, not changing jobs and jumping ship every time it gets a little difficult or rocky or there's a tough season. And I'm not saying you can never change your jobs or anything like that, but I'm saying there's a type of man, a type of person, who when the going gets rough, they just jump out and say, oh, I'm going to go do this other thing. And then they ride that train for a while, and when it gets tough, they jump out and say, oh, I'm going to go do this other thing. And as they do that for years and years and years of their life, they're not content.

They haven't gotten ahead. They're not doing better in their pursuit of whatever end it was, money or promotion or what have you in company. They're not getting there because they keep changing. The goal keeps changing. Where the guy who says, you know what I want? I want to do this, and I'm going to do this, and I'm going to stay here, and I'm going to try, and there's going to be good years and bad years and ups and downs, and I'm going to be here for it. That guy in the end will make much more progress. The same would be true of relationships. Divorce is not the sort of thing that's acceptable to God or common among this particular group of people. But those who are constantly trading out relationships don't make any good progress. I didn't like this one, so I'm going to go get a new one. God doesn't change.

He calls us to follow after him and to be conformed to him. And so we ought not to be the kind of people who are changing all of the time, who are, what I mean is changing our priorities. I don't mean changing in our pursuit of them. We have to change to pursue godliness, but we don't change what the goal is. So do you want a life of turmoil and a life of always striving and always planting and always sowing but never reaping? If that's what you want, pursuing the world will get you that. If what you want is a content life, a peaceful life, a peaceful life in the sense that there's peace between you and God and you have a peace that stabilizes you during the storm. It's like the ship rides the waves and there's a storm, but there's enough weight in the bottom of it that it doesn't capsize, that kind of peace.

You're going to get that from serving God and pursuing him, being conformed to him, changing in that direction. Here's the thing about changing in your mind. One of the dangers of being young, and many of you are younger than me, and I don't think I'm old yet, is you trust too much in your own assessment of what's worth pursuing and what's important. And you would do much, much better, and you would save yourself a lot of heartache if you would trust the men and the women. who are older than you. You think they don't know what you're talking about. And you think that the pressures you're facing are unique to you. They're not. They're not even unique to us. They've been around forever. They've taken a new particular shape, but the dangers are the same. The danger is that the young will always want to learn from experience instead of example. You'll make a lot better progress in becoming transformed into the image of God.

By gleaning and benefiting from and emulating the changes that the older people have already figured out. But young people always want to reinvent the wheel. And that's the world's way of doing things. And that's an American way of doing things as opposed to a godly way of doing things. We ought to honor our fathers and mothers. We ought to learn from them. Are they perfect? No. Do they do everything right? No. Is all of their counsel going to be spot on? No. Will they always agree with each other if you were to ask more than one of them? No. But as a principle, if you think you're smarter at a 20 or 25 than someone who's 55, you have a rough road ahead. Many times those older people will counsel you in the way of godliness from their own experience. They'll say, I've been on the road you're on. I've been further down the road than you have, and it gets rougher. The poles get bigger. The damage gets more significant. So I'm telling you,

Don't go down that road. Turn off of it and go over here. This is godliness. Go over here. You think, no, no, no, I know better than them. You can avoid all of the potholes. You know what they thought when they were your age? Exact same thing. And now they're here to tell you, don't do it. If my life had to be hard, give me the joy of saving you the same struggle. That would at least make my struggle worth it. To know that somebody else didn't have to go do the exact same thing. That was the most basic impulse I had when I became a Christian about wanting to become a pastor. It was like, my life has been miserable and I've made so many bad decisions. If I could just help other people not do the same stupid stuff I did, I would give my life to be able to do that. That's why I'm a pastor. Because I've done a lot of dumb stuff. And if I can save you the headaches and the heartaches, it would be meaningful to me. And so in your pursuit of godliness,

And in the renewing of your mind, I don't want you to think this is something you sit and think about all by yourself and you will always come to the right conclusions. In fact, I would say that's generally not a good idea. Think about it, consider it, and then talk to those around you who are older and wiser and who don't have a horse in your race and ask them what they think. And you'll find that in years and decades to come, you'll be thankful for the things that they told you. And this is your parents that you should ask. These are your pastors and elders and their wives that you should ask. These are not your friends. Those who have the life that you want to live, ask them how they got it and what they did to get there and what lessons they learned. Pay real close attention to what they say and then do what they say. Consider it.

Think about it. Say, there's this conflict between what you're saying and what my heart wants. I don't want to go do what you're telling me to do. That's honest. Then the question is, what's it going to be? Are you going to listen to the woman who has the thing you want? Or are you going to trust yourself and say, well, I think I can get there another way? Those who are conformed to the world and those who are transformed into the image of God will not end up in the same place. When we were in the Sermon on the Mount, when I was preaching through it, I was talking about the wide path and the narrow path. And one of the things I observed, and it shows up here again, is those two paths are not two paths to the same place. They don't go to heaven. They don't both end up there. The narrow path leads to life, and the wide path leads to destruction. Conformity to the world leads to death. Conformity to Jesus Christ leads to life. And so every day before you, you have that question. Which one are you going to be conforming to?

Which pressures, because there's pressures on both sides, which pressures will you say, these are the ones I will subject myself to? You feel pressure when you come to church to be a certain way, don't you? Yeah, we all do. Is that bad? I don't think so. I mean, there's a bad expression of everything that could be good. But the fact that God's people have an expectation for you to live like a Christian is not a bad thing. The expectation that they would say, that's stupid, young man or young woman. Don't give your life to that. That's a good thing. And that's pressure. And the question is, is the person saying that to you, do they have the life and the priorities that you want to have yourself? Do you want to be where they're at when you're their age? Then listen to them when they say, don't be an idiot. Our work as Christians is to prove what the will of God is. That which is good and acceptable and perfect. And so as we live,

And as we grow, and as people know us and see us, as our children grow up in our homes, they should be able to say, this is what was important to them. I've asked before, when you die, what do you want people to say about you? When you're not there to hear it anymore, what will they have said you proved was important? What was acceptable to God, or what was acceptable to the world? May it be that we would prove what is acceptable to God. And where we're weak and where we fail, let us remember the mercies of God, which are new to us every morning. That we serve a God who doesn't remember, doesn't count and store up our sins against him to hold over our heads in the future. He loves us and he cares for us. And the things that he calls us to and commands us to and urges us to and exhorts us to are for our good. No man who served God ever came up at the end of his life and said, you know, this wasn't good.

worthwhile or good for me to do. He came up and said, I wish I would have made it further down this path and not been so distracted and hadn't strayed so much. And so when you fail, even that's not an excuse because you have a God who is merciful towards you. I'll end by reading this from Psalm 103. He's not dealt with us according to our iniquities, nor rewarded us according to our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his loving kindness toward those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. Just as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him. This is what it means to be a Christian and to pursue living a life that's acceptable to him. If you live a life that's acceptable to him, you'll live in this constant conflict that it's not acceptable to you because you're having to say no to yourself.

but for the sake of godliness and for God's glory so that he receives the praise and the glory and not you. Let's pray.