Sermon given on Monday, August 1 at Generation For Christ 2011 at Camp Balandra, Trinidad.

Generation For Christ, Trinidad, 2011 "Be Ye Transformed"

<p>Sermon given on Monday, August 1 at Generation For Christ 2011 at Camp Balandra, Trinidad.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

AudioVerse

Norman McNulty

Be Ye Transformed

Our Father in Heaven, we thank you that you've been with us this weekend.

And now as we come to our last presentation for this weekend and for today, I pray that you would speak through me.

May I be lost sight of, may Christ be lifted up.

And may we go from this place ready to meet him when he comes I pray this in the name of Jesus amen.

So our theme this weekend has been be ye transformed based on Romans chapter 12 verses 1 and 2.

And I would like to start this final presentation by reading that passage.

Romans chapter 12 verses 1 and 2, where Paul says, 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 ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

Now, as I said earlier this morning, Paul has developed the theme of being transformed in the book of Romans.

And I wanna show you how Paul has developed this in the first several chapters.

First of all, notice how he says, I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God.

Did we not see the mercies of God, especially in Romans 3, where we see that God has offered us justification freely?

I mean the mercies of God, we deserve to die, all of us deserve to die, and yet God by His great mercy is offering us this free gift of salvation.

And so he's saying, because of that, present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service." Now what does it mean to present your body as a living sacrifice?

You realize that Paul actually talked about that earlier in the book, and if you've studied the book of Romans, I would invite you to turn to Romans chapter 6 verses 6 and 7.

Paul is saying, present your bodies as a living sacrifice.

Now notice what he says in Romans chapter 6 verses 6 and 7.

Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him.

Our old man is crucified with Christ, that the body of sin might be destroyed.

Now let me ask you this, if you present your body as a living sacrifice, would that not be the same thing as having the old man crucified with Christ?

When Paul says present your bodies as a living sacrifice, he's simply pointing back to what he showed in Romans 6 where he says, the old man is crucified with Christ.

Now the same author Paul, talks about being crucified with Christ in 1 other place in Scripture.

Well, more than 1 place, but especially in the most famous passage Galatians chapter 2 verse 20, where he says, I am crucified with Christ.

And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, or I live by the faith of Jesus Christ, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Listen, when I see that Jesus loved me and that He gave Himself for me, and was crucified on the cross.

I will be crucified with ye." Now let's go back to this concept in Romans 6 about the old man being crucified with Christ.

It says, our old man is crucified with Christ.

You realize that we were all born, ever since Adamson, we've all been born with sinful natures.

And we all have that tendency to be selfish.

And even little babies say, mine, don't take mine.

We have that in our nature, in our tendency to say, I'm gonna do it my way, and if that so happens to go along with what God says, that's convenient for me, good.

You know, naturally speaking, for myself, there are certain things in the world that have no pull.

And it's not necessarily because I'm converted.

I mean, you could not pay me enough money to go out and shoot somebody.

That would be like the most terrible, awful thing to even consider doing, and then to live with the guilt afterwards for doing it.

That's never even been on the radar screen of a temptation for me.

I've never eaten any type of meat in my entire life.

And that doesn't make me righteous and holy because I haven't done that.

I choose to live that way so that I'll have a healthy body and a clear mind to hear God speaking to me.

So, you know, if I go to a restaurant and I see a whole bunch of pork at a buffet, it's not like, oh man, I really wish I could put some pork on my plate.

But you know, there are certain things where my old man will start speaking to me and saying, boy, I know you're a follower of Jesus now, but don't you remember how good that felt?

Don't you remember when you were like really able to just be you and to tell those people what you really thought of them, and to just give them a piece of your mind, why don't you just show them Norman McNulty in a flash of glory right now?

Then you can go back to Serving Jesus again.

But right now, show yourself for who you really are.

And you know what, each 1 of you, you know what those temptations are.

It may not be the pork, it may not be going out to shoot someone.

Hopefully the shooting thing isn't even close to the radar screen for any of us here.

The 10 Commandments are the 10 Commandments, and if you break 1, you're guilty of breaking them all.

If you have hatred in your heart for a brother or a sister, Christ says that's as bad as murdering them.

If you can't forgive someone who's wronged you, in God's eyes, that's just as bad as if you shot them.

And you know when you come to Romans 7, and this is why Paul talks about presenting your bodies as a living sacrifice, because if you do not present your body as a living sacrifice, the old man is going to come back.

So in Romans 6, we see that our old man is crucified with Christ.

That the body of sin might be destroyed so that we will no longer serve sin.

It's interesting when you come to Romans 7, in the first 4 verses, Paul gives an illustration, and for the interest of time I will try to summarize this as quickly as possible.

But Paul is speaking to Jewish Christians, and he says, I'm speaking to you who know the law, that the law has dominion over you as long as you live.

The law is simply there to point out what is right.

You can never make up for breaking the law in your own human strength.

We've all sinned and come short of the glory of God.

We deserve to die and yet God in his great mercy offers salvation to us.

So he's saying, you know, the law has dominion over us as long as we live.

He says, and it's interesting, he specifically speaks with respect to a woman, because he's making a spiritual analogy to God's people as the church.

And he says, when you are a woman and you're married to a man, you are bound by the law of marriage to stay with him as long as you are alive." As long as you are alive and you're married, you are bound by the law to stay with him.

And of course that's true for men towards their wives as well.

And then it says, but if the husband dies, you're loose from the law of marriage so that you can marry someone else.

And notice what verse 4 says, Wherefore my brethren, you also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ, that you should be married to another, even to him who was raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God." Who is Paul saying that we should be married to spiritually?

Jesus Christ who was raised from the dead.

But now notice what Paul was saying here.

As long as you're married to 1 man, and he's speaking in a spiritual sense to women who represent God's church, as long as you're married to 1 man, you can't marry another man.

And he says if you try to marry someone else while you're still, while your husband is still alive, you're an adulteress.

And by the way, just as an aside, in our modern society people think that if you don't get along with your spouse, you can just divorce them and then go marry somebody else that you like better.

But you know in the eyes of God that makes you an adulteress or an adulterer because in the eyes of God the only reason that you can get a divorce is if there was adultery in the marriage.

And even Adventists seem to not understand this.

Like, well, we have irreconcilable differences, so I'm leaving.

And once the dust clears, I'll get married to somebody else.

The Bible is very clear and Jesus says so.

But here's the spiritual point that Paul is trying to make.

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Be Ye Transformed

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