In Job 11:7-9, a friend of Job asks, “Can you fathom the depths of God or discover the limits of the Almighty? They are higher than the heavens—what can you do? They are deeper than Sheol—what can you know? Their measure is longer than the earth and wider than the sea.” We only have so much ability to know God. God is higher, deeper, longer, and wider than the highest, deepest, longest, widest things we can comprehend! Our sincere, but meager attempts to describe God laughable.
Yet God has given us two inexhaustibly profound ways to know Him. First, we’ve been given the very words of God—the Written Word—the Holy Scriptures. In the Bible, God gives us knowledge about Himself (and our human selves). Knowledge that would be entirely unattainable otherwise. The Scriptural text is made living and active by God’s Spirit. We can put total faith in what Word says!
But then God has given us a second, equally inexhaustible and profound way to know him. He sent His One and Only Son Jesus Christ into the world as His Living Word. John 1:14, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son [sent] from the Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1:18, “No one has ever seen God. The one and only Son, who is himself God and is at the Father’s side—he has revealed him.”
We have profound inexhaustible knowledge of God reflected on every page of the Scripture; We have profound inexhaustible knowledge of God reflected in the very face of Jesus Christ. The whole key to resetting our relationship with God—to putting on a new self—is found in Colossians 3:10. How do we “put on a new self.” “You are being renewed in knowledge according to the image of your Creator.” The pages of the written Word, the face of the Living Jesus Christ, is the whole foundation (the knowledge base) of our faith. We’re coming back to God’s Written Word. We repent and turn back to Jesus, and in Jesus not only behold the majesty of our Creator but find renewal. The invitation for week 1 of Reset was Acts 3:19-20a, “Therefore repent and turn back [to God], so that your sins may be wiped out, that seasons of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord…”
This morning we turn our attention to Romans 12:1-2: “Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship. Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.” We should think of “faith” as that in which we put our absolute trust. For faith to matter, it has to have an object. For example, we’ve put our faith in the Written Word… we put our faith in the Living Word of God Jesus. So, then what is worship? Worship is how our faith responds.
The big idea in Romans 12:1-2 is that oh boy! If we could someone get our eyes full of the mercies of God, we’d spontaneously lay our very lives down, as living sacrifices, on the altar of God. If we could get our hearts-full (our minds-full) of the mercies of God, such knowledge would transform us! It would renew us. It would reset us.
Why do so few Christians sacrificially live for God? Why do so many Christians act all ambivalent about what is the good, pleasing, perfect will of God? The short answer is we don’t have a very deep perspective on the mercies of God. Mercy! What mercy? Grace! What grace? The faith crisis these days is we don’t know the mercies of God, and we don’t know them because we barely crack open the written Word of God much less gaze into the face of the Living Word of God Jesus Christ. Weak knowledge, weak faith! Weak knowledge, weak worship!
What if we inverted Romans 12:1-2? “Therefore, brothers and sisters, if you don’t know the mercies of God, why would you ever present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God? How would you ever truly worship or respond to God? How could you help but become conformed to this age? How could you ever be transformed? How would your mind ever be renewed? Why would you ever concern yourself with what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.”
Every time Paul writes a letter in the New Testament, he employs the same method. He spends at least 50% of his time enumerating the mercies of God. And only after detailing the mercies of God does Paul dare utter a single commandment. Why would we ever do anything for God, if we didn’t first understand what God did for us? We’re all familiar with Moses, the Ten Commandments, and the books of the Law. Do you realize that before God gave Moses a single syllable of the Law God gave Moses a full-eyed view of His Mercy and Grace? By the time God gives the Ten Commandments Moses already had a million reasons to want to listen!
Allow me to call your attention to Exodus 20:1-2. This is where we find the Ten Commandments right? But look how Exodus 20 and Romans 12 mirror one another. Exodus 20:1-3 says, “Then God spoke all these words: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the place of slavery. Do not have other gods besides me.” Romans 12:1-2. In view of the mercies of the God… i.e. God brought you of the land of Egypt, he delivered you out of slavery, out of the hand of Pharaoh. . . okay have no other god’s before me. Offer your body as a living sacrifice to me. Don’t be conformed to Egypt, and worldly cultures. Be transformed. Renew your mind. Consider what is the good, pleasing, perfect will of God. **Divorced from the context of God’s mercy and grace, God’s commands ring hollow and ineffectual!**
So here is my question this morning. Just how in focus are the mercies of God? How well do you know the Holy Scriptures? Just how deeply have you gazed into the face of our most merciful Lord Jesus Christ?
I have a confession to make. I spent most, of my Christian life focusing on the commandments of Christ. I would read the Ten Commandments for instance, completely skipping over the merciful context of Exodus 20:1-2. And I’d make my checklist. Okay, Love God. Don’t worship any idols. Don’t use his name in vain. Don’t skip church ever. Listen to Mom and Pops. Don’t kill your brothers or sister. Don’t have dirty thoughts about girls. Do not steal. Do not lie. Don’t covet your neighbor’s stuff. Got it! And boy if you mess up… there will be curses. Have you noticed in Scripture that a lot of people mess up?
It wasn’t until I was nearly twenty years old, sitting in a Bible Class, that I realized I was reading Scripture all wrong. I was banking all the demands of God while ignoring the vast mercies of God. I had to go all the way back to Genesis and reread every story through a new set of lenses… I had to learn to read Scripture with God’s mercy in view. If you don’t keep God’s mercy in focus, you’ll never love God in any truly meaningful, much less sacrificial manner.
Nowadays, when I read Scripture, there is not a single page that isn’t stained with the blood of Jesus Christ. God isn’t asking me to pay a price for my disobedience. On the cross God paid the price of my disobedience once and for all. He took my shame and guilt. He hung in my place, taking my nails, taking my penalty, taking the curses that were to be upon me, unto himself. But on that cross Jesus also paved the way for my obedience. In love, he won me over. He laid his life down on the altar of the cross, allowing his body to be broken and blood to be shed. How much more should I be inspired to lay my life down for Jesus? He obeyed the Father to the extent of death, why should I consider it pure joy to discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God?
The Mercy of God is the badly missing perspective, the badly missing context, for all our obedience. Ignore the mercy of God, and you’ll forever live a marginal lukewarm, vomit worthy life (at best). God will spit you out! The mercy of God is what creates our fire. If the church has grown cold, it’s because its lost sight of the mercies of God. John 3:16-17 Jesus tells Nicodemus, “For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”
Ephesians 2:1-10, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins 2 in which you previously walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the disobedient. 3 We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also. 4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love that he had for us, 5 made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace! 6 He also raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might display the immeasurable riches of his grace through his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift— 9 not from works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do.”
In Job 11:7-9, a friend of Job asks, “Can you fathom the depths of God or discover the limits of the Almighty? They are higher than the heavens—what can you do? They are deeper than Sheol—what can you know? Their measure is longer than the earth and wider than the sea.”
Ephesians 3:14-21, “For this reason I kneel before the Father 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. 16 I pray that he may grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power in your inner being through his Spirit, 17 and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love, 19 and to know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. 20 Now to him who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us— 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
Psalm 107