Sunday August 23rd - A Living Sacrifice

Um, hey, I'm honored and just so excited that Pastor Tommy would ask uh me and Pastor David today to come share the word.

That's an immense trust from our pastor.

Come on, who just loves our pastor?

Who loves Pastor Tommy?

Come on, somebody.

Can we just honor him this morning?

Such a, I'm telling you, it's such a joy to be able to serve under his leadership with our amazing staff and just to be here with you all, just a part of what God is doing in this season.

You know, my wife and I, Brittany, we are um we've we've been around for a while, so we are new, but we've been in this area for a while, and I've known Pastor Tommy for close to 10 years now, and so I've kind of been watching from a distance.

You know, he's posted on Facebook about what God's doing at the church over the last, you know, many years and about group life when he was leading that.

So I kind of got little pieces, and so for the Lord to now um just tether us and connect us to this church family at such a time as this, we are just beyond grateful and excited for all that God is doing.

So um excited to jump into the word today, but before we do that, do I have any scented candle fans in the house?

Anyone like a good scented candle?

There was a row in the first service that were really fired up about scented candles, but I think you were one of them.

Well, I didn't get that again.

Come on.

No.

I'm gonna light the scented candle.

You know, for me, I'm a little late to the scented candle game.

I'm gonna be honest.

Let's see if I can even get this into light.

There we go.

Um, you know, when like many years ago, most of my life, I I would didn't have a whole lot of thoughts about scented candles.

You know, I'd I'd go by the store, I'd walk right by, I'm not really interested.

But then I met my wife and we go to Target, and someone helped me understand, like, scented candles have taken over Target, you guys.

Like they have they're in too many sections.

There should be one section for scented candles, but you're in the home goods where we always end up, and it's like they're just scented candles everywhere.

But I found myself starting to kind of get into like, you know, you go by, you check them all out, check the different scents out.

And so I brought my scented candle today.

I'm gonna leave it right here.

We'll get back to that later.

But uh uh, we're gonna read a couple scriptures.

Our message today is on Romans 12, 1 and 2.

So I want to read that together, uh, and then we'll unpack the first verse, and then Pastor David will come up and unpack the second verse.

So it'll be on the screen, but Romans 12, 1 and 2.

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.

Can we pray together this morning?

Let's bow our heads.

Lord, thank you so much for this day.

God, we just rejoice in today, Lord, what you're doing in this house.

Lord, this what a powerful time in your presence as we worship this morning, God.

And we just want to continue, Lord, week in and week out, to just lift up your name, Lord, to exalt you in our hearts and in our lives, Lord, to magnify you, Lord, to declare the truth of who you are, to speak the truth of who you are and your love over our lives, over our families, over our church.

God, and we are just a grateful people today, Lord.

So thank you that we can be gathered here, Lord.

I pray that you would speak to us through your word this morning.

In your name we pray.

Everybody said, Amen.

Awesome.

So I'm unpacking that verse.

This is the book of Romans.

And so this letter is being written by Paul to the church in Rome.

He says, I appeal to you therefore, brothers.

He's sending it to the church family in Rome.

And like all the letters in the New Testament, we need to really lean in because the intended audience of these letters is us, right?

The church.

And the beautiful thing about God's word is that um the is that it's it's it's living, it's alive.

It it applied, it applies the same today as it did back then.

That's what's so beautiful about it.

This letter is just as much for us, the church, now, as it was for the church in Rome when Paul wrote the letter.

And second, we read by the mercies of God, he says.

Such a beautiful reminder that everything we have and experience, past, present, and future, is all from God and for God.

And because of this truth, all that we say and do should be a response to the grace and mercy he has shown us.

By the mercies of God, Paul is saying that.

What I'm telling you next, his encouragement, his challenge to the church, we don't have to try to do it on our own.

He said, by the mercies of God, you can step into these things.

By the mercies of God, you can you can apply this to your life.

That's true for us today.

So let's remember that as we unpack this next part where I want to spend the most majority of my time this morning up here with you guys, is the next part when he says, present your bodies as a living sacrifice.

So, what is a sacrifice?

Well, in this context, it's specifically something given to God.

And Paul is using language that people would immediately understand, but he's using in a way that would have also completely blown their minds.

Because up until this point, you gotta think that that people's picture of a sacrifice has been shaped over generations and generations of an animal sacrificed on an altar, an animal burnt on an altar.

That's what a sacrifice has been for generations and generations and generations.

So that's their picture of a sacrifice, and now Paul is saying he's taking the imagery of a sacrifice to God that the people knew and is saying, now you are the sacrifice.

Now you are the sacrifice.

They're probably like, What?

That's not what they that's not what they've known.

Paul's changing things up on him here.

But here's what's so beautiful about this is that an old testament sacrifice was dead, but a Christ-following New Testament, New Covenant sacrifice is living.

And he's saying that living our lives not for ourselves, but for Jesus, is the new sacrifice.

Because here's the thing: a dead sacrifice is offered once, but a living sacrifice gets up every morning and chooses to surrender again.

The heart of a living sacrifice is that even in the moments that we feel like doing things our own way, we remind ourselves that his way is better.

Because there's times, here's the thing, and I heard this, it was blew my mind.

The thing about a living sacrifice is it can crawl off the altar.

Right?

An old testament sacrifice, once you kill that animal and put it on that altar and light it on that altar, it's not going anywhere.

It's staying right there on the altar.

But a living sacrifice, you and I, not what we're called to be.

We can be like, you know what, this morning I woke up, I kind of want to do this my own way, I'm crawling off the altar.

Well, I think in this area of my life, I'm gonna do things my own way, so I'm just gonna slide off the altar here.

But Paul is reminding us that we are called to be a living sacrifice.

It's the continued posture of God, this is all this all belongs to you.

Not our will, but his will be done.

Amen?

That's what a living sacrifice looks like.

And one thing that Paul mentions as well in this part of the passage is presenting our bodies as the living sacrifice.

Not just our hearts, but our bodies as well.

You know, our bodies are the vehicle in which our lives are lived.

So this is what Paul is saying.

It's gonna be on the screen.

Write this down today, if you're taking notes.

Don't just give God your beliefs, give him your life.

Because it's one thing, it's easy to say, you know, God, I I I believe.

I'm giving my life to you.

I got you.

I'm gonna say that.

My heart, I got you.

But is our life matching what our declaration to the Lord is?

Is our life matching the call to be a living sacrifice?

So next, Paul says, as after saying, presenting our body, it's presenting as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.

And the word holy means to be set apart for God.

So imagine taking anything in our lives and saying, This is God's now, whether it be career, family, dreams, future, gifting, resources, all of it, no longer ours for us, but for Him.

A sacrifice of all of our lives, a living sacrifice.

As I've been reflecting on this, and like, okay, what does that actually practically look like when life starts happening?

Right?

I have two young kids pray for us.

We got two young kids at home, a lot of energy.

And and you know, we were recently talking, Pastor Tommy and I and um Sheena, we were talking on the podcast, a little preview, it's coming out, I think, this next Wednesday, possibly the next Wednesday, but great conversation.

We were talking about this and just how how life can just kind of start to happen and kind of pull us away from being on the altar.

Sometimes it's not even a direct desire to be like disobedient to God or, you know, I want to get off the altar, I don't want to listen to you.

Sometimes it's like we just kind of slide off because life happens.

We kind of just slide off the altar because life happens.

And so I've been thinking practically, like, Lord, what does this look like?

And the Lord just keeps reminding me that doesn't mean that we don't, but we stop living our lives and doing the different things that that God's called us to and placed in our lives.

Here's the picture.

We just stop treating them like they are ultimately ours and live knowing that they are from God and for God.

That's what it looks like to be a living sacrifice day to day in our lives.

So, what will living our lives like this lead to?

What does being a living sacrifice produce?

It produces worship.

It produces worship in our lives.

And I know for oftentimes for the modern church, you know, we have a pretty specific picture of what worship looks like.

It's it's usually like someone on a guitar in a band, and we're singing songs and we're singing hymns together, and the the New Hill song tune, and we're singing as a church, and that is worship, but worship is more than just singing a song.

Living for God is worship too.

Living for God is worship too.

So I want I I I put some things together.

I want to just read these things out.

Just a picture of what worship in our lives looks like.

So when you go to work and you do it honestly, giving it your best, that's worship.

When you serve your family sacrificially, worship.

When you forgive someone who hurts you, worship.

When you refuse temptation because you want to honor Christ, worship.

When you use your gifts to serve somebody else rather than yourself, worship.

When you give generously, that's worship.

When you choose God's will over your own, that is worship.

Your entire life becomes an offering.

Your entire life becomes the sacrifice.

So you're probably wondering why I've had this scented candle lit for the last 10 minutes right here.

You know, incense was a very important part of the tabernacle in the Old Testament.

It represented the prayers and worship of God's people rising up to him.

And while not the primary purpose of the incense, the sweet smell of it would also cover up the stench and smell of the sacrificed animals.

But as we've talked about, there are no longer sacrificed animals.

And here's another thought that I want to share today that the temple of God, the dwelling place of the presence of God, it looks different now as well.

And I want to share these two verses before Pastor David comes up and unpacks verse 2 of Romans 12.

But the first is 1 Corinthians 3, 16.

It says, Do you not know that you, that's you, that's me, are God's temple and that God's spirit dwells in you.

In Psalm 141, verse 2, it says, May my prayer be set before you like incense.

Psalms 141:2

May the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice.

So here's the thing we are now the temple of God, the dwelling place of the Spirit and the presence of God.

And Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice that now calls us to live like Him with our lives being a living sacrifice.

Can anyone smell this candle?

No, okay, just for me.

The vibes up here are strong, guys.

I got this nice cafe latte up here.

It's fantastic.

I was kind of hoping it might sneak down, but it's all right.

You know, it's I like I like it, it smells good.

There's a sweet smelling incense that comes from the temple of God.

It's just no longer literal burnt smoke rising, it's our worship rising.

And the thing is, the sweet smell of that incense, it no longer needs to cover the smell of dead burnt sacrifices.

So instead, this sweet smell, as it's pleasing to the Lord, will begin to draw others to Him and bless others and influence and inspire others around you.

That incense of your life, the incense of your worship, living your life for God.

So, what's the call today?

Well, it's that we would surrender our lives to Jesus and offer ourselves as living sacrifices unto him.

And as we do that in our day-to-day lives, Romans 12 gives us more guidance as followers of Jesus.

And I want to invite Pastor David up to unpack our second verse this morning.

Yeah.

Oh yeah, you're missing the vibe.

It is so good.

It is so good.

One of the things that Pastor Nathan and I were both very uh visual in learning, uh, and I'm a uh a teacher in my mind, uh, my spiritual gift is teaching.

And so anything like a word picture, if those of you who have been like like the we got group life and other you know, one team leaders together uh earlier this summer, and I gave everybody a piece of choral.

It's just it's like I think it's like my the way my mind works.

And so hopefully it will be helpful for you today.

Let's jump back into the scripture so that we can uh resettle in how I'm gonna connect the two sermons, what I'm doing and what Pastor Nathan just said, and how they work together.

And Paul says this in Romans 12, 1 and 2, like we've read.

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.

But then he goes on to say, do not be conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what the will of God is, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

See, we're talking about what does it mean to be a spiritual.

It's kind of funny, I'm watching you guys and you're like, I think he's gonna say some really good spiritual stuff, but everyone's literally just doing this.

When are you gonna get to the play-doh, bro?

Okay, we're gonna get there.

We're gonna get there.

Just give me one second.

Going off what Nathan, Pastor Nathan has said, he's saying this, God, my life belongs to you.

My body belongs to you, which means my future, my relationships, my resources, my giftings, everything belongs to you.

And sometimes in our life, we can place ourselves on the altar and we can look like we're in church and we're doing the right things, but we haven't actually given our mind to Jesus.

It may look like we are living a certain way, but our mind hasn't really got there yet.

I can be physically present looking calm, but inside my world could be chaos and fear and shame and anxiety.

And we're gonna talk about how that doesn't have to be that way.

Eugene Peterson, who wrote uh the message paraphrase of the Bible, wrote this so well.

And so I want to read this to you because it just the way he captures what we're trying to say.

Don't become so well adjusted to your culture that you fit in without even thinking.

Instead, fix your attention on God.

You'll be changed from the inside out.

Readily recognize what he wants from you and quickly respond to it.

Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, developing a well-formed maturity in you.

That's the idea that we want to talk about in this moment is what does it mean to have a well-maturing, a well-formed, well-maturing life?

What does it look like when I say, God, I give you my whole life and I offer it to you, but now we have to be that sacrifice that's wholly given unto the Lord.

And for that, yes, I will now talk about Plato.

So Catherine is my oldest daughter.

Catherine, come to the stage.

Will you help me out?

She's gonna help me out with this.

Uh, this is my beautiful assistant.

What's special about Catherine is she's our firstborn.

She's graduated high school, had a whole lot of threads because she's so smart.

I'm sorry, I'm embarrassing you.

But the most important thing she ever did for me was since she's our firstborn, she made me a daddy.

Winning! And she's gonna help me uh with this play-doh.

What I want to talk about is three different things that we're seeing that Paul's talking about here.

The first one's this refuse to be molded by culture.

You have to refuse to be molded by culture.

You know, teenagers, this is super important for you in your life.

This is this is where you're in your high school years, you're in your college years, young adults, and you're shaping your identity.

And the world wants to shape you in a certain way.

And so what we have is Plato is so moldable.

But if I do this, if you look at it, I have she has imprinted, where's the light?

Oh, there we go.

We've she's imprinted it with music.

There's like a record, there's a tape deck, tape decks were a thing, guys.

Um, and there's headphones, you know what headphones are, record players.

They're coming back.

And it can imprint on us, and we look more like the things we listen to, the things that entertain us.

Uh we can also got another one for me there.

We can also sometimes be oh, that's really fun.

We can be shaped.

Let's see if we can do this.

So, this is the camera, this is our commercial break.

Here you go.

Play-doh, buy it at your local Walmart.

No, so it has the imprint, you know.

You can see the movies, it's got popcorn.

Actually, popcorn's great.

If you want to do idolatry, just go after popcorn, but that's the only thing that's okay.

Um, but like the movies we watch, they'll edit that out.

Um the movies we oh, this is live, isn't it?

Okay, so the movies, the the entertainment, the things that begin to shape us.

Oh, what about this one?

Mone money money.

Hey, close up.

Okay, there we go.

He's gonna fire me.

So we are shaped sometimes by the things we like, like wealth, like money, like the cars we have, the jobs we have, the various things that have shaped us, they become the imprint of who we are and how we're shaped.

And unfortunately, sometimes over the years, the church, the church has shaped us in different ways that are unhealthy.

Uh, they try to put us in a mold that you know you didn't fit in, you didn't uh need to be in.

They they put you in, uh, they try to tell you who you were without letting you know who you are in Christ.

And you know, hopefully, you know, our church desires to not do that.

That's why we have things like growth track that is like, okay, here's what we are, here's what we think, here's what we do, but how do you fit into that?

What are your giftings?

It's not like you come in and be like, hey, uh uh, we need someone to work in kids.

Thanks for coming to our church.

You're gonna go work.

That's just not how that works.

We're looking at your giftings and how God has imprinted you.

And then finally, this is I knew that that we'd have teenagers in here, so guys, you gotta be careful.

Video games, you know, entertainment.

It can it can be imprinted.

Oh, it's like my shirt color.

That's nice.

And so I look good.

Like, don't I'm okay?

So, okay, take me off the screen.

Take me off.

Thank you very much, Catherine.

So, yeah.

Dude, she just like I'm the preacher.

Don't steal attention.

Okay, Mike.

And so what happens is the world takes our softness if we're not strong in Christ, and the outside pressure begins to shape it.

And that's the scary part about the fact that if we are not careful, we will be shaped by those things that are around us.

Paul calls it, uh he talked about how it's the pattern of this world.

The Greek word there is actually aeon, which is means like uh an age, like centuries, like you know how people can go and describe a decade.

You can say, oh, the 60s are like this, or the 70s are like this.

That's what aeon means.

There was this certain defining feature, and every age has one, the age that Paul was in and the age that we are in.

And if you are not intentional, the world around you will eventually become the world within you.

If you will not be careful, the world around you will imprint into you and make you what it thinks that you should be, and that'll never make you happy.

So you have to ask the question what's shaping me right now?

What's shaping me right now?

What's imprinting on me?

Is it Jesus?

Is it his word?

Or am I doing that which is going against that great design God has for me?

The important thing is this recognize it.

There's no shame in it.

There's nobody judging you, but you cannot resist a mold you do not recognize.

You know, if the world wants to mold me in the shape of its wealth and its finances, its popularity, if it wants to mold me in that, I just have to recognize, you know what, this is a temptation for me.

You know, the internet and the things on it, they're a temptation to me.

I recognize that mold.

And that way I can move away from that mold and be renewed into the image that Christ has for me.

The second thing I want to talk about is this.

Receive the transforming power of the Holy Spirit.

So, how do I resist the mold?

Well, you receive the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, and obviously I'm using the word transforming.

I got a transformer.

Some of you are ahead of me.

Well done.

You should be in group life right now.

Not just kidding.

Like you could teach this lesson, but Catherine's gonna help me come up here.

One of the interesting things about, you know, is this Optimus Prime?

Optimus Prime, Autobots.

You know, some of you just had like a Jesus moment.

Like you met, you know, I'm talking about theology, and you're like, I just love Jesus right now.

Okay, I love that too.

And so I'm gonna let Catherine transform it.

Remember, it does that one twisty thing.

So, and you know what?

It's like a car when you get it.

If I was to give that to a little boy, he'd be like, okay, that's a car, that's fun.

But see, there's an outward force called the Holy Spirit working on you, same components, same parts.

That part twists, yeah.

I don't play with this.

And so twist around now.

Head up.

Optimus.

And now it's transformed.

Thank you, Catherine.

You just transformed him into Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots.

But see, he couldn't have transformed himself by himself.

He had an outward force acting on him, and it used all the components that he was, but it transformed into something greater than just a car.

You know, it transformed him into the leader, you know, he's supposed to be.

And that's the thing we love about the transformers, is because there's this one thing that becomes another, and that's what God is doing in our life.

He's not saying, I'm gonna just radically change you into something totally different.

I'm gonna use the components I gave you, I'm gonna use the gifts I put in you, and he's gonna change us from the inside out.

But it starts with the mind, right?

It starts, everything starts with the mind.

We have to be careful, you know, again, what we view, what we hear, what we see, because it begins to speak to us.

And we have to ask this question why does transformation begin in the mind?

What is it that it that it makes it that way?

Well, the thing is that anything that's in your mind will distort the way you see.

And it'll eventually distort the way you live.

So, first it's distorting the way I think, the way I see, to the way I live.

I kind of explain it like this with my glasses, uh, one of the this lens right here is just a normal piece of glass lens.

There's no magnification or curvature correction.

This right lens has all types of magnification and curvature in its lens because of an incident I had uh when I was younger.

And so when I put on these glasses, it is correcting my view.

You guys are following me, I think, here.

When I have them off, everything is curved and slanted and slightly blurry in different areas.

And so, in other words, I'm not seeing rightly.

There is a there's a right way to see the room, and I don't see it rightly.

But when I take a worldview, when I take a lens that's corrective, let's say my glasses are a worldview that represents the Bible, and I put them over my eye, I now have a correction that lets me see the world rightly.

In other words, Paul is saying this is the lens in which you see everything.

And without my glasses, I don't function well.

In other words, I'm saying without the word of God in you, without Christ in you forming you, without the Holy Spirit's power transforming you, you will not live, see, or act rightly.

Biblical renewal is more than collecting information.

Renewal happens when the truth of God becomes a framework through which we see and understand everything else.

And I mean everything.

There's nothing that can be compartmentalized.

You know, sometimes we do that.

You know, while my work's over here, you know, my family's over here, my Jesus is over here.

It's kind of like a dresser, you know, like you have all kinds of drawers and there's all kinds of stuff in them, you know, but we we separate all those when it's supposed to be one thing.

We're supposed to be molding our image into the image of Christ who is strengthening us.

He wants us to be and live in the way he designed us to be.

And that leads us to our third point.

Once we know that we're being you know molded by the right forces and thinking in the right way, Paul says, recognize and respond to God's will.

It says, do what's right and go do it immediately, is the way Eugene Peterson is talking about.

In other words, it's action time.

You know, you don't say, well, I'm a living sacrifice like Pastor Nathan's teaching, I'll be on the altar and I'm this living sacrifice, and I'll figure out the other stuff later.

I'll fix some of those things later.

No, it says if you know what's right and you know what's good, just go do it.

Go move.

Like move quickly.

A renewed mind is something that asks, what does God desire about my whole self?

What does God desire about my mind?

How does he want me to use my body?

How does he want me to live in a certain way?

How does he care about my soul?

And one of the things that I like to do when I'm working with young adults, especially uh, you know, young adults, young professionals, is they're always asking the question, what about this will of God?

Paul just said it.

You know, this perfect, this acceptable, you know, this will of God, this good thing.

Like, well, what if I miss it?

As if there's one W out there, there's one will of God for every single person, and if you miss that one W, you're done.

And that's not what the Bible says.

The Bible is talking about a daily walk that becomes the continual will of God for your life.

Every day I sacrifice, every day I ask what is good, every day I ask what's acceptable, every day I ask what's perfect, every day I ask what's holy.

Are you seeing the trend?

You know, the will of God isn't this great, it's like, well, God has made me to be a preacher.

Well, he I didn't wake up and know that one day.

God formed me into somebody who would become a pastor, and it was a daily walk.

Ephesians 2.10 says that we're a masterpiece.

How do you make a masterpiece day after day?

Because Paul said, I per God through Paul says, I made you and all of the works before you were even born, so that you could walk in them.

And you know what the Greek Greek word for walk there in Ephesians 2.10 is the word walk, as in your feet on the floor.

There's no secret to it.

It's as easy as walking toward Jesus.

But you have to recognize what is keeping you.

And so I love the fact that Paul makes it so clear here, because I'm like you.

I ask the question all the time, okay, Paul, you're using a lot of great words, maturity and these other big, fun, transformational modification words, like, but what does it really mean?

Like if I was to leave here right now and I was to go home and I was to put this into practice, what's that mean?

Well, he gave us three words, and he chose those three words very specifically.

And the first one is choose what is good, agathos, the Greek word that talks about what it generally is something that's good and what it produces.

And so, not just like, okay, this is a good toy or this is good Plato, you know, it's not that cheap stuff, man, it's straight Plato.

They'll be sending the check.

My address is in Freeport.

No.

Um, and so, you know, it's the good stuff, you know, it's not what that means.

It means it's the stuff that actually produces good.

Choose the good, even when it's not easy.

Sometimes the good thing is the hard thing.

And a renewed mind does not merely recognize, oh, that's a good thing, it will choose it.

I choose the good thing.

That's what a living sacrifice is.

I choose it.

I choose to break the pattern of this world in the mold through the work of the I choose to allow Jesus Christ to transform me.

I choose it, and then God does the rest of the work.

The second word he uses is acceptable.

And so it says, he says, I'm gonna say this, offer what is acceptable, or I'm using the word well-pleasing.

And I'm using that because the Greek word there is better translated well-pleasing, not that acceptable is wrong, but when language goes over time, it changes, right?

And so if you were, I I see some of the guys over here, I'm looking, I bet you can make a good burger.

I bet you can grill a good one.

And if you brought someone over like me to your house, you said, Hey, Pastor David, check out this burger.

And I take that yummy, juicy, delicious, almost noontime.

I want to eat a hamburger.

Some of you are hungry right now.

Please stop talking about hamburgers, Pastor David.

And I take that hamburger and I take a big old bite of it, and then you look at me and you go, How was that?

That was a good burger, right?

And I go, it was acceptable.

It's what?

If I was to take a big bite of that burger and say, Bro, this burger is well pleasing.

Well, first of all, that'd be kind of weird because like what two dudes stand around saying well pleasing, but if it happened, you would be like, Yeah, it's well pleasing.

I pleased you with that burger because I cooked it.

I'm like that.

And so that's a lot better to say well pleasing than to actually say acceptable, because well pleasing shows the activity.

It's not just a good thing, it's a good thing that produces things.

It's not just an acceptable thing, it's a pleasing thing that does well in the world.

It's deeply pleasing.

Paul is describing a life that brings deep pleasure to the very heart of God.

So that when God is watching us, he knows that we are well pleasing.

And what's interesting about that word is it's the same word that's in verse one that we were talking about earlier when Pastor Nathan was preaching.

It says that it was acceptable and holy.

Now we're talking about good, acceptable, perfect.

The idea is you're a well-pleasing.

This is a well-pleasing fragrance.

It's going up and it's doing a major change.

Paul is trying to tie the ideas of your daily sacrifice on the altar to the daily way you live, and he's specifically using these words to make sure we get it.

When my mind is renewed, I can recognize what pleases God.

So when my body obeys, my life becomes the living sacrifice that's well pleasing to God.

That's how verses one and two tie together.

The question is not, well, does God just can I just can he just tolerate me?

Can I can we figure out how we have a toleration relationship?

That's the wrong question.

The question is, does the way I'm living bring pleasure to the heart of God, who's the one who gave everything for me?

It's not just I'm giving it to some God, it's not that I'm giving it to some other religious God, I'm giving it to the God who gave us Jesus Christ, who gave his life, who then left to give us the Holy Spirit.

In other words, they've left nothing out of the table.

They've given us everything.

And finally, Paul uses the word teleos, you know, what is perfect.

And I don't know about you, but that word scares me a little.

You know, when we talk about perfection, you know, people like, I don't know, I don't like talking about perfection.

Paul's not talking about perfection here.

He's talking about coming to the end of something because you have put together all the pieces in the right way so you got to the right result.

Teleos is the idea of coming to the end.

I do a degree, I come to the end.

I do 12 years of school, I get a degree.

I do four years of college, I get it, I've come to the teleos, I've come to the end.

God does not want us to have a frag leave us fragmented.

He doesn't want us to have this fragmented life.

He wants to move us through the Holy Spirit towards wholeness and maturity.

See, the world breaks life into all of these disconnected pieces, but God's transforming work brings everything that is us under the lordship of Jesus.

So, what's that all mean?

Help me out, David.

Can you can you sum it up in a phrase?

Absolutely.

The mature Christian is not necessarily the person who knows the most, it's the persons whose entire self, whose mind is intentionally aligned with Jesus, is living out daily to be the sacrifice God wants them to be.

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