9. “God’s Mercy, the Theme of Your Song” (Romans 11 & 12, Part 3)

Can I ask you a sort of artsy question?  If you had to write a song that caught the jist of your life (some of you are like, “I hate poetry…. no please don’t make me…..”) but if you had to, what would be the chorus?  what would be the refrain, the repeated lines that tie the story of your life together?Is it a love story theme, a la Taylor Swift? 

“Romeo, take me somewhere we can be alone
I’ll be waiting, all there’s left to do is run
You’ll be the prince and I’ll be the princess
It’s a love story, baby, just say, “Yes”  ”         

Or maybe it’s a later Taylor Swift, tired of people judging her from the sidelines?

” ‘Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play
And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
shake it off,  shake it off”  

Bet you didn’t think you’d get Taylor Swift at Church today! I have a young daughter and I’m pretty sure there are a few “Swifties” in the congregation.  Joking aside and in all seriousness,  if you had to write a chorus or refrain that captured the theme of your life, what would it be?  What’s it about?  Is it a theme of struggle, of difficulty?  A theme of victory, triumph, achievement.  When the voice inside your head (you know the one, the one that evaluates, judges, and assesses) evaluates you and sums up your theme and your story, what is it?  

My guess is that for many,  failure is somewhere in the mix. It might be connected with fear  (this doesn’t just have to be young people, but that was certainly my experience doing campus ministry),  you recognize a decent part of your life is organized around trying not to mess things up. You have to keep moving forward, keep it together, keep the plates spinning, keep up the juggling act, or you might feel like you’ve failed because you’ve not accomplished as much as you hoped or gotten as far as you would have liked. Or it could be failure in specific areas or your life, regrets of mistakes and things. Or it might just be a deep feeling like you’re just not enough.  

The hymns and songs of the church, the best of them, have this role of helping us to sing about our stories with greater accuracy and clarity because they set our stories, they set our song, in context. They set our lives in the context of Our God. Our God who is unimaginably faithful and good, loving and kind. Consider the second song we sang this morning, “O Love that Will Not Let Me Go”  v. 1 – O love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in thee, I give thee back the life I owe, that in thine ocean’s depths its flow, may richer, fuller be.”   

The last two weeks we have been looking at this passage in Romans 12, specifically focusing on this command to “offer our bodies as a sacrifice”. One of the things we’ve said is that this is about communion with God. In the gospel God has given himself to us and we are meant, we are called to give ourselves to God that we might experience communion with him a deep relationship of intimacy, connection, of mutual giving, and delight.  We said last week that this giving of ourselves to God is something that might sound as if it would leave us burnt out or ground us into the dust, because how could we ever give everything to God? We saw last week that giving ourselves to God, and relinquishing control, is the most human thing we can do and actually restores our humanity and what we were made for.  

Like we sang in verse two of that same hymn, “I yield my flickering torch to thee,” I am at times just a faintly burning, flickering wick, but in giving myself to God- yielding my flickering torch to you, what happens?  My heart restores it’s borrowed ray. 

But can we actually do this?  Can we actually give ourselves to God?  And I want to ask this question especially from this angle in light of our struggles, our imperfections, our inconsistencies, our failures, our sins… Can we do this?  I mean, is this the sort of thing that sounds nice in theory, but realistically is so far removed from reality and from where my life is, that there’s really no point in trying. So maybe the better way to put this question is like this: Can strugglers, sinners, those who at times feel like failures and like they are never enough, can people like us offer ourselves to God?  And does God even want someone like that? 

Let’s consider verse one again this morning, this time asking two questions. One, how can we offer our whole selves to God? (in light of sin, struggle, imperfections and all that … how can we?)  and two, what does God say about our offering?  What does he think about it?  

How can We offer our whole selves to God?  

Remember where we’ve been in Romans.  When we were looking at Romans 3 a month or so ago, Paul in Romans pulls back the curtain exposing the depths and extent of the problem of human sin.  And we said, from our vantage point it’s like the tip of an iceberg.  We all recognize things we don’t do right.  Any aware person can recall things they’ve said or done or thought that we’re not good, they were hurtful or destructive.  We have done bad things.  We have made bad choices. But God in his word shows how deep and serious the problem is.   He has shown us that it’s not just actions, but our whole orientation and way of being is off. We’ve failed to be what a human being is meant to be. 

If you’re new to Romans, or new to Christianity, or you’re someone who had stepped away for a time from the church and you’re just now really hearing and thinking more deeply about all this stuff… Romans can be overwhelming. If you’re really taking this all in and taking it to heart, it can be overwhelming. Because God speaks with such clarity, exposing how deep the problem goes, the gospel of Jesus says however you’ve assessed your spiritual state, your sins, it’s way worse than you ever imagined… But then we can get stuck there.  And let me say some of us in the church who have sought to take what the bible says about sin seriously, we can get stuck here.  

There can be, from this, a real hopelessness.  Maybe you recognize the problem of sin and you see the various ways in which you can be selfish and you see it goes really, really deep.  And then you begin to think about and realize the perfection of God and the perfection of Jesus and you’re really and truly thankful that God has made a way for you to be made right with him through Jesus’ death and resurrection, but when you think of giving your whole self to God, at least one question is, “How could I ever offer God something that he would want?  I mean, look at how messed up I am, and still am in many ways!  How could I possibly ever do this offering of myself to God right?  And if I feel like that’s impossible, should I even try?”

So let me ask the question again – How can We offer our whole selves to God?  What’s the way, or the means by which we can do this?  

We see the answer in the text. Romans 12:1 says ”I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice,”

It’s “By the mercies of God” that you can do this and are called to do this. So what does that phrase mean?   I think for quite a while I would have understood this to mean something like this, “Look what God has done for you in Jesus; look at what he did; Look at how Jesus died for you, look at how God forgave you. In light of that reality now it’s time for you to live for him.”

You could imagine a way of thinking that could develop from this that goes something like this… “Wow! Jesus did so much for you. Come on… The least you could do would be to do a few things for him.  Look what God has done, come on guys, get with the program, don’t you want to respond to that?”

But this misses the fullness of what Paul is saying here. Because as virtually every commentary written on this book will tell you, the phrase “By the mercies of God” is Paul’s way of summing up chapters 1-11.  And what that means, if you read through Romans 1-11 or you think about what you might know from Romans 1-11, what that means is that the mercies referred to are not just past mercies, as truly wonderful and glorious as those past mercies are.  In other words, it’s not,  “Well 2000 years ago, God did this amazing thing in Jesus and now you really need to respond to that… now it’s time for you to show how grateful you are, so get to work on that…”

If you understand this phrase “By the mercies of God” – you have to consider all that falls under the glorious umbrella of that phrase- it’s not just past mercies, it’s present right now mercies, and it’s future mercies.  It is all of it!! 

• It is the past mercies like forgiveness, and justification, being declared righteous by God because of Jesus, even though we’re sinful.  It’s the atonement of Jesus,fully paying the penalty of sin.  
• But it’s also right now, present mercies; like the gift of the Spirit, and being spiritually alive in Jesus.  It’s the gift of being united to a resurrected savior who is alive right now and so through him you are delivered from the power of sin and, right now in the present, you are meant to experience in your life this glorious thing of being alive to God.  It’s the mercies of the Spirit making it possible for us to put sin to death and to live into and grow up as a beloved child of God. It’s the present mercies of God at work, right now, to make you more like Jesus. 
• But it’s more than that too. It’s also future mercies like our certain future, that as those who have been called by God and justified before God, we will one day be glorified.  It’s the mercies that we’ve not yet experienced but we know will come because God who loved us at our worst has promised to bring about in the end. The God who says to us, If I am for you, who can be against you?  If I gave my Son for you, will I not also with him graciously give you all things?  Shall anything separate you from my love in Jesus?  
  • It’s the future mercies where God says, salvation isn’t complete until this world is renewed, and you are in a resurrected body have been fully restored in every way into the image of God, rejoicing in the glory of God.  

And this is why I had the beginning of chapter 5 printed. Look at Romans 5 where Paul writes of what is presently true for a believer in Jesus: 

“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

If you have received God’s gift of righteousness by faith and have been made right with God, Paul says you have “peace with God” through Jesus. When Paul says that a believer has “peace with God,” he’s talking about a profound change that has happened in our relationship to God. The way we typically use “peace” in everyday language doesn’t get this across. If you think about conflicts right now in the world, in Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Palestine,  if these nations and peoples were to enter into peace talks to end the war, what we’re talking about is a kind of peace that says, “we’re not going to try and kill you anymore, we’re going to end the ongoing outward acts of being hostile and using force to attack you.” But this is not what the Bible means when it says peace. Peace in the Bible is not the absence of something (like the absence of war), but the presence of something. It’s not merely ending the fighting, it’s restoring the relationship.  Russia and Ukraine may at some point cease fighting and end the war, but that is far from true reconciliation, of healing the relationship, of bringing wholeness…

But that’s what the Bible means when it speaks of Peace.  To be at peace with God is to restore the wholeness of relationship with God our Creator.   It’s not a neutral space where we’re given a second chance with God, but it’s a place where you are brought to wholeness and harmony with God through Jesus. Look at verse 2, “Through him (that is through Jesus) we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand”

In other words, through Jesus we’ve come into a different realm. We live and move and have our being in this realm where grace reigns.  If you are a Christian you exist, you stand, you live and do life and space that can be characterized by one word: GRACE.  No longer under law, no longer condemned and guilty because of sin, we live in the space of God’s favor. Paul writes later in verse 5 about this gracious realm where we exist and live. He writes that God shows his love toward us, giving us his Spirit, pouring his love into us through his Spirit so that you and I might know in the depths of our being, that we are his, that we belong, that we are loved. In case you were still wondering, if you’re a Christian, this is the theme of your song.  God’s Mercies.  

As we will sing in our last songs: 

• Your story is a story of Mercy – Tis Mercy All! Immense and Free.  
• This mercy is more than a match for your heart and your struggles and your sins.   
• This is mercy that’s active toward you right now, keeping you from utter despair in the midst of sin.  This is mercy, God’s free goodness, his grace toward you that revives and refreshes us.  

And this is what you need to offer yourself to God. Remember, we’ve said that this offering of ourselves to God, is about communion with God. If it’s about communion with God, it can’t be something where God does his part and then stands back as it were to see our response.  

You see, God doesn’t just accomplish redemption and then leave you to figure the rest out and show your gratitude. He is with us every step of the way.  Do you see how different this is? He is with us every step of the way. His mercies are with us because as he gives himself in Jesus, and by the Holy Spirit, the point is that we might have communion with him, that we might enter the dance of mutual giving and receiving with God. This is how you are to offer yourself. Through God’s mercies, mercies past, mercies present, and mercies in your future.   

And when you do this, when you present your body as a sacrifice BY THE MERCIES OF GOD, What does he say about it?  What does God think about it?  How does he evaluate it? If you look at verse 1, Paul gives us three adjectives about such an offering:

• It is living – which is important because if you remember in the Old Testament, you can’t offer a dead animal.  It has to be living.  Apart from Jesus and the work of the Spirit, you are not alive to God, which means you can’t offer yourself to God.  Apart from faith in Christ you cannot offer yourself to God

•   But if your life has been touched by THE MERCIES OF GOD, when you offer yourself to God you do so as one who is truly alive in Christ.  

• When you offer yourself by the mercies of God, that offering is not only living, but holy. By the death of Jesus we have been cleansed of sin’s corruption and defilement and we have been set apart, consecrated to God, your offering is holy.   

And finally it is “Well pleasing” to God. I know the translation in front of you has “acceptable to God,”which isn’t technically wrong, but it has a whole different sense to our ears doesn’t it?  The word Paul uses is sort of a compound word combining a prefix meaning “good” or “well”and another word meaning “pleasing.”  And elsewhere, like in Philippians 4:18 when Paul writes to this church who had sent him gifts to help him while he is in prison, he refers to those gifts as an “offering” as a “sacrifice” and using this same word and pretty much every English translation renders it as “well-pleasing to God.”  

And I think at least for us it’s important that we hear the right tone in this descriptor. Some of you were over at my home for the really great progressive dinner Trinity did a week ago.  Now imagine if I was feeling a little unsure of how the meal went and I asked my guests, “how was it?  What did you all think?”  There is a big difference between someone saying, “Nick that meal was well pleasing,” or “Nick that meal was acceptable”… Right?  

There’s a way of hearing that word, “acceptable” that feels… Well,  unfeeling or stoic, like it doesn’t really matter. And that’s not at all the right way to understand what Paul writes here.

When you offer yourself to God, by his mercies, that offering is well-pleasing. God receives it with delight. You might ask, how?  How could he?  I’m still sinful, I don’t probably do the offering of myself in the perfect way.  God is perfect, how could anything I do ever really please him? 

I want to tell you about a wall in our home.  It’s one of the main walls in our living room.  And on this wall there hangs a bunch of framed pieces of artwork that our kids have done.  They are all special to us in different ways.  But there’s one piece that gives my wife Erin particular joy and delight.  It’s a drawing that Liam did of our family when he was around five years old. If you were in our house and looked at it, it wouldn’t look particularly special. It’s brown stick figures.  There are four of them, one for each family member in our house.  If you studied it more you would notice, one of the stick figures has green eyes, while the other three have blue.  Why one stick figure with green eyes and the other three blue?  Because Erin’s eyes are green, while me and the kids have blue eyes.  This picture is “well-pleasing” to my Erin. It is a delight to her.  Why? Why does that picture hang on our wall and why does it give Erin such joy?  At least two reasons. One, because it came from our son.  There’s a relationship, a sharing in communion. And that relationship is one of peace, of wholeness.  Our children have a status in our home and with us as our kids. They belong and they are loved. If some random child gave me a picture, maybe this is harsh, but it’s not going up on our wall. But two, that picture, though it’s not a perfect drawing, doesn’t fully capture Erin and the rest of our family, why does it give Erin such joy? Because there is something in it that is true, that he recognized something true: Mommy’s eyes are green. A parent takes deep joy when their child is maturing, growing up, seeing us for who we are and relating to us.  If you are a parent, you know what I’m talking about don’t you?  It gives you joy! 

That is how we relate to God.  If you are a Christian, if you have trusted in Christ, you have a status before God. You have a restored relationship with him.  You belong and you are a beloved child.  You will never fully grasp who God is, but just like my son’s picture, when we offer ourselves to God “by his mercies” with renewed minds, with a mind that is beginning to understand true things about God and responding to who he is and what he has done and is doing and has promised to do, that is pleasing to God. As you grow and mature in Jesus, as you give yourself to Him, as you connect the dots between God’s mercies to you, past, present, and future and you respond, you offer yourself to him. You serve him. That is pleasing to God.