When I read Romans Chapter 12, I’m reminded of all of the crazy schemes that have come and gone through the years claiming to make folks successful, well, productive and free.  Free from depression, free from poor health, free from financial fright…even freedom from relational hardship. 

Can’t get happy?  Take this or try that.  Read this and recite that.  Can’t seem to get in shape?  “Stop the insanity!”  Remember that crazy bald lady, Susan Powter circa 1994?  She told us she had all the answers, remember!?  She was an inspirational, motivational speaker that was on during every commercial break no matter what show, news program or sport you were watching!  But where’d she go?  Same place they all go…the storm comes, their house falls.  Today she is twice divorced and living in a self-described “earth ship” in New Mexico!

Can’t get out of debt, or better yet, can’t get that toy that you want?  Sell magazines!  Remember that advertisement in the back of the kids magazines 20 years ago that had all of the prizes?  The awesome inflatable boat?  The gameboy?  The flashlight and pocket knife combo set…oh man mom didn’t want me to get that one!  And even cash!  Just sell 200 magazines for this, 400 for that…man I never got anything!!!  They even did that at school, that horrible program, remember that?

Hey can’t get along with your wife?  Google it!  Type in “how to fix your marriage,” which I did (not looking for help but looking for an amusing sermon illustration) and I got 50 million hits in a quarter of a second!  50 million people telling me that they know why I’m such a knuckleheaded husband!

“Self Help Schemes,” 15.5 million hits in less than half a second on Google.  “Get Rich Quick Schemes,” 3.3 million hits in a fifth of a second…why?  Because the truth is…we need help.  I mean that’s why this stuff sells…folks like us, eeeeerbody, we need help don’t we?

I bet every person in this room that has reached an age of adult responsibility needs help at times with fighting depression.  If you’re like me, I can’t ever seem to get into the shape that I want to be in physically?  My money never seems right…really.  And oh certainly a little help with the wife at times could go a long way…even help with you guys, my friends…my coworkers…know what I’m saying?

But Google doesn’t have the answer.  Isn’t that a crazy thing to say?  Between the three searches mentioned before, 70 million answers, all go by the way of an “earth ship” in New Mexico…why?  Because you can’t treat lung cancer by prescribing a potent cough syrup…

What?  I know that was weird, it’s called a transition.  It’s how I go from one thought to another.  You see all of those schemes address symptoms…they don’t get to the heart of the matter.  The tree is wilting…pruning ain’t gettin’ it…better have a look at the roots.

Go back, to when you were stronger then you knew.  When admitting you were wrong wasn’t so hard…where apologizing wasn’t agonizing.  When true comfort was found simply falling asleep in dad’s arms or on mom’s lap.  Go back.  Link is 3 years old.  He doesn’t care one thing about shame.  He doesn’t care one thing really about how people think of him.  He’s just simply my little one.  Making mistakes all day without hiding any (most of the time) and coming clean almost instantly all of the time.  Man, Let’s have a look at the root.

Chapter 12 is one of the most powerfully practical chapters to be found in all of scripture.  It containes the answer.  Not the answers, the answer.  To the only powerful question…what am I doing wrong?

I mean just take the short list from before.  Feeling down, don’t like what I see in the mirror physically, can’t get money off my mind and I can’t seem to find peace in my marriage, or in any of my relationships…just those four questions upon a stack of a million that we could ask or think…and the real question that needs to be asked, the courageous question, the righteous question…what am I doing wrong?  Chapter 12 has the answer.  And Paul knows it…

So why not just start with Chapter 12?  Why not place it before Chapters 1 – 11?  See, that’s what the world would do…go for the glory.  Instant gratification.  Get it now!  The problem is that reading through Chapter 12 has no sustaining power if you have not yet gone all in on Chapters 1 – 11.  Chapters 1 – 11 get us a good look at the root you see…

The previous chapters deal with our position in Jesus.  That is, before Paul addresses how to act, how to be, what to do…he first addresses doctrine.  You see when the concepts of doctrine precede the call to duty…when we understand that we have been grafted in as wild messy branches into the family of God, when we hear that the price required to pay our debt of sin is perfection and God Himself has made the final payment, when we know that there is therefore now no condemnation to anyone who is in Christ and that there is nothing more that we must do to get close to the Lord, we find ourselves free…free to simply come to Him and that produces in us a desire to want to serve Him, to want to thank Him for rescuing us…

Sadly many churches don’t get that right.  Churches teach what Christians should do without laying out the doctrine that Paul has in Chapters 1 – 11 and the result is a legalistic guilt trip that is absolutely foreign to the message of the gospel and the very nature of Jesus Christ.  Not Paul.  Paul has taught us doctrine, now he says, “you’re ready.”   “You’re ready now to answer the question, the only question…what am I doing wrong?”

I have titled this chapter in my Bible, “critical, vital, and essential for growth…”

Romans Chapter 12 Verse 1

• Paul says, “in light of all this, I beseech you.”  Now that is not a word we use today, at least not a word I use.  “I beseech you Brantley, run along and check the mail!”  Um, no.  This is the word parakaleo in the Greek which is awfully close to parakletos, in fact it’s the same word only in the form of action…the verb tense.
• The parakletos, the word Jesus uses when speaking of the Holy Spirit.  It’s John 14:16, Jesus said, “I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper or Teacher (parakletos) that He may abide with you forever, the Spirit of truth…”  That is the subject tense of the word, Paul here shows us the “go for it” tense of the word…He Holy Spirit’s us man!
• Truth.  Power.  Encouragement.  Correction…He says, “in light of Chapters 1 – 11, my personal testimony, God’s unsearchable glory and inexhaustible love and grace…go for it!  Forget failure, overcome man…lemme teach you…parakletos you…by the mercies of God, leave all of these false forms of righteousness behind…”
• All of these insufficient sacrifices that the Jews would constantly make and then turn their noses up at the gentiles…all of the things we do that we think makes us right with God…put it all down and place yourself upon the offering alter…in other words, something entirely foreign to the Jews, something entirely foreign even to the contemporary western American church, give your life to God…man.  All in man…born again man…for real alive for the sake of knowing God more and more each day…(MJ Story)
• My how we’ve so gotten it wrong.  How I speak to so many that are religious…they go to church, they’re masterful judges of others, they have no problem using God’s name in vain…it’s “oh my God this and Oh God that’s so funny…” and my heart breaks as my Redeemer is called upon in an act of in-humility!  Do you not know that the Bible speaks of the disciple of Christ abiding in Him?  The born again, saved and regenerated person will not look and smell and sound like the world any longer…not because they aren’t allowed but because they are in love man…wrapped up in agape…unconditional, eternal, rescuing power and persuaded, just as Paul was, that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come are anything…compared to closeness and oneness with the Lord…
• We’ve gotten it so wrong man.  This is our reasonable response to what God has done.  Not a profession of faith.  Not a cross around the neck.  Not a bumper sticker and a desire to be a better person…a living sacrifice.  Paul says, “let me teach you of what the Holy Spirit does when faith is real…”  How I fear for so many…
• And really I can understand…people have been taught one verse here, one verse there…topical studies of health, wealth and success…your best life now and the richness of God’s inheritance…which is true as it’s presented in the Bible…it’s just that our sinful nature, I call it our “auto correct” changes the truth of the Word before it takes root in our hearts…Auto correct?  Yea!
• You ever send a text and then when you hit send you realize that the auto correct has messed you all up?  Just this past week April texted me a question and I responded, “not yet, but I will.”  However right before I sent it I noticed that autocorrect had hooked me up…”not yet bury wii…”
• April would have been in the back yard burying Mario alive!!!  See what I’m saying?  We need to be taught not by the sinful desires of our heart…to get what we want, when we want it, how we want it…but rather by the Parakletos, the Holy Spirit through the entire counsel of the entire Word of God and the truth of the matter, the reasonable reaction to the remarkable and glorious gospel is that we give Him our all man…and if we do…if the connection is for real….

Romans Chapter 1 Verse 2

• So check this out.  Paul is methodical, he’s so clear…if the connection is for real, forget all the self help schemes, leave behind all the get rich quick scams, you don’t need them!
• Be not conformed to this world…oh something so cool in the Greek…know how we’ve talked about all of the schemes this world will try to sell you, and sell you, and sell you (which by the way proves it’s a scheme because if it wasn’t then you’d only need to buy one…) well the word here in the Greek for conformed is actually syschematizo!  Did you hear it!  Even the Greek word includes the word scheme!  Don’t fall for it man!
• The enemy, the world, your flesh, what you think you should do, what you think will make you well and right and rich will lead you leach you and leave you man!  Don’t fall for it is what Paul says but be transformed, emerge, rise up, be something more, find something more!  EE-AA-OO-AA (transformer talk!)
• Man playdoh is conformed, a play thing…someone’s toy…how is it that we conform to the culture rather than transform it?  How is it that we adjust to the culture rather than change it!  Because we are a bunch of powerless lumps of playdoh, why?  Go back to step 1…is the connection for real? 
• I want it to be.  I want to be a transformer man.  A glow in the dark alien that rules the room for the sake of the righteousness and regality of a real and eternal and high and lifted  up Jesus Christ!  Teach me Paul, parakeleo man…we’re ready, we need it…how can we do this thing???
• By the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God…practical Paul completes the picture…”what am I doing wrong?” 
• We’re so physical, we’re so works focused, we’re so conscious of proving Jesus in our lives…yet we’ve missed humility man…You see, I can give my body to the Lord…verse 1…as a living sacrifice but it’s incomplete in and of itself if my mind and my will do not humbly go all in for Him also…truly the root of all faith and power and reality…is humility man…
• The power to be transformed; the power to light up the room with the glory of the Lord, the power to put it together and the power to be absolutely nothing so that God may be all…humility…and though the outward man is perishing, the inward man is being renewed day by day in that power…and as you walk in that, “what am I doing wrong?” is answered clearly…for the proof of what is good, acceptable and perfect…God’s will for your life is unveiled…
• You will know His will, you will hear His word, you will shine forth His power as you surrender your life and will to Him…no other way…all others are scams man…