Latest / HBCWestminster / 10.1.23 Romans 12:1-8 Pastor Danny Gardner

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10.1.23 Romans 12:1-8 Pastor Danny Gardner · HBCWestminster

• 0:00
  We're going to look at Romans 12. All right, Romans 12. We raised our hands in victorious triumph two Sundays ago as we finished chapter 11. What are doctrinally deep and rich chapters 9, 10, and 11, but which nevertheless feel a little bit like a slog to get through as we are reminded of the restoration of God's people, specifically the Jews, that he is a promise-keeping God.
• 0:26
  Great chapters, no doubt, but I told you two weeks ago that I was looking forward to Romans chapter 12, and the text we have this morning before us is actually quite easy to understand, although it might be difficult to apply. When it says things like, let love be genuine, it's very easy to understand, sometimes difficult to apply. I'm a lot better at fake love than at real love. Genuine love sometimes is very difficult, and so we're going to look at Romans 12 this Sunday and next Sunday.
• 0:54
  referring specifically to the will of God. What is the will of God for this church? What is the will of God for our lives? And with that in mind, would you stand with me as I read our text, Romans 12 and verses 1 to 8. The word of God says, 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,
• 1:27
  and acceptable and perfect. For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same functions, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them.
• 1:58
  If prophecy in proportion to our faith, if service in our serving, the one who teaches in his teaching, the one who exhorts in his exhortation, the one who contributes in generosity, the one who leads with zeal, the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness. And Lord God, I pray.
• 2:19
  That your word, which is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, Lord, would be preached with conviction and clarity this morning, that it would have its full and powerful effect in our hearts and minds. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Thank you, church. You can be seated. Well, have you ever made a really big purchase? Perhaps at some point in your adult lives you have purchased a car, maybe a house.
• 2:47
  Have you ever applied for a student loan? You ever tried to get a job in the Jeffco school system? Did anybody actually try to read all of the documents you have to sign? As you're sitting there and now you have a house in escrow, you're either selling or buying a house and they set this stack. It looks like a ream of paper in front of you and your spouse. And they begin saying things like, listen, you can read these if you want, right? Because that's what they say.
• 3:17
  I am legally required to tell you that you can read them if you want, but there are 400 pages, and this is only a 30-minute meeting that we've scheduled. So you can read them if you want, right? Do you ever get a little bit overwhelmed by the hundreds and even dozens of signatures, initials required? It's almost the expectation is don't ask questions, just sign here and here, and initial here and here and here and here and here and here, and we'll let you know when we're finished.
• 3:45
  My son, Pearson, recently had a 48-hour stay, many of you know, in the hospital. He had some breathing issues last month. Praise God, he's okay now. But at this point, the letters and the bills are beginning to roll in. And so far, you know, I've been collecting those and we're documenting each of those and figuring out what we're going to owe and all of those things that we all do with health insurance and appeals and advocates and everything else. But my favorite two letters that have come so far are these two.
• 4:12
  They look on the surface very similar. You see they're on letterheads, Cigna Health, right? They're both identical. They're both addressed the same way. They really do look identical. They're even dated the same day, September 13, 2023, the exact same day. These letters were written on the same day. They were sent on the same day. They arrived to our house on the same day in separate envelopes, one on top of the other in the mailbox. I looked at them and I thought, well, they duplicated the letter, but they didn't.
• 4:40
  And I began to read it. And my favorite part of the letter, and the reason I wanted to show you is because this one, it is identical in every way, but this little line right here says, we carefully reviewed the information your doctor sent us. We determined the services Pearson had done to him were medically necessary. I thought, well, that's good because he wasn't breathing, right? So, okay, that's good. I think they were medically necessary too. Second letter.
• 5:06
  After carefully reviewing the information your doctor sent us, we determined the services provided were not medically necessary. Identical. They're the same letters sent by the same people on the same day, and yet one says medically necessary and one says not. I called, you know, we subscribe to this medical advocacy program. Many of you do as well. I called them and I said, hey, help me to figure this out. They just laughed. They audibly laughed over the phone and said, yeah, that's funny. Take pictures and send them to me. We'll see if we can work it out.
• 5:36
  Do you ever feel that way when it comes to the will of God for your life? Does it ever feel long sometimes, confusing, vague, like reading through escrow papers, trying to figure out what you owe to the hospital? Does it ever feel foggy, full of legal jargon, confusing, even contradictory at times? This one says to do this, this one says not to do this. Do you ever feel that way with the will of God?
• 6:08
  If the will of God has ever been confusing to you, if you've ever wondered what God's will for your life is, then this morning is going to be great news. The Lord tells us plainly, the will of God, boiled down, is that we be holy.
• 6:22
  like he is. And because God does not want us to be confused, he tells us exactly what holiness is and what he expects a holy life to look like. In fact, if you began to do a study in the New Testament on holiness and what holiness is, you'll find that holiness is actually a state of being rather than a call to doing. The reality is if you are in Christ, then you are holy.
• 6:46
  It's more about who you are in Christ rather than what you do. Does that make sense? And that's important to understand. And this is why the Apostle Paul, when writing to what is the most derelict and deviant church in the New Testament, the church at Corinth, the one that had all the problems, the one that had so many problems, they got two letters and not just one.
• 7:09
  This is why the Apostle Paul, in writing the letter to the Corinthians, can still, even with all that deviation, the dereliction of the Christian life, can still call them saints. To the saints at Corinth. Why? They were holy, sanctified, because of their position in Christ and not necessarily because of what they did.
• 7:33
  In fact, if you are in Christ, then you can sin a thousand times and still be considered holy because of the blood of Christ on your behalf, because of what we've just celebrated in communion. The blood of Christ really does cover your sin. And because he took your punishment, you really are now the righteousness of God in him. However,
• 8:00
  The call of God now on the life of a Christian after they've been converted is to live a life of Christ-likeness, of righteousness. We are called to holiness, we know, because God himself is holy. But what does the holy life look like? My goal this Sunday and next Sunday will be for you to leave with a clear picture of what God expects of you. What does God want from me? Can I know his will? What is his will for my life?
• 8:31
  My goal will be to give you a grid through which you can run every one of life's questions in order to determine the holiest course of action. If taking a certain job or pursuing a certain career path does not make you a holier person, then it is likely not the will of God for you. If dating a certain person does not make both you and them holier, then find someone else. These questions are going to work with spending money
• 8:56
  With gaining friendships, having neighbors, classmates in your marriages, and even choosing academic majors. How do I choose an academic major according to the will of God? And if it is indeed the will of God that we should be holy, then every desire of our heart should be to become holier. And this morning's passage contains five statements regarding the will of God for us, five statements. And from those five statements, we will extract five...
• 9:23
  questions which we can ask to make it easier to determine his will and notice first it is the will of god for you to be regenerated it is god's will for you to be saved look at verse one i appeal he's literally saying i'm begging you i'm begging you therefore brothers by the mercies of god that phrase by the mercies of god
• 9:53
  combined with the word therefore, connects this application section, beginning in chapter 12, all the way back to chapters 1 through 8. He's saying, based on all of those truths, I appeal to you, I'm begging you, by the mercies of God, these brothers and sisters in the church at Rome had been condemned, chapters 1 to 3.
• 10:18
  They had been justified, chapters 4 and 5. They were now in the process of being sanctified, chapters 6, 7, and 8, all because their souls had been regenerated. And if you're ever confused about the will of God, then can I encourage you to ask yourself this question, is this?
• 10:42
  Whatever decision I'm making, whatever I'm about to participate in, is this going to cause me or somebody else to do something that Christ came to die for? What is this going to do for my soul? Is it good for my soul? If it is something that is going to cause harm to your soul or harm to another's soul, then I would tell you it is not.
• 11:12
  the will of God for you. You should avoid it at all costs. But notice second, God's will, according to verse 1, is that your body be devoted. Look what he says, 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. In the same way that the Jewish people connected
• 11:42
  Worship with sacrifice. So do believers in Christ. The Apostle Paul here even uses Levitical language to convey the concept. In the Old Testament, we're all familiar with this. In the Old Testament, a Jewish person would bring their sacrifice, a spotless lamb, up to the temple. He would hand that animal to the priest. The priest would take it and slay it and place it on the altar on behalf of the person who brought it.
• 12:10
  Because, Hebrews says, the Lamb of God has now been sacrificed in our place, the sacrificing of animals is no longer expected, no longer required, and at this point would even be blasphemous. We cannot work, we cannot add to the work of Jesus Christ. So he, the perfect Lamb of God, has been sacrificed in our place. Now all of those sacrifices are done away with.
• 12:36
  The redeemed, you and I, now, rather than offering dead sacrifices, are to offer a living sacrifice, our very bodies. It's like the life of Isaac, who was purchased back from the dead by the provision of God. Christ also has purchased us back from the dead. And if Isaac's father, all those years ago, Abraham, had been allowed to follow through with the sacrifice of his son, Isaac would have been a dead sacrifice.
• 13:07
  But a replacement was made. A ram caught by his horns in the thicket was placed on the altar instead of his son Isaac. And now Isaac was redeemed back and was to be a living sacrifice from that day forward. He was redeemed by God. He was expected, therefore, to commit everything to God in response. And this says we are responsible the same way. Now our spiritual worship, this living sacrifice, is described using two adjectives. Notice in verse 1,
• 13:37
  Two adjectives, this living sacrifice is holy and acceptable. Two different adjectives, they convey something individually, they convey even more if you take them together. That word holy, hagios in the Greek, is physical perfection set aside for a specific purpose in relation to sacrifices. It meant that the animal had to be physically without blemish and spotless.
• 14:07
  physically spotless, a perfect lamb, holy. The word therefore acceptable is the moral equivalent to physical holiness. Does that make sense? That holiness, holy, is physical perfection. Acceptable is moral perfection. Now taken together, these two words convey that if one has been saved by the grace of God, if you're sitting here this morning and saying, yes,
• 14:36
  I have put my hope and faith and trust in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of my sins. I celebrate communion, and I understand what it means that Jesus died for my sins, and I'm so thankful for the forgiveness I have in his name. If that is you, then this says we must honor God with our physical bodies by adhering to and participating in those things which please God. 1 Corinthians 6 and verse 19 describes it this way.
• 15:07
  It says, do you not know, right? So he's talking to that Corinthian church. It's that same derelict church. Do you not know, he's asking this question, that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? We will say that, right? My body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. We say that phrase. Have you ever thought about what that means? What does it mean that our bodies are now the temple of the Holy Spirit? What does that mean? I'm really asking. What does it mean? It means what?
• 15:39
  The Holy Spirit lives inside of you. Remember from Romans chapter 8 that the Holy Spirit of God dwells in us. He lives in us. The Spirit of Christ lives in us. This is why Jesus can say at the end of his life, I'm ascending into heaven. I will spend the next couple of thousand years there at the right hand of the Father. And although I am there at the right hand of the Father in heaven, I am with you to the very end of the age. How can he say that?
• 16:05
  Because His Spirit is actually living in us. He indwells us. Okay, now think about this. You are therefore not your own. You are bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. You ever think about wherever you go, you're taking the Holy Spirit of God with you. Whatever you say, the Holy Spirit of God who lives in you is in essence saying.
• 16:33
  Whatever you participate in, whatever you watch, whoever you're with, the Holy Spirit is going with you. Once you're in Christ, the Holy Spirit never leaves. He's always in you, which means if you're going to live in flagrant rebellion and sin against God, guess who else is participating in that? Isn't that a crazy idea?
• 16:56
  If we live in open rebellion to the Lord, he's saying it's contradictory. It makes no sense. You honor God with your body. Why? Because the Holy Spirit now lives in you. The way that he used to dwell in the temple, he now dwells in us. And so we've got to honor the Lord with our bodies. If you're ever confused about the will of God, ask yourself this second question. Does this, whatever you're going to do, whatever decision you're going to make, whatever you're going to participate in,
• 17:25
  Does this honor God in my body? Am I bringing honor to God with my body? Third, verse two, this says God's will is for your mind to be transformed. Verse two says, do not be conformed to this world. The idea there is a pattern, and maybe if you've got a different translation there, it even uses the word pattern.
• 17:53
  Don't be conformed to the pattern of this world. Now, you guys all know what a pattern is. We've got a group of ladies who get together here a couple of times a month on Saturday mornings. They all sew together.
• 18:04
  right when you're sewing and I've never done this before I would not be good at it I'd end up sewing my own hands shut and fingers together and whatever else but I right when you're running that thing you're taking fabric which has no pattern and no form or shape you're laying a pattern over the top of it and you're cutting that fabric to match the pattern he's saying here when you don't conform don't pattern your life after this world but rather he says be transformed
• 18:33
  by the renewal of your mind. In other words, don't think like the world thinks. When you give your life to Christ, not only does your soul cross over from death to life and you're called out of darkness and into God's marvelous light, but he says you actually begin to think differently.
• 18:52
  Don't think like the world thinks. The world is passing away along with its desires. If you align yourself with the world, you are aligning yourself with an entity that has enmity, hatred, discord with God. The transformed or renewed mind is saturated with and controlled by the word of God. It is the mind that spends as little time as possible with the things of this age.
• 19:21
  and as much time as possible with the things of God. Colossians chapter 3 says it this way, set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. I don't know about you. My mind, honestly, is obsessed with earthly things. When I'm just sitting there thinking, I'm thinking about...
• 19:43
  How can I be an effective pastor? How can I administrate the church well? How can I run my home well? All of the things that I've got to do, all of the bills that I've got to pay, the very first thing in the morning, I'd wake up, I'm looking at my phone, checking my schedule, what do I need to do today? What do I need to accomplish? My mind is wrapped up in this earth. And here the call is, don't wrap your mind up in the earth, wrap your mind up in heaven. You're going to spend a lot more time there anyway.
• 20:14
  Wrap your mind up. Set your mind on those things. Hebrews 12 and verse 2. Let us fix our eyes on who? Jesus. Where is Jesus? He's in heaven. That's where he is. Set your mind. Fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faiths, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and then sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. He is there even now. And we are to fix our eyes on him. We are to set our minds.
• 20:40
  on him. If you're ever confused about the will of God, ask yourself this third question. Does this, whatever decision you're going to make, whatever action you're going to participate in, does it cause me to think more like Christ or more like the world? Am I patterning my mind after the world or am I patterning my mind on heavenly things? Fourth, also in verse two, God's will
• 21:11
  is for your will to agree with his will. Let me say that again. It's a little bit of a tongue twister. God's will is for your will to agree with his will. In other words, if you've got a transformed mind, then you will eventually want what God wants. Notice verse two says, that by testing, you may discern what is the will of God. That's what we want. We want the will of God. I want to know the will of God, what is good and acceptable and acceptable.
• 21:41
  perfect. And when the mind of the believer has really been transformed by God, their thinking ability and moral reasoning and spiritual understanding are able to process every aspect of their lives and to accept only what conforms to the perfect will of God. A transformed mind will produce a transformed will.
• 22:03
  you really will begin to want what God wants. You will begin to lay aside your own plans and to trust and accept God's plans for you no matter the cost. And you guys, this is crazy. We will actually begin to make decisions that are not necessarily for our own good, for our own glory, for our own...
• 22:31
  power, and authority. Rather, we will begin to make decisions that are the best for the kingdom and others. Have you guys ever met, have you guys ever met a missionary? You meet a missionary that serves overseas. You guys have met these folks, right? We support many of them through the church here and they come and preach. You meet a missionary. Have you ever met an inept missionary? I mean, maybe occasionally. There probably are some mixed around and the Lord can deal with them.
• 23:04
  like completely incapable, useless. They probably exist. I don't meet very many. Far and away, the missionaries that I meet who are serving around the world, far and away, the missionaries that I meet are some of the brightest people I've ever met. You know how hard it is to learn another language? Sometimes multiple languages. The multiple languages that then you're so good at, you can translate God's Word into these other languages. They're administratively gifted.
• 23:35
  Their families are incredible. Most of the time when I meet those missionaries, I'm like, man, they'd be great on our staff. How can I convince them to come home, right? Would that be in the will of God, Lord? Or am I fighting against you? Sometimes they are the most capable people I've ever met. Have you noticed that? Why in the world would some of the most intelligent and capable people leave behind what could have been very lucrative careers here? Capable. They could have made a lot of money here, most of those people.
• 24:04
  They're very intelligent. Why would they leave behind careers like that and go serve in the Congo? Makes no sense. Indonesia? You're wasting your life. That makes no sense. Why would you go to the Philippines? That makes no sense. Do you want to know why? Because their transformed mind has produced a transformed will.
• 24:27
  which means they really do want what the Lord wants. They recognize that the treasure they have waiting for them in heaven far exceeds any earthly treasure they could compile. And so when they're comparing the two, they're like, well, I'll choose that.
• 24:42
  I'll go do that. I'm willingly laying down my life. What a crazy concept this is. You are actually able to determine the actual will of God. And not only that, you're willing to set aside your own hopes and dreams and desires for this earth for the hopes and dreams and desires of the next life. If you're ever confused about the will of God, ask yourself this fourth question. Do I trust God's will for my life over my own? Do I trust God's will for my life
• 25:13
  over my own. Notice fifth and last. God's will. Verses three through eight. God's will is that you participate in the body of Christ, the church. God's will is that you participate in the body of Christ, the church. And I don't want to overstate this, but did you know I can tell a person's ecclesiology. Ecclesiology is just a fancy word for what you believe about the church and your own role in it.
• 25:41
  I can tell your ecclesiology by what time you regularly arrive and depart from worship services. It's not true all the time, but if you show up Sunday after Sunday, Wednesday after Wednesday, five minutes late, and you leave the moment we're done, you're out of here. It says something about what you believe about the church.
• 26:05
  I'm not at all trying to put you down. If that's you, if I've just described you, I am so thankful you're here. Please don't be offended. If I've not described you, if you and your family get here 15 minutes early, if you leave an hour after we finish, please also don't assume that you're off the hook for this next part. But did you know that your attendance at church actually has very little to do with you? If you are mature in the faith,
• 26:36
  Your attendance in the church isn't even for you. I was so blessed last weekend as we hosted that marriage conference. I was so blessed, honestly, at how many older couples attended the marriage conference. Couples that have been married 30, 40, 50 years came to the marriage conference. And honestly, do you think any of them heard anything they haven't heard before?
• 27:04
  I've been married 50 years. And they're like, all right, tell me, 40-year-old who's been married 15 years. Tell me all the things you've figured out that I haven't, right? There's no way. We didn't say anything new. In fact, most marriage conferences are all the same.
• 27:20
  The passages we read are the same. The preaching is the same. The breakout sessions are the same. Most of the time, marriage conferences are the same. And I've heard people come back and say, you know, we've attended many marriage conferences. And at this point in our lives, at this point in our marriage, we just don't need them anymore. Now, I don't agree with that statement. To me, that would be like saying, you know, all oil changes, they're all the same.
• 27:45
  I'm just going to stop getting my oil changed in my car. Right? They're all the same. They do the same thing over and over. Well, obviously not. Our cars need maintenance. So do our marriages. I was so blessed. There was a couple here that had been married about 40 years, about 60 or so years old. I came up to them. I said, man, I'm so glad you guys are here. And they said, oh, we're glad we're here too. Time for a tune-up. That's literally how they said it. Time for a tune-up. You know, some of those older couples came to me afterward.
• 28:15
  And they said, Pastor Danny, we're so blessed to be here. And then they said this, we want these young couples to succeed. They even said, the reason we came was not for us. We came for them. We noticed that there's a lot of young couples here having babies. We want to make sure that they know. They said, Pastor Danny, if they need anything, we will help. We've raised our kids. We've got some time now. If they need free babysitting, those kids just need a date night, you call us.
• 28:46
  I was like, that is awesome. They came to the conference understanding they weren't there for themselves. And listen, friends, that is how we should come to church. It's not for you. It's for the person sitting next to you. And what we have in the next six verses, three through eight, is a description of a true biblical church. And notice what he begins with. This is bonkers to me. I don't know what you, you made a list at some point before you found Highland.
• 29:15
  Before the Lord drew you here, your family made a list. What am I looking for in a church, right? And you get a number of these things, probably preaching or something at the top, the worship, the VBS, a good kids ministry, something for my teenagers, right? Youth group and other things, good coffee and not the, you know, whatever, right? We want these things. Let me ask you, how far down the list was humility? You know what we're looking for? We're looking for a humble church.
• 29:47
  I don't know that humility even makes my list, which is probably why he starts with it. Look at verse 3. For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you, everybody in the church, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned or in proportion to what God has done. We begin, if we've got our...
• 30:11
  souls regenerated and our bodies devoted and our minds transformed, our wills into alignment with God's, we begin thinking about everything differently. And here the author follows up by including how we even think about ourselves. The believer who honestly thinks the church exists for them is like a spiritually drunk person.
• 30:35
  The believer who thinks that other believers honestly exist for their sake, that I am here to be served and not to serve. It's like you're drunk. You're out of your mind. You're not thinking clearly. You come to the church thinking everyone else exists for me. He says, right off the bat, come down off your high horse. You're not all that.
• 31:02
  The consecrated life is the humble life. The atmosphere in which every church functions must be humility. The air that we breathe is humility. The soil that the gifts of God to the church grow out of is humility. And this is one place where the Christian worldview certainly comes into conflict with the secular. The world doesn't understand Christ's statement that he came not to be served, but to serve. In fact, they would say to do the opposite. You should be served.
• 31:30
  You are the most important person in your life. You are great. Your life is about you. Therefore, your marriage is about you. Your work is about you. The church should even be about you. And if we come to the Lord's church as if we have no needs, as if others exist for our sake with the expectation that we should be served rather than to serve, we're coming as if we saved ourselves, that we needed no grace. But this is not so.
• 31:58
  Let me pick up in verse 4. As in one body, we have many members, he says. The members do not all have the same function. So we, though many, are one body in Christ, individually members one of another. We actually belong to one another. I'm not here for me. I'm here for you, and you're here for me. And then he says in verse 6, having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them. I love that. God has given you spiritual gifts.
• 32:26
  And not only spiritual gifts, but even physical talents and gifts that should be used in the church and for the good of the body. And notice it even says these are all different gifts.
• 32:40
  Not everybody is gifted the same way. Whatever you are gifted in is probably what you are called to do. And he says, whatever you are called to do, go and do it. It's the most liberating feeling to walk in the confidence of your calling. Because only you have to fulfill your calling. And no one here is called to fulfill anyone else's calling. And this says, the Lord has gifted you uniquely to fulfill it.
• 33:06
  And maybe you remember if you've raised kids or if you're helping with grandkids or if you've babysat other people's kids, maybe you remember the song called the Butterfly Song. Anybody teach your kids the Butterfly Song? If I were a butterfly, I'd thank you, Lord, for giving me wings. You guys remember this? And if I were a robin in a tree, I'd thank you, Lord, that I could sing. And if I were a fish in the sea, I'd wiggle my tail and giggle with glee.
• 33:37
  And I just thank you, Father, for making me, me. Because you gave me a heart and you gave me a smile. You gave me Jesus and you made me your child. And I just thank you, Father, for making me, me. Well, thank you. Thank you. Verse 2. If I were a wiggly worm, no. They're squirming worms and they're smiling crocodiles. And if you were a fuzzy, wuzzy bear, you'd thank the Lord for your fuzzy, wuzzy hair. I stopped doing that a long time ago.
• 34:09
  I just thank you Father for making me me. There's something really, I mean it's very simple and we teach it to three year olds, right? But there's something profoundly true about that. Robins get to rejoice in the fact that they're robins and they don't have to wish they were something else. And fish get to enjoy the fact that they were created to be fish and they don't have to pretend to be something else.
• 34:32
  And I just thank you, Father, for making me me. And so on Sunday mornings, if you wake up and you're not sure what to do, where do I fit? Sing the song, the butterfly song. And then jump in and whatever you do, do.
• 34:50
  And it doesn't have to look the same. In fact, you tie this together with Ephesians 4, and we're out of time, so I can't do it, but you tie it together with Ephesians 4 and talk about unity through diversity, that God has given us diversity on purpose in order to show his beauty in creation. You bring all of that diversity together under one roof, it actually points to his unity in his body.
• 35:16
  He gives a sampling here and notice it's just so simple how he describes it. If your gift is prophecy, and I believe that is a convicted preaching, this is the word of God, do it in proportion to your faith. If your gift is service, what should you do? Look at it, verse seven, serve. That's not hard to figure out. If it's teaching, what should you do? Teach. If it's exhortation, exhort. If it's contributing to the needs of others, then guess what? Blow their socks off.
• 35:46
  Do it generously. Absolutely. If it's leadership, do it with zeal, not lackluster. It's acts of mercy. Do it with cheerfulness. Cheerfulness. Identify your gifts. He's saying hone them, sharpen them. Use those diverse gifts for the unity of the body. And if you're confused about the will of God, ask yourself this final question. Man, I have a lot of quotes there that I just ran right through.
• 36:14
  Look at that, number five. Am I genuinely serving the Lord's body, the church? Or am I just serving myself? You want to know the will of God? Ask yourself, am I serving the body? Or am I serving myself? I know what's going to happen after a sermon like this. I'm going to be asked in person and by email, well, Pastor Danny, where can I serve? I know I'm supposed to serve. Where at Highland can I serve? But I think we're asking the wrong question. The question we should ask is, who can I serve?
• 36:46
  It is true that Highland has some specific ministries in the church that have specific needs. We need somebody to mow the lawn. We need somebody to fill up coffee. We need somebody to straighten the chairs. We need somebody to work with our youth. We need somebody to lead worship. We need somebody to work with kids. We need somebody who is financially gifted who can be our treasurer. All of these are very specific needs. But most of the time, service in the church is just the needs of the person sitting next to you. What do they need? You're there for them.
• 37:17
  And let me give you some ideas for how to serve them well. I'll just tell you some things in the church that never get old. Encouraging notes and cards. Encouraging notes. I don't know if you've ever gotten an encouraging note from somebody. Man, you're doing a really good job at this. I've seen evidences of grace in your life. I've seen growth and conviction. Good job. Keep going. Don't give up. Man, do those notes not fill your sails? They never get old. Anybody get tired of getting those? I'm so tired of all this encouragement.
• 37:48
  Done with it. There was an older lady at my old church many years ago. She's probably with the Lord now because she was old enough at the time, add 20 years. But she would come in with a stack of postcards. And the whole time I was preaching, I would see her writing. I thought for a long time she was taking sermon notes. She wasn't. I walked up to her one time. I said, you taking notes? She's like, nah, I don't really even pay attention. She said, you know what I'm doing? I come in with postcards. I look around the room.
• 38:16
  And while you're preaching, I'm writing encouraging cards. And when it's done, when you're finished, I walk around to people and I give those to them. And I say, you know what? I've noticed this about you. Good job. Keep going.
• 38:26
  Can you imagine? She'd write 10, 12, 15 of these a week, and she purposely, she even sat in different places in the church so she would notice a different 10 people the next Sunday. Unbelievable. You know what never gets old? Kindness offers a friendship, inclusivity, hospitality, generosity, support, cheerfulness. I love that he puts that in there. You do acts of mercy, do it with cheerfulness. Not like, ah, I gotta be merciful again. You're like, well, no.
• 38:56
  Cheerfulness never gets old in the church. And those are some of the things we're going to look at next Sunday. Allow me to pray. God, thank you for your word, which speaks so clearly and simply. God, I pray that we would be a people who wants to discern your will.
• 39:16
  having our souls regenerated, having our bodies devoted, having our minds transformed, having our wills brought into alignment with your will and serving faithfully one another in the church. Lord, we love you and are grateful that you speak so clearly to us in your word and it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.