ManChurch: The Kingdom Within

So guys, turn to Romans 12, verse 1. So Romans, the best place to find Romans in your Bible is in the index. So don't ever get confused about wondering where something is in the Bible. Look it up in the index. That's why they put it there. And anyone who goes, oh, you should really know where it is, kick them in the nuts and never see them again. It's the best way to deal with that mob because they're at some point, they're not going to be friends with you. So Romans. So you got Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And then once you come to that, you got the book of the Acts, which is like the fifth gospel, talks about the life of Christ, the journey of the church. Then he gets into the epistles, which are the writing by people like Paul and other people, and it starts off with Romans. So Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, and then you're going to get into Romans. So Romans 12. Romans 12 is a very interesting chapter. And Romans 12:1. So from Romans 1 through to 11, people will read that and go, man, that is like reading sludge, because it's a, it's an incredible mind activity because it's doctrine and theology. Now theology, theo and ology, is the logic around God. So that's what theology is. And I promise I won't treat you as being stupid if you don't believe you are. Because it's not that difficult, and doctrine is understanding the nature and character of God. So from Romans one through to eleven, coming up into twelve, we've got Paul outlining some of the basic fundamental theology and doctrine of the church. Then at chapter twelve, he starts to apply it. So that's where we are. So "Be transformed, not conformed" is the title of what I would call today. So Romans twelve one. I beseech you therefore, brothers, by the mercy of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. I'll get admin assistant to handle the admitting from now on. Thank you. Hey, Rocky. And not— we're in Romans 12:1, fellas. And not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. That you may prove what is good and acceptable and perfect will of God. So today I want to actually start at the end, and I want to give you a summary of what I'm going to be teaching, and then teach it, and then come back to it, because I think that might be helpful in getting your head around the concepts that I'm wanting to try and touch on. So to be transformed and not conformed means the following, and we're in Romans 12:1. Offer your whole self to God. This is your reasonable and intellectual and spiritual worship. Number 1. Number 2, do not let the world shape your thinking. Its assumptions, values, methods, and moral judgments must not govern you. Number 3, do not overreact into legalism. Scripture, not the world, and not man-made tradition must govern your mind. And number 4, be transformed by renewing of your mind. In other words, know the truth, understand the truth, apply the truth, and live the truth for all to see. All right, so let's unpack it and then we'll have a chat at the end. So big thought for you, and that I want you to track all the way through this, is that the Christian life is not meaningless or mindless religion. Christian obedience is not detached from doctrine. Now, doctrine— again, doctrine is simply the understanding of the nature and character and ways of God. Very simple. Understanding the nature, the character, and the ways of God. So Christian obedience is not detached from that understanding. If you don't understand the nature and the character and the ways of God, you won't be obedient to God. If your kids don't understand what you're asking them to do, they're not going to do what you ask them to do. So that's why we have to understand the nature, the character, and the ways of God. So obedience actually flows from doctrine. It flows out of it. If you don't know what you stand for, you'll fall for anything. That's why we're seeing a lot of the things that we're seeing in our world today. That's why preachers are preaching total crap. You can't get into the pulpit and preach some of this stuff which is so obviously against the tenet of Scripture and just bloody common sense. People call themselves Scripture— Scripture Christians, and yet they espouse non-biblical beliefs, and they're very confident in their ability to do. Oh, I don't care what you think. I think— I feel we should. You can feel all you want, Sunshine, but the Bible says this, so don't be a dick. Read the Bible, and one of them is going to change. Either you're going to change or the Bible's going to change. Now, unfortunately, we're in an age where they're actually starting to change the Bible, and that's— you have to be very careful with that. They're literally starting to change scripture to start to conform to the value of the world. Very 1984. And you've got things like the Pope putting a prayer room in the middle of the Vatican. Okay, it's not making much sense for me here. It's like putting a Buddhist shrine in the middle of your church. If you wanna get into Buddha or Islam or whatever you're into, that's on your deal, dude. It's not on our turf. You just can't mix those. It's water and oil that's happening here. So people who have no doctrine, people who have no understanding of the nature and the character and the ways of God. Have no foundation, and that includes leaders in our church. And if you as head of your home are not leading your family from a place of sound doctrine, then who is? How do you know that a preacher's on track? How do you know that what you're listening to—and because we all do it on YouTube or on a podcast or whatever—if you don't know the truth, how do you know that person that's telling you, "Oh, I've got insider truth." But how do you know that they're accurate? Now, I'm not giving you permission to be arrogant, and this is the fine line, because many rules make small men. But what I am doing is giving you permission to stare into eternity with fear and trembling and hope that you get it right, because that's really what it is to lead your family in the walk with Christ. It's okay, I'm trying my best and I'm listening. I want to give you permission to know the word so that you can tell if the word that is coming into your house is true and correct. And we'll talk a little bit about that as we go. So let's look at this phrase, reasonable service. Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. So the context is to present or give or hand over your whole being, not just your flesh, for what the word says, or in the King James Version, a reasonable service. So Reasonable in English means moderate or fair, and service is an activity or work. So we might read this as giving our bodies to God for moderate or fair work— mowing the church lawn, giving our bodies to God by going to church, that's reasonable service, giving an offering, that's reasonable service, dropping an old lady home. You see what I mean? All of it is These are things that we do, but that's actually not what this scripture means. What this scripture means is that reasonable service is actually something that you think. Reasonable here means something that you've reasoned, your ability to reason. It's something that's rendered by your mind. It means something that is mental and intellectual. It's an intellectual service. As an act of worship. Now, if you look at the English version translation, the ESV, it says, present your bodies holy and acceptable as a spiritual worship. And many of you would have heard that in either way, but it misses the mark because it makes what you do as ethereal and what you believe as some feeling-based thing as opposed to a fact-based thing. Whereas what this verse actually means is that by taking action with your mind awake, you can move forward and your life will be transformed. Taking action with your mind awake— it's not doing things like mowing the church lawn, it's not lifting your hands in church or sitting under a mirror ball. It is taking actions in life with your mind awake. Paul does not separate body and mind as a spiritual thing. Now, monasticism, being a monk, they would go away and beat, flagellate the body because they thought that somehow would bring them spiritual revelation. That's not true. There's nothing in the Bible that says that. Does the Bible talk about fasting? Yes, but for very specific times, for very specific things. It's not the sort of thing you should do all the time because somehow you'll get some Great spiritual revelation. Again, you're trying to curb the flesh to engage the spirit. It's actually this way: curb the mind, engage the mind to experience the spirit. Reasonable service. Reason ability. Serve it. Serve it with your reason, your ability to reason. All right, we'll leave that. I was just ranting. All right, so what is shaping your mind? Romans 12:2, and be not conformed to the world. The world is mentioned here is not the physical universe, or not just the physical universe. It's an outlook. It's your worldview. So often as men, we think about life apart from God. We think of our business, our money, our family. We reduce the concept of the world and worldliness to bad things bad habits, bad activities. I call them the 6 PM sins. They're the sins that you see on the 6 PM news. Someone embezzled this, someone shagged this one, someone did that. And they're the big general sins that everybody else has got because we're too holier than thou to actually have. When in fact, the world here— when it means here, do not be conformed to the world, it actually means Do not think in such a way that excludes God. Again, we're coming back to reasoned service. Do not think in such a way that excludes God. So often we again, we define it narrowly: drugs, drinking, pornography, violence—the things we do as opposed to the things we think. But worldliness, by its definition, includes the whole person, especially your thinking. So you can drink a light beer, you can turn off a violent or sex-filled movie, you can avoid a whole lot of things that might have been conveyed to you at some point in time as being worldly, but you're still embracing the way that the world thinks. Worldliness is allowing the world around you to define your belief system. Worldliness is allowing the world around you to define your belief system. It is allowing the fearmongering of social media to define your faith. It is allowing the lust and desires for possession to define how you live your life, how you steward yourself financially. Rocky does a great talk on that. I, I Encourage you guys to go back to some of his early podcasts and have a listen to some of that. Very good. When you allow someone else to define your world for you, they will make it too small. In anything in life, write it on a bit of sticky note and put it on your computer. If you allow someone else to define your world for you, they will always make it too small. You're too old to work out, John. You're 62. Okay, 65 and you're fat and ugly. I can't do anything about you being ugly, but at least you could lose some weight. You'll never make it to that. That's going to be impossible. You can go and frog toad yourself because I'm going to give it a go and I'm going to die trying. So why? Because it's my reasonable service. I think I can have a go at this. I think this is what I'm supposed to do. Caleb looked up the hill. And said, okay, so here's my thought, God. Moses. So I can either have the flat ground and live with all these losers, or I can go up there and kill a few giants and have the best view in the valley. And I'm 80. Yeah, I'm going upstairs. I want the view. And there's water up there. But you're old. You're 80. You can go and frog toad yourself. I'm going up the hill. Intellectually, that's where I want to be, and that's what I want to achieve. So don't allow— if you allow this world and the words, the thoughts, and the expectations of others to define your world, they will always make it too small for you. So the modern church does this all the time. Take worship for the example when I'm talking about worldliness and allowing the world and the measure of the world to define our church. So who the hell ever invented mirror balls for church? Okay, so a whole bunch of boomers grow up in the '70s and they get their Saturday Night Live on And everyone likes going to a concert. Everyone loves going to a concert. Yeah, lights off, get your lighter out, or if you're not old enough to do that, Brian, you get your phone out and then do that thing. Why the hell have we brought that into church? Number one, active shooter can come through the door. Absolutely silly. And why do I need to turn the lights off so I can encounter God? God sees me naked in the shower. Like, he knows exactly what I look like. So why the hell am I embarrassed about lifting my hands or singing a song or standing out wide or applauding or doing whatever it is in church because the church says that we need to entertain people. Church leadership said we need to entertain people because we're seeing a drop in church numbers. Okay, okay. Now we're in competition with Led Zeppelin or whoever is the new thing or whatever. I'm old. So we're in competition for that and it makes no— we spend millions of dollars on a Christmas pageant And we preach a gospel so weak it challenges no one, and no one repents, offends no one, and no one gets saved. But not that the aim of all preaching should be to offend, but it probably should. We've got to challenge. Offense means to challenge, to stir up iron on iron. Does God need a mirror ball? I don't think God really cares about a mirror ball. If you as a pastor need a mirror ball, then have a mirror ball, but don't tell me this is worship or God's doing this. just because you're confirming to the way the world does something. So there's a nuance there, making sure that we're not taking our leadership or our instruction from the world, but rather we're taking it from the Word and what God wants. And we can make a lot of excuses in that. We're very smart and very clever at justifying whatever we want based upon the Word. We'll go flipping through the Bible and try and find something that'll justify our point of view, as opposed to changing our point of view to what the overall context of doctrine and theology says. David danced foolishly, so foolishly he ended up getting a divorce because his wife was embarrassed by his zeal. Now, I'm not necessarily advocating you be that pain-in-the-neck guy, but it would be nice if you met a Christian man every now and again who was as passionate about church and Christ as he was about his hobby. I just think that that's a good thing. I think for people to know that we are Christian men is not something we need to be ashamed of. I'm not talking about shoving it down anyone's throat. If you've ever met a pilot, you'll know they're a pilot because they'll tell you in the first minute of any conversations. It's like golfers. It's okay, you're a golfer. Congratulations. I think there should be something where we're comfortable saying, yeah, I'm a Christian man. Look, this is just who I am. Just, we need to be comfortable with that in ourselves. So conforming to the world. When as men we replace the word and will of God with public opinion, we are conforming to the world. Now some will say, "I'm not conforming. I don't listen to the libtards on CNN." Okay, then you listen to the fascists on Fox. I don't believe in either of them. I'm not. I'm just making broad generalizations. But it doesn't matter who you're listening to. It doesn't matter their political views. What matters is that whatever their opinion is probably an opinion of the world, and you're conforming yourself, and you're allowing yourself to be a part of it. If the world is the basis of your thought life. And your actions are not rooted in theology in the world of God, then you are conforming to the world. So let's talk about being transformed versus— How you going, fellas? You doing all right? We good? All right. I'm on a roll. I love this. I'm so challenged. I'm so convicted at the moment. I just want to crawl under my table and die. But we shall probably— I can see it coming Monday. We're going to have post-Man Church conviction blues coming on. It's going to be fantastic. We're weeping, wailing, gnashing my own teeth. It's going to be great. So transformed, and this one kicked my butt all week. Anyway, transformed versus conformed. Romans 12:2: Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. Refusing conformity does not mean being rigid, legalistic, or monastic. In other words, locking yourself off. Why? I can't ever watch television again. Because I'm pursuing Jesus's, all of the Jesus's. I can't do that. And here's my list of things I've got to do. Okay, great. Constipated sort of thing. It's actually not what that means. You've got to be careful not to swing in opposite directions. Some say they're rejecting the world, but what they're actually doing is replacing scripture with tradition, prejudice, Fear and made man-made rules. Don't swing into the other ditch. Many rules make small men. It started with one: don't touch the tree, mate. Listen, don't touch the tree. Okay, you stuffed up. You touched the tree. Here's ten. All right. Okay, you can't even do the ten. I'm going to come up with six hundred thirty-two, which is all of Leviticus, to try and help you meet the ten. And then Jesus comes along and says, "Listen, we're back to two now." So many rules make small men because you're constantly looking for an external measure to conduct an internal audit, and that's not what it— love God, love man. What does that mean? Work it out. That's a bit vague. I am— work it out. So here are 3 things I use as simple guidelines. Worldliness says let the world decide. Legalism says let my rules decide. Biblical Christianity says, let God's word decide. Worldliness says, let the world decide. Legalism says, let my rules decide. Biblical Christianity says, let God's word decide. So that's when you know if you're moving into transformed or if you're being conformed. So conformed means to wear a false outward shape. A liar who lies has integrity. A thief who steals has integrity. A sinner who sins and admits it has integrity. There's grace for every one of those people, for all of us. A Christian who professes one thing and deliberately leads and lives another has no integrity. They are liars, thieves, and sinners with no excuses. And when we act like this, we are living worldly and conformed to the world. Conformity means assuming an outward expression that does not come from within, does not represent your inner life, or it actually does represent your inner life, and that's a problem. We've got to live from the inside out, not the outside in. That's what it means. When the outside, the pressure, is making you conform and act like it wants you to do, then you're being conformed to the world, not transformed by the word. So what is transformed? It's the opposite of conformity. It means that the inward nature comes out. Remember when Peter, James, and John, they went up to the Mount of Configuration in Matthew, and Jesus was Transfigured or transformed before them. Intelligently, what they realized, that his inner glory was coming out. And there was one verse in 17:8 where it says in Matthew, and they lifted up their eyes and they saw no one but Jesus only. So what was transformed before them, or what appeared before them, was Jesus in his true form. The inner Christ manifested in such a way as they could visibly see who Jesus really was. The Christian is to let the new life of Christ become visible and override and make the foundation of their daily walk. We have to let our inside out. If you have a challenge doing that, guys, then I urge you to ask yourself the deeper question: why? Because it's not an issue of controlling the behavior on the outside. It's an issue of controlling the understanding on the inside. Reasoned service. I keep on doing this thing. I keep on watching porn. I keep on stealing from work. I keep on— I keep on lying about why I'm late. I keep on being late and making excuses, which is a lie. Okay. Why? What's your reasoned intellectual act of worship behind that? Because why do you lie to the boss because you're 10 minutes late? Because I don't want to get in trouble. Why? Because I fear man and I feel the consequence. Okay, so you fear the consequence enough to lie, but you don't want to be man enough to leave 10 minutes early because you want to stay up 10 minutes late by scrolling on your phone. And so there's this series of consequences. So turn it around from trying to be conformed by what Fear of man and fear of the boss. Turn it around and say, "I need to take responsibility and reorganize my nighttime schedule so I can manifest in my morning schedule." That's a very simple excuse, John. Reason, John. Example, John. Yeah, most of life is a series of very reasonable, simple things that just need to be addressed in order to produce a massive outcome. The principle of one percent. Is simply being able to steer the plane off course 1%, and you're hundreds of miles away. So if you want to change your life, just change 1%. Just 1%. 1% a month. Not 1% a day or a week. That's rubbish. It'll never happen. But 1% a month. If you do that, by the end of this year, you'll have changed 12%. By the end of next year, you'll be a quarter. Okay, 4 years, you're close to 50%. 8 years. You're 100% totally renewed. If I was to tell you, I believe, Brian, in 8 years' time you'd be 100% a different man in a totally different position, he'd go, I'm in, I'm in, that'd be fantastic, man. It's a long way off, but I can work towards that. Okay, you just got to do 1%, just one thing. And it's the same when we transform our life. We're looking at these big changes, but it's really small things that get us there. So Christianity is not behavior management. And I say this because I want to balance this thing up. Jesus did not demand merely a reformation of the behavior, but a transformation of character. Religion focuses on external behavior. It's based on rules and regulations. Christianity is focused on a person, Jesus Christ, and focuses on the person who follows him. So what about the logs in our eyes? Remember that scripture in Matthew where it talks about don't judge the dot or the speck in someone else's eye, the little grain of sawdust, because you've got a splinter or a log in your own? I want you to reverse that today, and I don't want you to think that this is something external to somebody else, but this is internal to you. Often what happens is that we get overwhelmed with our very own logs, with our very own dust. So with that, we focus on a persistent sin that we feel is separating us from God and our pursuit of him, and we get into condemnation because of it. We focus on that one thing. When you are focused on a single issue, or multiple issues if you're just being honest with yourself, you're missing the bigger picture. We are caught in the trap of imperfection, and it will stall our progress and lead to condemnation and guilt cycle. Something I've seen often with dealing with men is men aren't stupid, and we've been told many times that we're unemotional. And we don't really care and we're not intuitive. All of that is crap and just not true. Men are the most emotionally in tune beings that walk this planet. We just don't often want to talk about it in a public setting or with a range of people, but we will have a conversation with God about it and with our mates about it. You will carry the weight of the imperfections of your life harder than just about anybody else in the world, particularly Christian men who are trying to follow Christ. You will be overwhelmed with the imperfections that you know are yours. And sometimes the weight of those imperfections, the weight of those imperfections overwhelm everything else in your knowledge of anything else. You focus so much on that single issue that you're missing the bigger picture and you get caught in this condemnation and guilt loop. Uh-huh. Here's just a simple way to stop that. You have to stop and focus on— you have to stop focusing on that thing, and you have to even transform the way that you're looking at that thing. When you're doing something and you're caught up in this cycle of negativity, stop. Okay, what has God done for me? Okay, saved my soul. I'm married. I've got a job, or I've got retirement. My bills are covered. Okay. What is salvation? I'm saved. I'm saved. Jesus Christ loves me. Okay. What kingdom do I belong in now? I belong in the kingdom of God. Okay. What does it mean to be a Christian? It means a Christian because who I am in Christ. And you literally stop that cycle of condemnation and remember who you are in Christ. You have to understand and come to understand who you are in Christ. And theology is very important. And I want to Before I bring this to our conclusion, I want to talk about this. So how are we going on confirmation and transformation? Got an idea with where we're heading in it? Okay, because I want to show you how. Now we've talked about being conformed to the world. We've talked about being transformed by the world, and I want to talk about how you renew your mind. Because what it actually says here in Romans 12:2, do not be conformed to this world, but transformed by the renewal of your mind. Remember, reasonable, reasoned ability, worship, service. Our reason, our intellectual service is going to be the thing that transforms us, not conforms us. 4 things: acquaint yourself with the truth, read and receive teaching from the scripture— got to do that— be in fellowship with other Christians. Man Church is one of— very important to me because I'm in fellowship with brothers. I've met a lot of guys along the way who have got hurt by church, and they run off and they just read their Bible at home. I get it. I understand it. But I don't encourage anyone to do it because you're either going to end up following a Jim Jones or become a Jim Jones. Because when you're in isolation like that, it's incredibly dangerous. So I go. I go to church not because I need church, but because I need the accountability. I need to make sure that who I am. And what I'm doing. I've studied theology for 40 years, fellas. I've got a doctorate in theology and I'm strong and opinionated. Stay hand around me, 3 and a half. Yeah. Okay. Thank you for the smile, Al. So I can very easily get into the frog's legs, all of you. I know everything. I've got a doctorate in theology. I can do that. I can do that. I can do it really well. I don't want to be that guy. I wanna continually humble myself. And if that means going to a church where every 4th sermon is going to be okay and will give me a little bit of something, then I'll do that. Why? Because if I don't, then I'm in isolation by myself, and that is a very dangerous place. Now, do I want a church that I can go and embrace and get involved in? Yeah, man, I ran one of those once and it totally changed my life and changed the life of people around me. And I loved it so much. It was one of the happiest periods in my life, but that's no more. So I have to do something else because I don't want to fall and fail. So how do you transform your mind? Okay, you transform by the renewal. So here are some books. I'm going to give you some titles for some books, and I'm going to hold them up so it gets in the video and you can see it at the end and when you get the replay. These are very simple books. Now, some of them aren't simple to understand. Knowing God— it's taken me— what month are we in? May. Oh, I started in December. And I'm— I've still got this far to go. Why? Because it's like chewing steak. But I will sit down and I'll read a page or 2 of this and I'll get a headache and I'll have to put it aside. But if you look through it, it's all lined up, it's all marked up because I scribble all the way through the thing. Knowing God, phenomenal book, but it's difficult to read. So don't pick it up and go, I don't know, just pick it up, read it, and put it down and go back to Superman. That's what I did. Okay, so a couple which I encourage you to get soonish. Now, I spoke on this once, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart. It's a great little book on this, on the doctrine of salvation and the assurance of salvation. Why? Because most people wonder if they die if they're going to go to hell or they're going to go to heaven. It doesn't matter how long they've known Christ. Great little book. Okay, love this. What's so great about the doctrines of grace? It's a little tiny book. It's a little tiny book that'll absolutely give you months to read on and chomp on. Phenomenal. What's so good about the doctrines of grace? John Stott's Basic Christianity. If I could just live basic Christianity, I'd be a happy man. I'm flat out doing that, you know what I mean? It's only a tiny book. I've only got a tiny brain. If I can get this tiny book in my tiny brain, I'm a happy man. Concise Theology by Packer. So if you want to know about Bible on things like angels, demons, the Judgment Seat, the Lord's Supper, all that sort of bits and pieces, this is a tremendous book that covers all sorts of concise theology and what Reformed theology— which is, I'm a Reformed in my theology Pentecostal in my experience. What does that mean? Pentecostal, I believe in miracles, the Holy Ghost, and walking on water, man. I'm in for everything. I want everything that God's got. Reformed is I'm extremely conservative. One Bible, 7 days, whatever. Born good, don't kill babies, all that stuff. Why I Am a Christian, John Stott. Phenomenal little book. If you could just get your head around these books before the end of the year, which you can, come on. Yeah. We spend too much time watching football anyway, and why watch American football? If it was rugby, it'd be different. But anyway, you could get yourself and read those. And this is a devotional book. This is coffee in the morning for 20 minutes, and you're going to get through this, and you're going to chew on it all day long, and you'll have to come back and read the same thing over and over again. And that what'll happen is it'll totally change your life. So how do you conform yourself? Acquaint yourself with the truth. Number one. Number two, understand the truth. Wrestle with it. That's why I am still reading Packer five months on because every time I pick it up, I go, oh! I picked it up before Manchurch this morning, and it was so incredible and just way too much to understand in twenty minutes. So number one, acquaint yourself with the truth. Number two, understand the truth. Number three. Apply the truth consistently. Old thought patterns— the mind continually tries to fall into old grooves, and you've got to get it out of those. Number next is renewal means remembering your new position. Who I am in Christ— I've been delivered from darkness. I'm a citizen of heaven. I don't walk like an Egyptian. I think like a Christian. Number next is transformation is truth becoming outlook. In other words, by the time you get to transformation, your worldview has changed from what is coming in to what is going out, and you're seeing the world in a totally different light. So the first things we started with: offer your whole self to God. That is reasonable intellectual spiritual worship. Don't let the world shape your thinking. Its assumptions, values, methods, and moral judgments— not what govern you. Don't overreact with legalism and be transformed by the renewal of your mind.