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Romans 9-16

Applying Righteousness: Towards the Lord

Zach Honnen · Sunday, 19 October 2025 · Romans 12:1-2 · 31:45 · 4,589 words

Romans S26 · 12:1-2 Grand Blanc

There is no public page for this message yet — the transcript below is the whole of it.

Romans 12:1-2 shows what it means to respond to God's mercy by becoming a living sacrifice. The message explains that God does not need us but chooses us out of love, and our obedience should flow from that understanding. Being a living sacrifice requires complete surrender, not halfhearted effort. The sermon calls listeners to reject cultural conformity and pursue transformation through renewing their minds. It challenges both believers to live fully for Christ and those without faith to repent and believe.

What this sermon is about

Ranked by keyness against every other sermon in the corpus. Each one is a word this sermon actually said — nothing here was written by a model.

transform 19 ace 6 culture 13 surrender 12 conform 14 sacrifice 16 renewal 8 logical 7 flaws 5 renew 8 live 39 response 9

Topics

Atonement & Sacrifice 4 Sanctification 3 Grace 1 Sin 1 The Holy Spirit 1

Scripture referenced 20

Verified against the transcript. A reference the recording does not support is never listed here.

Romans 12 1:59 Romans 12:1-2 2:03 Romans 11 2:07 Romans 11 2:11 Romans 11:34-36 2:16 Romans 11 2:24 Romans 12 3:12 Romans 12 3:18 Romans 12 3:22 Romans 11 4:11 Romans 12 4:15 Romans 11 4:18 Romans 12 4:25 Romans 12:1 4:25 Romans 12:1-2 4:25 Romans 12:1 6:11 Romans 12:2 13:31 James 4:8 19:10 Romans 10 27:42 1 Corinthians 10 29:28

Transcript

Every word, as spoken, with the second it was said. Each word links to its own entry in the index.

Pre-service announcement — 8 lines, 1:49. Excluded from every count and search on this site, kept here so nothing is hidden.

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Thanks again for joining us and we hope you are blessed by today's message.

You can also visit our website at theriverchurch.cc to learn more about us and what we have going on as a church.

Thankfully, I haven't seen him so far. It's not too late.

But thankfully, Pastor Chuck is excited to allow me to preach this passage and I'm grateful that he has given me his pulpit this morning.

So if you have your Bibles, please go ahead and open up to Romans chapter 12.

We'll be looking at verses 1 and 2.

And if you did not join us last week, we looked at chapter 11 last week.

And I wanted to share with us what chapter 11 closes with.

In Romans 11, verse 34 and 36, it says this.

So chapter 11 ends with this doxology.

It ends with this statement of God's sufficiency.

It ends with this understanding that God doesn't need anything, which includes you and me.

God does not need us.

There is nothing that we can do to repay him for who he is.

There is nothing that we can give him that he hasn't already given us.

And the reason we need to know this is to understand chapter 12 in the proper context.

Chapter 12 is not us trying to repay God.

Chapter 12 is not us trying to earn God's favor or pay him back for salvation.

God is not obligated to love us, but he chooses to love us.

That's the context around what we will be talking about today.

And I don't know about you.

If you're in Rome.

In relationship with somebody.

You don't want them to be obligated to be in relationship with you, you know?

You know, like when you're a kid, you're like, your mom says, I love you.

And you'd be like, you have to love me.

I'm your kid, right?

Whether I'm good or bad, you have to love me.

But when you get older and you marry somebody, it's no longer an obligation.

It's a choice.

And that creates a deep level of intimacy.

And that's what we have with God.

He does not want, he does not need us, but he does choose us.

And he does desire us.

Romans chapter 11 ends with God's glory.

It begins with our response in chapter 12.

The theology that we've just received in chapter 11 must lead to our doxology,

to our worship and to our devotion.

So let's pick up in verse one, Romans chapter 12, verse one and two.

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 testifying.

You may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

With the reading of God's word, let's pray.

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for today.

We thank you for your mercy.

We thank you for your kindness.

Lord, we do not deserve you, but you've given yourself to us freely.

And Lord, we thank you for that today.

We thank you for allowing us to be here.

We thank you for allowing us to have your word in our hands.

Lord, I pray that we don't forget how valuable that is.

For God, we ask that we would recognize the presence of your Holy Spirit this morning

and that you would move us.

And that you would speak through your word in your Holy Son's name.

As we just discussed, God is not coming from a place of desperation,

but a place of total sufficiency and desire for us.

And you might wonder why I really want to labor this point.

The reason is because we're looking at God's character.

We look at God's mercy.

We look at who he is and what he has done

and how much he loves us in order to realize what our response should be.

And this is what Paul says in verse 1.

I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God,

to present your bodies as a living sacrifice,

holy and acceptable to God.

A living sacrifice.

This is based upon God's mercy.

This is a calling.

This is a challenge by the Apostle Paul.

And it's not based upon us, but it's based upon the Lord.

It is a response.

And it is a logical response.

Paul is pleading with us to look at the character.

And I want to ask us this morning,

how often do we look at God's character?

How often do we look at his mercy?

Do we wake up every morning with gratitude and joy

that God sent his son to die for us on the cross?

Because our response, our obedience is a response to the mercy,

response to the love of God to be a living sacrifice.

Now, I'm sure many of us in this room have heard this passage before,

to be a living sacrifice.

And at times, I think we understand it well,

or we don't understand it well.

To be a living sacrifice is to be in complete and total surrender.

And oftentimes, we can put on a facade of being a living sacrifice.

We can put on a show or a mask and pretend

that our life is sold out for Jesus.

But inwardly, we know that we're only giving 50%, 60%.

See, when I was a kid, I would sit in gathering.

I grew up in church.

And I would sit there and be like, what if I had to stand up

and defend the church?

Would I be willing to die for others?

You know, this is like a five-year-old boy just thinking out loud.

And I would be like, that would be so cool to sacrifice myself

for somebody else.

It'd be heroic.

But something that the Lord had confronted me with

over the past several years is it's easy to, in one moment,

choose to die for somebody.

But oh my word, is it so much harder to live for somebody.

How many of us in this room are married?

How many of us would die for our spouse?

Now, you don't have to raise your hands here.

I'm not going to make you raise your hands.

How many of us struggle to live for our spouse every day?

There's always one.

There's a discrepancy between the two.

It's easy to say, I want to be a hero.

It's hard to say, I want to be a hero every day

and live a sacrificial life for the Lord.

And I see this in my experience when I worked construction.

I would see these guys.

They would say, if anyone tried to mess with my kid,

I would die for my kid immediately.

But then I would look at them, and they would not live for their kids.

They would pursue alcohol, drugs.

They would pursue self-gratification.

lust, anything that would distract them. They would miss all the football games, all the basketball

games, but don't worry, they would die for their kids. And I believe they would, but they did not

choose and would not choose to live for their kids, to live for their families. A living sacrifice is

not 60, is not 70, is not 90 percent, is 100 percent self-surrender. And this type of sacrifice isn't

just physical, but it's emotional and it is spiritual. It's how we live and think and breathe.

This is to choose Christ and not just be willing to die, but to be willing to live. Now, this may

seem like a huge commitment, and that's because it is. I'm not going to pretend like it's not a

huge commitment. This is everything. This is the rest of your life, but it is a very logical

commitment. And I tend to be a logical person, and I've learned through relationships and dating

that not everyone is as logical as me, and emotions exist. So it's okay to be burdened by how heavy

this is.

And that's why it says, which is your spiritual worship. Now, most of you know that Pastor Chuck

uses New King James, and I use ESV. But today I'm going to dip into New King James. You can't tell

Pastor Chuck, all right? I'm counting on you. In ESV, it is translated, which is your spiritual

worship, which is a good translation for the word. But I believe there's another translation in New

King James that puts it as logical service.

Holy and acceptable to God, which is your logical service. This is something that makes sense. And

yes, it is a spiritual form of worship to live your life as a living sacrifice, but it is also

something that makes sense when we put our life into perspective, when we look at the mercy of

God, when we look at the love of God, when we look at his beauty, his power, and his love for us,

and the fact that he doesn't need us, but he chooses us.

And so I'm going to go ahead and read this passage. And I'm going to read it to you. And I'm going to

read it to you. And I'm going to read it to you. And I'm going to read it to you. And I'm going to read it to you.

When we're faced with such goodness and beauty, how can we have any other response but total

adoration and surrender? Now, last night I was teaching at a youth group over in the Oakland

County area. And I was talking to one of the youth leaders after the message. And he was sharing with

me that he's been dating for a long time, and he's thinking about marriage, but he's not sure. And he

was at this wedding. His name was Ace. He was at this wedding, and Ace was talking to his uncle.

And his uncle was holding a cupcake. And he went to Ace and said, your girlfriend made these,

right? He's like, yeah. He's like, listen, I've eaten 10. And I'm taking a box of 10 home,

whether they like it or not. And he looked Ace dead in the eye and said, she loves the Lord.

She loves you. And she loves to cook for you. What are you doing? Why is she your girlfriend

and not your wife? And Ace kind of laughed it off. And he's like, oh, details, school,

logical stuff, whatever. But I listened to that story, and I couldn't help but be on his uncle's

to you in your life. Why would you hold back 5%, 10%, 100% instead of just committing fully to it?

And I feel like we oftentimes do this with God. To be a living sacrifice is to be willing to live

for our faith, to live for Christ, to live differently, to talk differently, and to act

differently. And that's why it flows into the rest of verse 2, starting with the do not statement.

It begins with this negative statement. And looking at the Hebrew and the Greek,

a commentator put it this way. Thus Paul's words can be paraphrased. Do not be conformed

to this scheme of a passing evil age. Do not be conformed to the schemes of this passing evil age.

Now, I don't have to remind you that our culture is evil. I don't have to remind you that our world

is evil. That hit way too close to home. But I don't want us to get caught up in the thousand

foot view of the evil age. I don't want us to get caught up in the thousand foot view of the

evil. We need to look at the macro. We need to look at the things that affect us. Do we recognize

the evil around us that we are conforming to? Do we recognize that the enemy is seeking to destroy us

little by little? Paul is talking about the kind of evil that is under our nose and we don't even

realize it. When I think of being conformed to this world, I think of walking around all day doing

this, never looking up, never having a second thought. I look around, whether I'm with students,

adults, or adults, everyone is constantly distracted. Everyone is constantly entertained.

And we look no different than anyone else in the rest of the world. Now, I'm not saying phones are

evil. Obviously, we all have them. But what I am saying, that slothfulness is a sin. That laziness

is a sin. Conformity to this culture looks like gossip and pride. Conformity to this culture is a

life filled with distraction and entertainment and idolization of things besides God.

And belittling others. We live in a prideful, arrogant, distracted culture. And I wonder how

prideful, arrogant, and distracted are we on a daily basis? When was the last time we thought

about sharing the gospel, let alone did we do it? When was the last time that we thought about

praying for someone else, let alone do it? Are we conformed to this culture? Because if we claim to

be Christians, if we claim to serve the Lord, we must look different than everything else around us.

Because this culture is temporary. It is passing away.

Praise the Lord for that. But our impact on those around us in this culture is very eternal,

depending on how we spend our time, spend our life, and serve the Lord. Being conformed to this

culture means damnation for others who we could have shared the gospel with. We are called. We

are called to not be conformed, but we are called to be transformed. Looking at the rest of the

verse. But be transformed by the renewal of your mind. And what this means is that where our culture

is prideful, we are humble. Where our culture is greedy, we are generous. Where our culture is

lustful, we are loving, so on and so forth. To be transformed is to not allow laziness, anger,

gluttony, lust, or envy to rule our lives, but to allow love, contentment, satisfaction,

gentleness, and diligence to rule our life. And the word for transformed is the same word as

we can all think of as a tadpole to a frog or a caterpillar to a butterfly. The same person,

but transformed into something new. But this word is also used to describe the transfiguration of

Jesus, which is a work of the Holy Spirit that leads to external change. It's complete and it's

total. Jesus' face shone like the sun. His body was completely transformed at the transfiguration.

And this renewal is a drastic change. It's not a little change. It's transformative,

by the power of the Holy Spirit. But this is also a gradual process. Be transformed

by the continual renewal or the renewing of your mind. This is a process and a work of the Holy

Spirit that takes time. We are changed by the renewal of our mind, not behavior modification.

We can change our habits, but that's not the renewal of our mind. It is a heart transformation.

No one's going to leave this building this morning or today fully renewed and changed.

It's just not going to happen. But that process can be begun by drawing near to God.

According to James chapter 4, verse 8, it says,

There's no caveat. There's no parentheses. It is a calling and a commitment for us to live

near Christ, to seek after him, to live in step with the Holy Spirit so that he can

renew our minds. Now, like I said earlier, relationships is on my mind when I think of

this passage. And many of us in this room are married or we're in relationships, but the

closeness within a relationship will directly affect the intensity of our transformation.

I've been dating the past several months, and that's awesome and exciting, but also someone

gets to know you. And when they get to know you, they get to know your flaws. And it doesn't stop

there. I'd feel okay if it stopped there, but then they begin to bring up your flaws. And I'm like,

normally, I'm like, oh, thank you so much. I appreciate that. I want to be better. But sometimes

I lack wisdom. And I'm like, okay, can we calm down for today? It's been a lot. I know there's a

lot to work on. I believe you. Let's book that for next year. We'll figure that out. Intimacy

of relationship will directly affect the intensity of the transformation. If you keep people like

this, no one will speak into your life. No one will tell you what's wrong. No one will tell you

what's going on in your heart. But when you allow someone in, they have the ability to transform

you. And how much more is that true with God? How much more is that true when we wake up every day

we throw the phone across the room and we open up our Bibles and we spend time with the Lord and we

go to our closet and we pray and we build relationship with the Lord verbally. To be

renewed, we must pursue. Plain and simple. We must join God in step and be 100% surrendered to him,

asking him to transform us, asking him to do the thing that we don't want and point out our flaws,

asking him to do that surgery to transform us and allow us to be made new. And we do this by

drawing near to him. But there's another side of this. When we draw near to somebody and we allow

them to see our flaws and we begin to see their flaws and we begin to work on each other, we also

begin to be able to understand them deeply. Now I'm sure many of us have this feeling, I want my

partner to do this, but I don't want to tell him because then he's doing it because he has to. I

want him to do it because he loves me and because he thought of it, right? Raise your hand if you've

had that thought. Okay, only a few of us. The rest of us are normal. I'm just crazy. We don't want

something out of love. And when we draw near to God, we begin to be able to discern what his will

is. And that's what the rest of the passage says, that by the testing, that by testing, you may

discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. The more time you spend

with the Lord, the better you understand the Lord, for better or for worse. There are times

when I am in a conflict and I know that the Lord's will is humility, but my will is pride. My will is

selfish. But when we draw near to God, we know what his will is. We know what he would desire

for us. It's growing up in relationship and knowing what he wants from us. So when we draw

near to God, we will begin to see that discernment come into our life. When I first became a

Christian, I didn't know what I was doing. All of a sudden, I'd feel convicted and be like, what did

I do? But now I try to pretend like I didn't know what I was doing. We need to seek the Lord and

understand his will. And the way to do that is to be a living sacrifice, is to surrender our bodies,

totally to God, to not be conformed, but to be transformed. And this will bring us to a place

of peace with God that surpasses all understanding. There may not be peace in the world, but there's

peace with him when we draw near to him. And when we understand his desires, when we understand

that we are in his will, that means in the midst of chaos, we know we're still supposed to grow

here. I remember talking with some pastors and I'm like, how do you get through the hard seasons?

How do you get through the times where people treat you like terrible,

crap? And then how do you get through it? I'm talking to pastors who have been through a lot.

And they said, when you know you're in the will of God, you know that's where your roots are and

you can stay planted. No matter what storm's going through, no matter what's going on, you can stay

grounded. So when you cling to the Lord, when you renew your mind, you're able to put down your

roots and you're able to stay planted and have peace. Now this morning, I have questions for us.

Are we committed to God? Are we surrendered as a living sacrifice? Not because we think we have to,

but because we see his mercy, we see his love, and it's the only proper response and we want to

be surrendered. Now, are we conformed to our culture? Are we conformed to our family or our

coworkers? Or are we being transformed and renewed by the word of God, by Jesus? This isn't all going

to be perfect. This isn't a perfection system, but this is a surrender. Today, I want to invite you,

if you haven't been living 100% for Christ, to begin that today. And a pastor who's no longer with us used

to say something like this, better today than yesterday and better tomorrow than today. We will

not be perfect in this life, but we have the opportunity to live every day like it's our last.

Billy Graham used to say this thing, if Christ was coming tomorrow, how would you change your life?

You know, that makes me think he would pause there and I'd be like, how would I change my life? I

would do this differently. I would do this differently. I would do this differently. But

then he said to his audience, I wouldn't change a thing because I have resigned myself to live as if

tomorrow, which means that friend or that family member that doesn't know Christ would be gone

tomorrow. Do we have that sense of urgency? Do we have that sense of urgency when it comes to living

for the Lord and not just dying for him? This is our chance. This is our opportunity. This is our

wake-up call to jump in and serve the Lord with everything we have, to begin living as a living

sacrifice daily. Now, if you're in this room and you don't have a relationship with Christ,

if you're zero percent in, you don't have a relationship with him, I want to invite you to

today to have a relationship with him. I want to invite you to fully surrender to him because the

truth is all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And the wages of that sin is death,

not just going in the ground, but separation from all things good, all things lovely,

separation from God. But the good news is that the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ

Jesus, our Lord. And the way we receive that free gift is by repentance,

and belief. It is by saying, I've been going my own way for so long, but God, I'm turning towards

you. You're no further away from who you once were, but you are now going the right direction.

That is repentance. Romans 10 9 says, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord,

and you believe in your heart, in your soul, that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

If you don't have that relationship with Christ, if you don't have that intimate desire for Christ,

it's time for you to repent. If you don't have that intimate desire for Christ, it's time for you to

surrender today. It's time for you to give your life to him today. Now, if you're like me,

and you read this passage, and you realize that you're lacking, that you're not being transformed,

but you feel like you're being conformed to this culture, today is the day that we repent and seek

after the Lord in a new way. Now, what tends to happen, at least in my experience, when I hear

someone speak on something like this, I go, yeah, I'm going to do this. And then tomorrow I wake up

and I forget. How many of us have been there a thousand times? Maybe you've heard this passage a

thousand times. You need to look to your left, look to your right, and seek accountability.

Look to those around you in your growth community and say, I want to be different. This is how I'm

being conformed. Please keep me accountable to being transformed by the Holy Spirit. We're meant

to do this together. This isn't meant to be something that we hear and then we just walk

away and forget about. I appeal to you, therefore, by God's mercy, to present your bodies completely

and totally, 100%, as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship,

your rational service.

Be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may

discern what the will of God is, what is perfect, acceptable, and good. 1 Corinthians 10 31 says,

so whether you eat, drink, or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God. This is our mission.

This is our goal, and this is our calling, to live for Christ every day. So are you seeking the Lord

to transform you? Does this make sense to you? Or are we going to be like my buddy Ace, who has a 10

out of 10 offer, and then we're going to be like, oh, I'm going to be like, oh, I'm going to be like,

Will we step into the unknown and give our life to Christ in full surrender? This isn't perfection,

but this is surrender. God doesn't need us, but he desperately wants us. There's no obligation

on his part, and today he is inviting us to go all in with relationship to him. With that said,

let's go ahead and pray. Dear Lord, thank you for today. Thank you for allowing us to be here.

Thank you for sending your son Jesus to die on the cross for our sins, God. Lord, I ask that if we

need to be renewed, that we would be renewed, and that it would be a continual renewal. Lord, we ask

that if we need to be transformed, that you would transform our lives completely. And Lord, I ask

that we wouldn't just be willing to die for you, but we would be willing to live for you by the

power of your Holy Spirit through reading of your word and preaching of your gospel. Lord, I ask

we'd be willing to live and die for you like Paul did. Lord, I ask if we have friends or family that

don't know you, that we would seek them out and tell them about you. Revival begins at home with

us, Lord. Lord, we love you and worship you. In your Holy Son's name, amen.