Sermon Tone Analysis

You Are In Someone’s Mold

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Romans 12:1                  Countercultural Faith Series # 1

 

 

The key message Paul conveys in the book of Romans is that of detailing the wonderful way in which God has rescued us through the salvation He has provided through the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And then, having detailed that, he says, since God has rescued you in this way, you ought to live for Him in these ways.

He details that wonderful salvation in the first eleven chapters and then takes the remainder of the book to say, here is how we need to be living for God.

In fact, chapter 12:1 is really the pivotal verse in the whole book.

He changes gears there.

He has been saying what God did for us, and now he is going to be saying what God expects of us.

Chapter 12, verse 1. “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God,…” In other words, because God did all this for you—eleven chapters worth of blessing—therefore, I urge you brethren by the mercies of God, “that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

2  And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”

God has blessed us incredibly.

Eleven chapters don’t cover it.

God has been generous beyond measure.

He has extended us forgiveness on the basis of the work of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

He has given us the Word of God, the indwelling Holy Spirit.

He has placed us in the Body of Christ where we have friends and fellow believers who can encourage us and help us.

Whatever else we try in the world, He is there to pick us up when it doesn’t work.

He is faithful.

He is not a grudge holder.

He welcomes us back when we go out and try something else and it doesn’t work.

We do well to center ourselves on Him.

Whatever tempts us, whatever is attractive to us, whatever has promised to give us life apart from Him, we need the courage as we focus on Him to turn away from.

A number of years ago you could buy a little toy that was made by the Playdough corporation, and it consisted of a huge number of molds.

You could take this mold and you could get a piece of blue playdough and stuff it in the mold and open up the mold and you would have a little blue dog.

Or you could take a mold that was in the shape of a horse, and you could stuff your playdough in the mold and open it up and you would have a little blue horse, or a doll, or a piece of furniture, or whatever mold you chose.

And children would take these things and make huge messes with them, building little molded blue and green and red dolls and dogs and horses.

I want to ask you a question about that illustration.

It’s going to seem like a very simple, ridiculous question.

But it has a profound impact on our lives.

The question is this: when you were playing with this playdough toy, what determined which toy you end up with?

Too simple?

Simply the mold you choose!

If you choose the dog mold, you are going to end up with a dog.

If you choose the doll mold, you will definitely end up with a doll.

That question has impact for us because we are people who are in someone’s mold.

Romans 12:1 and 2 makes it clear that you and I are in someone’s mold.

Someone or something is molding us into something that we are going to become.

The second reason that question is important is because we are a people who are allowed to choose our mold.

We can choose which mold we want to be in over the course of today or over of the course of the next ten years, or the course of a whole life.

It’s our choice.

Someone or something is molding us, but we get to choose the mold.

With those thought as a background, I want to ask you to think with me about this passage, and think about some questions for our own lives.

Number one, which mold have I chosen?

Who is molding me today?

Number two, asking myself the question, How do I change molds?

And number three, asking the question, if I get into a good mold, how do I stay there?

With those questions in mind, let’s begin to think about Romans 12:2.

The first issue is the reality that the world system is actively working to mold every believer, every Christian into something ugly.

The world system is actively working to mold us into something very ugly.

Romans 12:2 says, “Be not conformed to this world.”

There was an English scholar, J.B. Phillips who wrote a New Testament paraphrase in which he said, “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold.”

We have three huge enemies in this life once we trust Christ.

Number one, our first enemy is Satan.

The Bible describes him as a real being, describes him with personality—not a personality you would enjoy—but a personality.

The Bible describes him as being very crafty, as being a personal adversary as 1 Peter 5:8 says.

“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”

We have an enemy in Satan.

Secondly, the Bible says we have an enemy in our own flesh, that is, not our physical body, but in our own personal bent toward sin.

The New Testament has many passages that deal with that.

We won’t take time to look at them, but Galatians 5:16-21 is the most well-known passage that describes this inner desire living in us, a bent toward sin.

It’s a huge enemy to us.

In fact, one passage in Peter talks about this inner bent toward sin as being a sailor that’s on a ship and ready to commit mutiny.

I am toting around in me a sailor ready to commit mutiny against me.

But the third great enemy, the one we want to think about today, is the enemy that is called the world system.

It is very simply a spiritual kingdom, a spiritual alliance, which is aligned against God and against every person.

This world system is described in James chapter 4:3-4, where it says, “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.

4  Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.”

If I become a friend of the world system, I am hostile toward God.

Romans 12:2 is saying to us that this third great enemy, the world system, is doing its level best to squeeze us into its own mold.

We have an enemy out there that is trying to mold us into something ugly, trying to break us off like a piece of playdough and cram us into a very ugly mold.

The question I want to think about to begin with is the question, how does it do that?

How does it work?

What is it that is impacting us that causes us to be changed into ugly people?

I would suggest to you today that one of the main ways that the world system tries to mold us into ugly people is through the use of the culture that we live in.

The world system, I believe, to a great extent, is using the American culture to mold us into people who are not like the people God wants us to be.

Culture is very simply a collective way of doing things.

We live in a nation that has a group of people that has a collective way of doing things.

We have subcultures.

They do things differently in the south than in the north or the west or the inner city or out in a rural area.

But our culture as a collective way of doing things has, first of all, some good things.

There are some things about the way that we as Americans go about life that is good.

One of the things that we have seen repeatedly is an incredible generosity of the American people after disasters.

It collectively gathers together to help others.

That’s a very positive thing about our culture.

There are other positive things about the way we do things.

Our generosity in volunteering and providing care for people who struggle.

There are positive things about the way we do life in America.

There are also some very negative things about the way that we collectively go about life.

Here are some ideas that came to mind.

Number one, we live in a culture that glorifies beauty and youth.

We live in a culture that is very much bent toward the thinking that valuable people are attractive people and they are young people.

One of the very ugly parts of our culture is the bent toward individualism—this idea that says that we need to promote self-health, self-promotion.

Do what you need for yourself.

Be an individual.

Don’t be connected with the body around you.

That’s one of the ugly parts of the way we do culture.

We also value money and material possessions far too highly.

We have another trend in America called privatization.

Collectively, as a culture we have a trend called privatization which says we are being more and more and more private about our lives.