Do Not Be Conformed to This World: Romans 12:1-5

Romans 12:1-5: "1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. 2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. 3 For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith. 4 For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, 5 so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another."

The Collect for today, the First Sunday after Epiphany, states,

"O Lord, we beseech Thee mercifully to receive the prayers of Thy people, who call upon Thee; and grant that they may both perceive and know what things they ought to do and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfill the same; through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth, with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen."

This Collect carries the theme of the reading wonderfully. The Blessed Apostle St. Paul in the Epistle reading for the First Sunday after Epiphany, which is also this morning's reading, captures the spirit of the Lord's wholehearted consecration of Himself to His Father from today's Gospel reading of the Boy Jesus in the Temple from St. Luke 2. This reading is all about conforming one's self to the will of the Father. It is all about obedience. And the Blessed Apostle, St. Paul, explains to the Church at Rome, that that obedience applies to us as well.

Our Lord Jesus was to be about His Father's business in the Temple. He was to be obedient to the Father's will. We too, are to be about our Father's will. Well, this obviously begs the question, "What is the Father's will?" We learn from Dr. Martin Luther's Small Catechism, on the Lord's Prayer, the third petition, that the Father's will is done

"When God breaks and hinders every evil counsel and will which would not let us hallow the name of God nor let His kingdom come, such as the will of the devil, the world, and our flesh; but strengthens and preserves us steadfast in His Word and in faith unto our end. This is His good and gracious will." *

This means that God's will is to destroy the devil, the world, and all sinfulness. This is done by what we learn from the first two petitions of the Lord's prayer, having His Name being hallowed, and having His kingdom come. God's name is hallowed, when His word is taught in its truth and purity, and we lead holy lives according to it. In other words, when we are obedient to our Father in heaven, by listening to His holy Word, and doing it, that is, His commandments. The kingdom of God comes to us when He gives us His Holy Spirit. His Holy Spirit gives us the grace to believe His holy Word, or to say it another way, the Holy Spirit creates and sustains faith in us. The Holy Spirit does this by the blessed Sacraments, through those means of grace, which impart to us faith and life.

And even though we pray for these things, God gives them to us without our prayer. This is why He has given us the Church, and within the Church, He has established parishes, with ministers, to dole out those gifts, so that we might have faith and life.

So just like our dear Lord Jesus as a boy in the Temple, who is to be about His Father's business, so too, are we to be about our Father's business, that is receiving, and rejoicing over the gifts that He gives us, both bodily gifts and spiritual gifts. This is what it means to "not be conformed to this world." For this world, wants nothing to do with the Father's will. There are even those in the Church, who bemoan and wail about having to go to church to worship, or they moan about having worship their way. They would trade the worship of our Lord, for the worship of themselves. Even the amount of worship gets slap in the face from this world. Heaven forbid that a worship service last more than an hour! And even more so, if one advocates worshipping on more than just on Sunday (except for Advent and Lent, then people will begrudgingly relent to Wednesday night services, since they only last a few weeks).

The Early Church, and the Church of the Middle Ages, worshipped daily, at least morning and evening, and in some places several times a day. Our lives as Christians should be filled with worship, that is, with the hearing of God's Word, and the receiving of His gifts. It must be this way, because the devil, the world, and our sinful flesh do not want us to hallow God's Name, or let His kingdom come, and they will do whatever it takes to destroy the faith and life that God planted into us through the means of grace. This is why, we as Christians, must come to the Lord's House, to His Temple, and "present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service." For in is in His house, the place where He hands out His Word and gifts, where we find not only rest for our souls, from the battle that we face daily because of the devil, the world, and our flesh, but it is also the place where God strengthens us in His Word and Spirit, so that those unholy three, have no power over us.

So, rejoice today that our dear Father in heaven, has sent His Son into our flesh, and on account of Him, sends the Holy Spirit to us, that we might have forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and salvation through the means of His grace, so that we might be obedient to Him, and trust and rely on Him for all of our wants and needs.

God's peace be with you!

Deacon Dulas


* Translation from Doctor Martin Luther Small Catechism and An Explanation of Christian Doctrine based on Doctor Luther's Small Catechism, Edited by Markku Sarela, Published by The Confessional Lutheran Church of Finland, 1999.

Only Noah And Those Who Were With Him in the Ark Remained Alive: Genesis 7:1-24

Genesis 7: 1-24: "1 Then the LORD said to Noah, 'Come into the ark, you and all your household, because I have seen that you are righteous before Me in this generation. 2 You shall take with you seven each of every clean animal, a male and his female; two each of animals that are unclean, a male and his female; 3 also seven each of birds of the air, male and female, to keep the species alive on the face of all the earth. 4 For after seven more days I will cause it to rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and I will destroy from the face of the earth all living things that I have made.' 5 And Noah did according to all that the LORD commanded him. 6 Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters were on the earth. 7 So Noah, with his sons, his wife, and his sons' wives, went into the ark because of the waters of the flood. 8 Of clean animals, of animals that are unclean, of birds, and of everything that creeps on the earth, 9 two by two they went into the ark to Noah, male and female, as God had commanded Noah. 10 And it came to pass after seven days that the waters of the flood were on the earth. 11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. 12 And the rain was on the earth forty days and forty nights. 13 On the very same day Noah and Noah's sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and Noah's wife and the three wives of his sons with them, entered the ark--14 they and every beast after its kind, all cattle after their kind, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth after its kind, and every bird after its kind, every bird of every sort. 15 And they went into the ark to Noah, two by two, of all flesh in which is the breath of life. 16 So those that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him; and the LORD shut him in. 17 Now the flood was on the earth forty days. The waters increased and lifted up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. 18 The waters prevailed and greatly increased on the earth, and the ark moved about on the surface of the waters. 19 And the waters prevailed exceedingly on the earth, and all the high hills under the whole heaven were covered. 20 The waters prevailed fifteen cubits upward, and the mountains were covered. 21 And all flesh died that moved on the earth: birds and cattle and beasts and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, and every man. 22 All in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, all that was on the dry land, died. 23 So He destroyed all living things which were on the face of the ground: both man and cattle, creeping thing and bird of the air. They were destroyed from the earth. Only Noah and those who were with him in the ark remained alive. 24 And the waters prevailed on the earth one hundred and fifty days."

The narrative of the Flood shows God's judgment and mercy. God judges the whole earth to be worthy of destruction, and so He sends a flood. This should serve as a stark warning to us! "All in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, all that was on the dry land, died." We learn from Dr. Martin Luther's Small Catechism that, "God threatens to punish all that transgress these Commandments. Therefore we should dread His wrath and not act contrary to these Commandments." * This is a commentary on Exodus 20:5, "I, the Lord, thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me." * What that means, is that God takes His Law seriously. He does not want people neglecting or breaking His commandments. What that also means, is that He will punish those who transgress against His Law.

What does that mean for us? It means we should take God's commandments seriously too. Especially those of us who claim to love Him and want to do His will. We should study His Law, so that we know what to do, and not to do, and live by them. We should teach them to our children, and place them on our hearts, on our walls, and keep them ever before us. However, we should never think that we are saved by our keeping of the Law. Only One Man was perfect, and that was our dear Lord Jesus, only He kept the Law perfectly. We fail often, daily. And when we do we should confess our sins, to God, or our minister. When we repent of our sins, and confess them, and promise to amend our sinful ways, we receive absolution, that is, forgiveness of sins, from our minister, just as if it came from God Himself.

I am quite sure that at the time of Noah, there were many people, like today, who did not believe that they were all that evil. After all, everybody else was probably doing the same things, and unfortunately, we have this bad tendency to judge our works according to our neighbors works, that is, by our fellow man's works. This leads to one of two things, pride or despair. Pride comes when we look at our neighbors works, and think, "Well, at least I'm not as bad as that guy." Despair comes upon those who look at their neighbors works, and think that they will never be a good person. They say to themselves, "I wish I was as good as so and so." But we should not be comparing our works to any other man's works. Instead, we should trust in Christ's works on our behalf. Our dear Lord Jesus, fulfilled the Law perfectly for us. And better yet, our Father in heaven, took out our punishment upon our dear Lord Jesus. And so, our keeping of the Law, really stems from our love for what our Lord did for us. We desire to keep the Law because of what He did. And when we fail, we have an intercessor before the throne of heaven, who pleads on our behalf for us--our dear Lord Jesus, who sits at the right hand of the Father, interceding for us.

This is why Noah is saved. It wasn't because of his righteousness, but because of his faith in God to redeem him, inspite of his sinfulness. And this faith was reckoned to him as righteousness. This is why the world is destroyed in a flood, because they lacked faith in God, they trusted in themselves and their works. They thought they were not all that bad, that they were acting just like everybody else. This is why Christians don't act like everybody else, why they obey God, because they believe that He is their Lord and Savior, and that He will keep His promise to punish those who remain in their sins, even as He punished those at the time of the Flood.

But God shows His mercy in this pericope as well. He saves Noah and his family. We see from the text that God even closed the door for Noah, shutting him up into the Ark. We see that He protected Noah, and all of His creation, by saving two of each kind of living thing. Again Noah is a figure of the promised Christ. Noah is shut up in the tomb of the Ark, just like our Lord Jesus is shut up in the tomb. Both our dear Lord Jesus and Noah are carried through death, one real, one seeming, to life again on the other side. This also is a picture of baptism. In baptism, God saves us, we are placed into the Ark of Christendom, and He carries us through the Flood of this life to our eternal home. He counts us as righteous, because we believe that He has called us by baptism, and enlightened us with His gifts of forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and salvation, and sanctifies and keeps us in the one true faith. That faith is that our dear Lord Jesus fulfilled the Law perfectly for us, and suffered and died for us, so that we might have eternal life with Him.

This evening we rejoice in this gift. We rejoice that God has shut us up through the water of baptism, into the Ark of Christendom, and guides and protects us through this valley of tears, until we come home to live with Him in heaven.

May God be with you!

Deacon Dulas

* Translation from Doctor Martin Luther Small Catechism and An Explanation of Christian Doctrine based on Doctor Luther's Small Catechism, Edited by Markku Sarela, Published by The Confessional Lutheran Church of Finland, 1999. Scripture quotations from the King James Version, 1611.