(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

some of evil, but overcome evil with good. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for the chance to be in your house this morning, Lord, with the people that you've gathered, Lord, and I pray that you would just bless this sermon as I preach, Lord. Fill me with your Holy Spirit, and in Jesus' name we pray, amen. Now, in Romans chapter 12, I wanna start out in verses one and two. This is one of the most famous scriptures in the whole Bible. Many of you have probably heard it before, where the Bible says, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service, 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. I'm gonna go through this piece by piece. He starts out by saying, I beseech you therefore, brethren. Now, beseech means I'm begging you. It's like asking, but it's a very strong way of asking. Begging them, I beseech you, brethren. Please, he says, present your bodies a living sacrifice to God. But look what he says there at the beginning. I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God. So you might think, you know, well, what right does God have to ask me to present my body as a living sacrifice? You know, if God is gonna ask me to give him everything, and if God wants me to even present my body a living sacrifice, to give my entire life over to Christ, you know, what right does he have to ask that of me? He says, I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your body a living sacrifice. You see, the mercies of God has to do with the fact that we are saved not because we're good, or because we've done good works, or because we have followed all the commandments, but according to the Bible, we are saved because of the mercy of God. Now, mercy is when we do not get what we deserve, okay? And another word that's very similar to mercy is grace, okay? Grace is when God gives us something for free. Grace is when we receive a gift from God that we did not earn, but it was just given unto us because of God's love and mercy. So if you think about it, grace and mercy are two sides of the same coin, okay? Grace is when we get something good that we did not deserve. We get a free gift that we did not pay for. That's grace, okay? And mercy is when something bad was gonna happen to us. Like, let's say we've committed a crime and a horrible punishment is coming. Mercy is when we get out of that punishment. We receive mercy, okay? So when the Bible says, I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that's referring to the fact that there's a punishment that we all deserve because of our sin. The Bible says for the wages of sin is death. The Bible teaches that because of our sins, we deserve death, we deserve hell. But because God is merciful, He has provided a way for us to be saved, not by earning it ourselves, not by being a good person or keeping the commandments, because frankly, none of us is a good person. You know, we all sin. We all come short of God's center. But God's mercy is what saves us. Now, that is an amazing gift that God would just give us eternal life for free. And He doesn't make us jump through a bunch of hoops to get it. He just said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. I mean, that's amazing. And the Bible says, thanks be to God for His unspeakable gift, meaning that words cannot even describe what a great gift this is, what good news this is to know that all of our sins are forgiven. You know, I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want God to go through all my sins. Especially not in front of other people, right? I mean, how would you like to go in front of God at a great white throne and have God go through all your sins and everybody see all your sins? Who would go through that? That'd be horrible, right? Nobody wants to go through that. It would be embarrassing. It would be shame. But the Bible says that if we're saved, we never have to worry about that. Because if we're saved, the Bible says as far as the east is from the west, that's how far God has separated us from our sins. He took all of our sins and forgot them, forgiven and forgotten. I mean, that's great news. That's a relief, you know, that we don't have to worry about that. And it's great news that we get to live forever, eternal life in a perfect place called heaven. This is great. And here's the thing, when we receive such a great gift, when we receive the mercies of God, there's no strings attached. So even if we just take that gift and we never go to church and we never clean up our life, we still have that gift. But that doesn't mean that's what God wants us to do. God is not pleased with that, okay? God is not forcing us to serve him. Okay, he's not forcing us. He's not saying, look, you have to obey me or you're gonna go to hell. Because once we believe on Jesus Christ, we're saved and we have freedom, we have liberty. He's not forcing us, but what he is doing is he's beseeching us. He's beseeching us, he's begging us. He's telling you, and I'm beseeching you today as a pastor, as a preacher of God's word. I'm beseeching you, my friend. Present your body a living sacrifice to God. Now look, if you don't present it, you're still saved. But I beg of you, my friend, don't waste your life on drunkenness. Don't waste your life on following the way of this world and enjoying the pleasures of sin for a season. No, I beseech you, brother, by the mercies of God, present your body a living sacrifice to God, which is your reasonable service. Now the proof that this has nothing to do with salvation is look at the first phrase there. I beseech you, therefore, brethren. What does brethren mean? We're talking to the brethren in Christ. We're talking to people that are already saved. He's saying, look, you're already saved. You're already a brother in Christ. Take the next step by presenting your body a living sacrifice to God. And he said, when we present our body as a living sacrifice, this is the thing that is the most precious to us, the most dear to us is our body. Because if you think about it, in the book of Job, Job lost his money, Job lost his family, Job lost his business, Job lost everything. His children, not everything is gone. But the devil said, you know what? If you touch his body, that's when he'll curse you. And of course, Job's body was touched, but he still did not curse God. But that goes to show you, you know, our body is pretty dear unto us. I mean, that's probably the last thing we wanna sacrifice. When God says to present our body, he said, you know what? You should be willing to give everything. You should be willing to submit yourself to God and present your body a living sacrifice to God. And then the next thing he says is, present your body a living sacrifice, holy, holy. Now, what does it mean to be holy? So God doesn't want us to present our body in an unholy condition and we show up and our life is filled with sin and we're doing all kinds of things contrary to the word of God and say, okay, God, I'm ready for you to use me now. He wants us to work on cleaning our life up too so that we can be the best worker that we can for God, okay? So he wants us to present our bodies a living sacrifice and he wants us to be holy. The Bible says, be holy for I am holy. And holy means set apart. It means different than the world around you. It means when the people around you are all living a simple life and they're all getting drunk and they're all having sex with all kinds of people and when they're committing adultery or when they're even committing murder or stealing, you don't be like them. You're holy, you're different. You live a Christian life. That's what God wants you to do and he wants you to present yourself ready for service, ready to do his work. Now, let's keep reading. It says that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And then it says in verse two, and be not conformed to this world. Now, conform means patterned after. He's saying, don't pattern yourself after the people around you. Don't pattern yourself after the world. Don't be conformed to them. Be holy, be different, be set apart, be a peculiar people. And the Bible says, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Now, when we present ourselves to God to work for him, when we present our bodies a living sacrifice, it's gonna cost you something. When we hear the word sacrifice, here's what comes to mind when we hear the word sacrifice. You're giving up something, right? Everybody pay attention up here. I know there's a lot of action going on, but there's a thing. The word sacrifice, what does it mean to sacrifice? I mean, if I told you, hey, I'm gonna make a sacrifice, that means I'm giving up something. Now, listen, you can't have everything in this world. You can't have everything. People think, oh, I'm gonna have everything. No, life is about trade-offs. Life is about choices. Life is about priorities, okay? And when we present our body a living sacrifice, it means it's gonna cost us something to serve Jesus. Now, how much does it cost to be saved and go to heaven? Nothing. But how much does it cost to serve Jesus? Everything. Everything. Cost you everything. You know, we were kinda joking about this a little bit because of the fact that when brother Paul Wittenberger and brother Garrett Kirschway and another friend of ours named brother Naar, when they were at the airport and they got banned from entering South Africa and they've traveled all this way, they got to Germany and they got banned from entering South Africa, and when they did, all of their luggage just sort of went into a no man's land where they couldn't figure out where any of their luggage is so they only had that which they carried on with them. But all their luggage, they don't know, is it in Johannesburg, is it in Germany? No one could tell them, right? So I booked them other flights to bring them through Kenya into directly from Kenya to Botswana. And basically, we were joking about how, what's the cost of entry to go to Botswana and serve the Lord? Everything. You lose everything, you know what I mean? You're coming to Botswana, be ready to leave everything behind. You have to lose everything. But you know what, it's funny, but in reality, that's the attitude we should have is to say, you know what? If Jesus Christ laid down his life for me, if he died for me and was buried and rose again, he gave his body, he said, this is my body which is broken for you. You know what? We should be willing to give everything. Not because we have to, but because we want to. We should be willing to present our bodies and living sacrifice. We need to be ready to give things up and make sacrifices and do what's right. And the Bible says that anything that we give up in this world, he will return to us. He will reward us greatly. And sadly, we were able to reroute a lot of people in our group through other African countries to bring them to Botswana. But some people got deported back and shipped back to various places and we're still trying to bring them. Thank God we have a lot of people here and we got way more coming today. But if you think about it, those people, even if they didn't make it to Botswana, even if they got turned around and they made the trip for nothing and they sat on airplanes for 20, 30, 40 hours and then they ended up not making it. You know what? I believe that God's gonna greatly reward those people because they made a sacrifice to try their best to be here. They did everything they could and God sees that and they're gonna have a great reward in heaven because the Bible says that if we suffer persecution for Jesus Christ, that great is our reward in heaven. And let me tell you something. These people that are trying to stop the gospel and they got us banned from the United Kingdom and banned from South Africa and these people spend just day and night just on the internet trying to find ways to fight us and destroy us and attack us. Let me tell you something. These people are gonna burn in hell and it's gonna be way worse for them than for your average person. Because the Bible talks about people who heard the gospel and they heard the truth, he said it would be worse for them than it was even for Sodom and Gomorrah. It'll do worse to them than what he did to Sodom and Gomorrah. And you know what? God is gonna, and these people, they rejoice right now. They think that they're winning and they're smiling and laughing. Ha ha, we got you banned. Ha ha, we made you go to other countries and you had to fly to Kenya and all this stuff. Ha ha ha, we cost you thousands of dollars. You know what? You can cost me all the thousands of dollars that you want because I'm ready to kiss it all goodbye. I'm ready to, I don't need any of it. I came into this world naked and I'm leaving this world naked and God gave and God has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. And these people, they think they're winning but all they're doing is just making hell worse for themselves by making God angry. They're just incurring God's wrath, promoting this filth, this disgusting filth of homosexuality. And they love filth. They literally love feces. That's what they love, literally. Okay, that's what they love. And you know what they hate? The precious gospel of Jesus Christ. They hate it. And you know what? God's up in heaven and the Bible says one day he's gonna laugh at them when they beg for mercy. He that sitteth in the heaven shall laugh. The Lord shall laugh. God's gonna get the last laugh. And by the way, they think that they're stopping us but here we are. And we have a great army today assembled and we're gonna have way more people coming this afternoon too. And we're gonna go out and knock doors and we're gonna preach the gospel and we're gonna win people to Christ. And you know, these bunch of sodomites that are out, there's only a few because thank God, you know, there aren't that many here in Botswana. But I think all the sodomites in the whole country are out there. No, I'm just kidding, it's fine. Just kidding. But anyway, these protesters that are out there, they think that they're gonna intimidate us but they don't realize that I will not be intimidated. I don't stop. I will keep preaching. I will go to the grave teaching what I believe. I will never take one step backward. I am gonna preach what the Bible says and I'm not gonna censor it. I'm not gonna water it down. And they can ban me and beat me and arrest me and find me and waste my money. But you know what? I'm just gonna keep on going and all this persecution is doing is just getting me fired up and it's getting other people fired up and it's motivating people. And there are a lot of people who've been sitting on the sidelines, maybe in South Africa or sitting on the sidelines in Botswana or sitting on the sidelines somewhere in the US or Canada. And when they see this fight happening, they realize, you know what? It's time for me to get involved. It's time for me to present my body a living sacrifice. I'm tired of being a spectator and just watching. I wanna get in the fight. I wanna win somebody in Christ. I wanna do something for God. I wanna stand with the man of God and I wanna stand with the people of God and do the work of God. And I'm not gonna let a bunch of perverts that are 1% of the society or less intimidate me and push me around. And you know what? If governments ban us, we'll just shake off the dust and go to the next place. And you know what? Frankly, I like it here in Botswana. I'm glad they let me come. I'm having a good time. All right, don't send me home. Well, until it's time for me to go home. I do wanna go home when it's time to go home, but I don't wanna go home today. So we're on the winning side. Don't let these people discourage you. Don't be timid and shy. You know what? We're not the ones going around doing a bunch of filthy things. What do we have to be ashamed of? I'm not ashamed of anything. Why should I be ashamed of being married and having children and living a decent life? Why would I be ashamed of that? I'm not. And you know what? Paul said, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to everyone that believeth. I said, to everyone that believeth. To the Jew first and also to the Greek. I'm not ashamed of it. I'll preach it from the housetops and I'll preach everything in the Bible from the housetops. And I'm not gonna let these people intimidate me. And we should not let them intimidate us. We should be ready to make sacrifices. You know, it could cost you something. You might have to endure persecution. Well, you will have to endure persecution. The Bible says, yay and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. But today Christians are afraid of that. Christians today, they want a Christianity that costs them nothing. Now thank God salvation costs nothing. But they want a discipleship that costs nothing. You know, they want a Christian walk that costs nothing. And you know what? We need to be ready to make a sacrifice, the Bible says. To present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And the Bible says, be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Now, what is it that's gonna keep us from being conformed to the world? Where we're patterned after the world around us. Where we're living just like unsaved people. Where we're living just like the heathen. What's gonna help us not be conformed? The Bible says in verse two, be not conformed to this world, but be transformed. And how are we gonna be transformed? By the renewing of our mind. You see, our mind has been brainwashed. Okay, by lots of different people. You know, we go to school and they brainwash us on certain things. We go to work maybe and watch the TV or listen to the radio or read newspapers. And oftentimes it's a brainwashing that's going on. So people have these really weird ideas in their mind that did not come from within. They think it came from their heart, but it actually was put in their mind through TV, magazines, books, radio and university and things. They pick up these ideas that are contrary to the word of God but they think that they're right. And the proof of this is that 50 years ago in America, everybody had a certain opinion. And then 50 years later, everybody's opinion is different. Is that a coincidence? No, there's an agenda, a campaign to slowly brainwash people and get them to accept things that you never thought they would accept and get them to believe all kinds of crazy things. So in order for us to be set apart, in order for us to be holy, you know, the Bible says we're gonna have to renew our mind. Okay, renew our mind. Now, what does it mean to renew your mind? What does it mean to renew something? Okay, well, to renew something is like pushing a reset button, right? So it'd be sort of like if your phone, you know, you're messing with your phone and you're having problems on your phone, sometimes you just have to turn it off and turn it back on again, right? Just kind of reboot, renew it because it's got a bunch of junk in it, it's messed up and you have to power it down and power it back up again or like on a computer, push the reset. That's what we have to do with our minds. We have to realize that our mind, you know, we caught a computer virus, as it were. You know, we got this junk in our mind. We've gotten all these false teachings in our mind and what we need to do is we need to go to the word of God and we need to renew our mind. Okay, we need to change our mind. Now, the battle today that we're fighting is a spiritual battle. We're not fighting a physical battle. Otherwise, we'd be out there kicking some serious butt but we're not fighting a physical battle. It's a spiritual battle. The Bible says we do not wrestle with flesh and blood. We wrestle with principalities and powers against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. So the battle is not a physical fight. It's a battle for the mind. It's a battle for the hearts and mind where we go to people and we let the light of the glorious gospel shine in to where the darkness has crept in and blinded their minds and they can't see things right because their mind is darkened. We need to renew the mind. Now, let me just tell you this right now. Everybody who's here, if you don't read this book right here, the Bible, you will not have a renewed mind because you're hearing all kinds of other stuff on the TV, radio, classroom, whatever. So how are you gonna get the bad part that came in? How do you get rid of it? You have to read this book to renew your mind. This is the reset button, okay? This is the new sim card, okay? Since I've been in Botswana, I've noticed that everybody's got a cell phone and they're switching sim cards and how the cell phones here have two sim cards. I've never seen that because in America, it's one sim card. Okay, so this is the thing. Your sim card is jacked, all right? You need a new sim, all right? Now, all of us as Christians, we're all operating on a dual sim, right? Because one of our sim cards is all the junk we get from the world, right? But here's the thing. If you don't read this book, that's all you have is that messed up sim card that's filled with all the devil's junk that he's trying to tell you, right? So here's what we need to do, okay? We need to get the new sim card, all right? Insert that new sim card of the word of God. Then we need to go into the settings and we need to switch over to sim card number two and route everything through sim card number two. Is everybody here? Am I making sense, people in Botswana? They're like, oh, it makes sense. I see. I get it now. No, so the point is, we need to renew our mind. And listen, if you don't read the Bible, you don't have a renewed mind. That's why there are lots of people in South Africa who say, I'm a Christian. Lots of people in Botswana that say, I'm a Christian. Lots of people in the United States will say, oh, I'm a Christian, I'm a Baptist. And people in Canada, oh, I'm Christian, I'm a Baptist, I'm an evangelical. And then you talk to them. They don't believe what's in this book. They believe a bunch of junk that they heard out there and they don't believe what's in the Bible. They need a renewed mind. They're not reading the Bible today. I believe that 99% of Christians have not even read this book one time, the whole book. 99%. Look, I grew up in a Christian home and I did not read this book until I was 17 years old, the whole thing, 17 years old. But I know people who were in church for 50 years before they read this book one time. Cover and cover. Because most Christians don't read this book. They leave it on the shelf and they just come to church and they just believe whatever they hear. Instead of opening it and checking it and reading it. And listen, I wanna make sure that everybody who comes to this church has Bibles. That's why we brought all these Bibles. These are not decorations for your house. This is not just some kind of a trophy or an ornament. It doesn't just go into the pillow. So you have to actually read this. You take it out from the pillow, you gotta read this book. And renew your mind, clear out your mind. And you know what? If you talk to people who read the Bible and you talk about this controversial stuff, guess what? They all agree with you. If you talk to somebody who has actually read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, they agree with what I'm preaching. They agree and when you talk against the homos or anybody else, they agree with you. Because they read it in the Bible themselves. But when you talk to these Christians who are like, I don't know where he's getting this from. Yeah, that's because you didn't read the Bible. Of course you don't know where because you didn't read it. When you talk to somebody who's read the Bible and you talk to somebody who did not read the whole Bible, it's like a night and day difference. It's a completely different mentality. And so I just wanna strongly encourage you in this church. And I believe that we've talked to the people that are here this morning. I know there's some visitors that walked in later. But most of the people here, we've already talked to them and made sure that they're going to heaven. Made sure that they trust in Jesus as their savior and believing in Jesus Christ. So I'm talking to people that are already brethren. I'm already talking to people that for the most part, the majority of the people are already saved. They already have settled that they're going to heaven. So I'm beseeching you brethren of this church to take the next step and present your body a living sacrifice. And in order to present your body a living sacrifice, you're gonna need a renewed mind. You're gonna need to read the Bible and you're gonna have to make some sacrifices. Like here's the thing, just coming to church this morning is a sacrifice because you could be somewhere else. You could be doing something else, right? But you're here, you've sacrificed time to be here. You know, people who come back tonight at six o'clock have sacrificed their time to be here at six o'clock. Sacrificed their time on Wednesday night to be here at six o'clock. Going out and knocking doors is a sacrifice of time, a sacrifice of energy. Those who flew here, many of the people that are here with us from North America, most of them bought their own plane ticket out of their own money. That's a sacrifice of money. I mean, they laid down a substantial amount of money. You know, they might've laid down, you know, 10,000, 12,000, 14,000 hula to be here. That's the sacrifice that they made because they love the people of Botswana and they love the Lord Jesus Christ and they wanna present their bodies a living sacrifice. They wanna be used by God. They wanna be a part of something great. And people who drove up from South Africa, many hours of driving, petrol in the tank, that's a sacrifice that they made to be here because they love the Lord, that's why. They wanna be here. They wanna serve Him. And you know what? If you're gonna continue on in your Christian life, after the excitement of, oh, the wedding and, oh, visitors from another country, you know, we're partying and we're spoiling and going to these places, you know, after all that excitement is over, it's gonna be a sacrifice for you to decide, you know what, I'm gonna keep coming. I'm gonna keep coming. I'm gonna be dedicated. And you know what? When I have nothing to do and I'm sitting around, I'm gonna pull out this book and read it instead of turning on the TV or something. This is, you know, catch up. And those of you that have been saved for a long time and you haven't read the Bible, you gotta catch up. You got some catching up to do. Read the Bible and present your body a living sacrifice. Listen, this church, this church is a light that's shining in this part of the world with the gospel, shining the gospel. And hopefully the beams of light that come from this lighthouse right here will shine all throughout Botswana. I know that Brother Garrett Kirschway has an exciting vision for this church. He wants to reach the whole nation of Botswana with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, not everybody's gonna get saved because that's a decision that they have to make. Everybody has to decide that for themselves. But here's what his vision is. Just make sure that everyone hears the gospel so that they can make that decision, that they can have a chance to hear the gospel. There are two million people in Botswana. We wanna give the gospel to all of them. And he's ready even to train preachers and send them to other parts of the country and to go there himself and to travel to other towns and other cities and to preach in the schools and preach in the prisons and to knock doors and to do what it takes. And hopefully the beams of light from this lighthouse would not only shine the light of the gospel into Botswana but also even into South Africa that they would see from South Africa and see what's going on up here and be inspired to wanna do more for God and to get a vision and to get not the spirit of fear but a spirit of power and of love and of a sound mind. You know what? If you are here today, you are part of history by being at the first service. Years from now, after all the great works have been done that God will accomplish in and through this group and through this church, you could say, you know what, I was at the first service. And there are a few people at our church in Arizona that came the first month and those people, we always say, hey, they were there the first month and it's exciting to be one of the original members. And you are a part of something great if you're here and you may not even fully understand that but you're part of something great and God's work is a great work. And so I beseech you, brethren, to present your bodies a living sacrifice unto God, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. Be not 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. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer now. Lord, we thank you so much for these great scriptures, Lord, in Romans 12, one and two. And I pray that every single person, Lord, that's here would decide I'm willing to make the sacrifices necessary to be a servant of the Lord. I'm willing to read the Bible to renew my mind. And I don't wanna be like everybody else. I wanna be different. I wanna do something great that will have a lasting effect, not just in this life but for all of eternity. I pray that every single person here would decide that that would be something that they would do with their lives. And we thank you so much for safely bringing us here, Lord. And we thank you that we were allowed to let this vision of having a church in Botswana here that's an independent, fundamental Baptist church come to pass, Lord, and I pray that you continue to bless. And in Jesus' name we pray, amen.