Below are my notes from the message I presented last Sunday, at Life Community:
It’s only been about a month since we
celebrated Christmas. I want you to take a moment and think about Christmases
past. What are the various reactions you have had in response to Christmas
gifts?
If we were to rate presents from awesome
to just so-so, the two extremes might look like this:
Some people are surprised and really
really, grateful when they get something they wanted but they thought the
gift was just too expensive or impossible to obtain. They are extremely
grateful and exuberant for getting something that they dreamed of getting.
Some people are almost emotionless when
they receive a gift they did not need or want. They might try to fake some
level of gratitude, but it usually comes through as a mere show. Can you relate
to these reactions to a gift?
Today we want to look at God’s gifts to
us and question what should our response be.
If you have your Bibles and I hope you
do, I want you to turn with me to Romans 12:1. This should be a very familiar
passage of scripture, but as I have been studying and contemplating this
passage for about a year now, I am convinced that it is so foundational to our
walk with Christ that it should be studied on a regular basis.
Before I begin reading, I want to state
that I will be using the words “grace” and “mercy” somewhat interchangeably.
They are similar in meaning but they are different. Mercy means not getting the
penalty we deserve. A guilty person might throw himself on the mercy of the
court. He is begging not to get the sentence he deserves for the crime, but a
lesser sentence or no sentence at all. Grace is having favor with God. With
grace we receive what we do not deserve – eternal life in heaven.
Romans 12:1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy (or mercies), to
offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper (or
informed) worship.
Imagine that you sent a
multi-page document to your printer and walked away and then came back to find
that it had shot the pages all over the floor.
As you scooped up the pages which were not numbered and tried to put
them back into the proper order, what would you do with a page that started off
with the word, “Therefore” in the top left hand corner?
My guess is that you would
figure that there must be at least one more page in front of that one, right?
No one starts a document with the word, “therefore”.
Unfortunately the way we
read our Bibles many times we take a long letter, like this one that Paul wrote
to the church in Rome, and start reading in Romans 12:1 and blow right past
this every important word, “Therefore”.
“Therefore” is a connecting
word. It shows that Paul had not finished with his prior thoughts but was
connecting what he had said (in this case the prior 11 chapters) with what he
is about to say. Bible scholars tell us we should always determine what the
“therefore” is there for.
As is typical of Paul’s
letters, he spent quite a bit of this letter to the Romans talking theology.
Now in Romans 12:1 he shifts from
theology to talking about how to apply that theology to our lives. Paul
tells the reader what a proper response should be to what he wrote. Fortunately,
we can condense most of the prior 11 chapters down to a few verses. In Romans, Paul laid out God’s plan of
salvation. If you have ever taken a personal evangelism class you have probably
come across the Romans Road.
It is important to
understanding Romans 12:1 that we review these fundamental scriptures here this
morning.
Romans
3:23
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
All have sinned. I
sinned. Pastor Duane and Pastor Steve sinned. Mother Theresa, Billy Graham, the
Apostle Paul and on and on. ALL have sinned. Some of those reading or listening
to this letter may have taken offense at this, because Paul lumped the former-pagan
now Christian Gentiles in with the Jewish Christians. Some of the Jews no doubt
were upset to be classified with the Gentiles. Sin, Paul stated, places us all
on the same footing with each other.
By sinning we have come
short of the glory of God.
On one side we have God
and all of his glory. Read Isaiah 6 about God sitting on His throne with angels
circling saying “Holy holy holy is the Lord Almighty”. Isaiah’s first reposnse
was to recognize how unclean he was.
And on the other side we
have mankind lost in their sin. Between the two is a huge gulf that cannot be
traversed by people. We cannot get to God. We are lost in our sin. We are
without hope and we are dying and on our way to hell.
This is the condition of
people without Jesus.
This concept of a gulf
between people and God is a major difference between Christianity and most
other religions. Other religions teach that people can better themselves until
they improve enough to reach “god”. Other religions teach that people can
improve themselves to ultimately reach a form of righteousness that allows them
to enter eternal peace.
The world believes that
people can somehow improve themselves enough to earn favor with God. Some
believe that doing more good than bad earns one a spot in heaven.
Our Bible, teaches
otherwise. Also in Romans we read
Romans 3:10 There is no one righteous, not even one;
God says none of us,
even on our best day is good enough. We can’t cross over this chasm between God
and sinful people by doing good things. It can’t be done and any religion even
under the guise of so called Christianity that says otherwise is a false
religion.
Romans
5:8 But God demonstrates his own
love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Paul makes it clear that
it was while we were lost in our sin that God reached out to us. We did not
clean ourselves up first so that God would like us or reach out to us. He came
to us in our sin and our messed up lives. We could never be clean enough on our
own. None of us can do that, whether we are murderers, adulterers, substance
abusers, child abusers, self-righteous gossipers or just self-serving “good”
people, we are all in the same bad situation. Without God we are lost in our
sin and we need a way out.
There is a misconception
about God, perpetrated by people who know little if anything about the God that
it is revealed in our Bibles. It’s a belief that God is a grouchy old man
waiting to catch us doing something wrong so He can punish us. Nothing could be
further from the truth. Let’s face it, God wouldn’t have to wait long to catch
most of messing up, if that were His purpose.
Instead, the God I read
about in the Bible is the one whom
Max Lucado described as “the One who would rather die than live
without us.”
What an awesome creator.
He would rather die than live without us.
Romans 6:23 For
the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ
Jesus our Lord.
Paul’s language is so
beautiful. The wages, what we have earned based on our sin, is death. When the
New Testament talks of death, it is a two-fold death. It is a current death in
that we are not in relationship with God. God has always desired to be in
relationship with us. From Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, through the time
of Israel, the early church and up to today, God has always wanted to be in a
relationship with people who loved Him. But we are incapable of living in a
right relationship with God while we are living in sin.
The other aspect of
death, is eternal death. After this body dies, the soul of the sinner goes to
eternal death in hell. This, my friends, is the death that our sin has earned
us. Death here on earth wandering aimlessly looking for meaning and purpose and
then eternal death in hell.
But God has offered us a
way out. We are not stuck with the death that we deserve.
God has offered us a
gift. Gifts are not earned. Remember we cannot earn our way to God. In order to
give a gift to someone, the giver generally has to purchase it. Our gift from
God was purchased on Calvary with the death of Jesus. This gift is available to those who believe
and accept Christ as Savior.
This is such a great
picture of mercy and grace. My sin earned me death. Someone had to die for my
sin. It seems only logical that it should be me. But I will not receive the
wages of my sin. We call that God’s mercy. Instead Christ paid my debt of death
on Calvary and has given me the gift of life. I get eternal life which I do not
deserve; we call that God’s grace.
While we were in our
sin, not after we cleaned ourselves up, God demonstrated to us just how much he
loved us. Again, Paul tells us that it is God who bridged the divide between
man and God. Nothing we did or can ever do will bridge the gulf between ourselves
and God.
During a British
conference on comparative religions, experts from around the world debated
what, if any, belief was unique to the Christian faith. They began eliminating
possibilities. Incarnation? Other religions had different versions of “gods”
appearing in human form. Resurrection? Again, other religions had accounts of
return from death. The debate went on for some time until C. S. Lewis wandered
into the room. "What's the rumpus about?" he asked, and heard in
reply that his colleagues were discussing Christianity's unique contribution
among world religions. Lewis responded, "Oh, that's easy. It's
grace."
After some discussion,
the conferees had to agree. The notion of God's love coming to us free of charge,
no strings attached, seems to go against every instinct of humanity. Only
Christianity dares to make God's love unconditional.
There are more
scriptures in Romans related to the Romans Road but in the interest of time,
I’ll stop here. The point is that we are totally dependent on God’s mercy and
grace in this life and the life to come.
My concern today, is
that some in the church in America, have minimized the importance of these gifts
from God. I think that some of us who were raised in the church and really did
not live a wild, overly sinful life, think maybe that God really did not show
us a whole lot of mercy. You know, maybe God’s lucky to have me on His team.
Or maybe those of us who
have been in the church for a long time have minimized just how badly we sinned
over the years. Just like those fish that Pastor Duane caught years ago get
bigger and bigger over time, our lives before Christ somehow get better and
better. Over time if we are not careful, we can minimize the necessity of God’s
mercy in our lives.
Think back to the best Christmas
present you ever received? What was your
response?
About 12 years ago, Joan
surprised me with a portable XM satellite radio receiver. I was traveling a lot
at that time and Joan knew I liked to listen to the radio and satellite radio offers
all kinds of different music, news, sports, and comedy. It was an awesome, yet
totally unexpected gift. I loved that gift.
By comparison, I have a
relative that is up in years and lives on a fixed income. For years, she felt
the need to give everyone in the extended family Christmas gifts. Every year
for quite some time I got a small box of handkerchiefs. Within just a couple of
years, I had a life-time supply of handkerchiefs. Despite my best efforts to
act surprised and grateful for my present each year, I doubt that I showed the
same exuberance or gratitude for the hankies as I did the satellite radio.
How do you view God’s
mercy and grace? What is your response to God’s gift? I feel that it is
essential that we get a proper perspective on God’s mercy and grace before we
will ever be ready to offer ourselves as living sacrifices. Do you view God’s
mercies as the greatest gift you have ever received? Or is it more like a box
of hankies?
To put it another way,
in Luke 7 Jesus attended a meal at a Pharisee’s house. As they were eating, a
sinful woman (probably a prostitute) came in and washed Jesus’ feet with her
tears, dried his feet with her hair, kissed his feet and then poured expensive
perfume on his feet.
The Pharisee objected to
this because Jesus allowed a sinner to do this to him. Jesus responded with a
parable of two men who owed money to a moneylender. One owed about 2 months’
wages and the other owed about 20 months’ wages. Neither could pay their debt.
Remember that these men could not go to bankruptcy court and get out of their
debts. They were subject to being thrown into prison, meaning they would lose
their homes, families etc. It’s possible that their families could have been
sold into slavery to pay the debts. Each man was forgiven his debt. Jesus asked
who would love the moneylender more. The obvious answer was the one who had the
larger debt. The prostitute knew she was a sinner and owed a debt. The Pharisee
however, did not perceive himself to be a sinner and so he felt no obligation
whatsoever.
Darrell Bock’s NIV Application Commentary on this
passage states:
The greater our sense that God has dealt with us in mercy, the
greater love we will have for him in return. If our love for God is cold, it
may well be because we come to think he owes it to us, not that he paid our
debt…
The deeper we realize that he has dealt with us out of mercy in
the midst of our disobedience, the greater will be our response of love.
It is dangerous to see ourselves as “little sinners” as the Pharisee
did. Rather we should see ourselves as unworthy objects of God’s rich grace as
the woman did.
A simple way of
evaluating our understanding of God’s mercy and grace is to measure how much of
a sacrifice of our lives we are making. The amount of our sacrifice is a
reflection of how much we understand and appreciate God’s mercy. Do you view yourself as a little sinner or
an unworthy object of God’s grace?
What is your response to God’s grace and mercy?
Next week, we are going
to examine this idea of a living sacrifice in detail, but today I would like to
close with these questions for you to consider:
Do you view God’s mercy and
grace as the most amazing gifts you have ever received?
Or do you view God’s
mercy and grace as a box of hankies? You didn’t ask for them and you really are
not all that grateful for receiving them?
Paul told us that our
response to understanding God’s mercies should be a life sacrificed to God.
Does your life look like a life sacrificed to God?
If so how? If not, what are you going to do about it?
Let’s pause for a time
of reflection.
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