Here is the second of four messages on Romans 12:1-2
Romans 12:1-2 Week 2
If
you have your Bibles and I hope you do, I want you to turn with me to Romans
12:1.
Let’s
look at this very important passage from Paul’s letter that tells us how we
should respond to God’s mercy and grace.
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.
If you were here last
week, I hope you remember that we looked at what Paul meant by the word,
“Therefore”. Paul spent most of the prior 11 chapters detailing what we today
call God’s plan of salvation.
In quick summary.
Romans
3:23
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
We were hopelessly
separated from God, with no way to get to Him because of our sin. Our sin
separated us from God and there was nothing we could do about it.
Romans
5:8
But
God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners,
Christ died for us.
God desires to have
people who love Him that He can be in a relationship with, so God had to fix
the problem of the people He loved being separated from Him. Christ died for
our sins to provide a way to bridge the gulf between sinful people and God.
Romans 6:23
For
the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in
Christ Jesus our Lord.
God in His mercy
did not give us the wages for our sin that we deserved. Instead God showed us
grace. He gave us what we do not deserve - the gift of eternal life if we are
willing to accept His gift.
Let’s look at
Romans 12:1 again.
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.
Paul says that
based on our understanding of God’s mercies we should respond to those mercies
by offering our bodies as a living sacrifice.
Paul elaborates on
this idea of a living sacrifice. He says that it is holy and pleasing to God.
Holy and pleasing to God, here means we are set apart for service to God.
Sometimes the word “sanctified” is used to denote this same meaning. Our
sacrifice should set us apart from the world. We should look and behave
differently as we serve God.
Paul says that this
sacrifice of ours is our true and proper worship. Depending on the translation
of the Bible you are using you may see this term “true and proper” translated
as: spiritual, reasonable, true, intelligent or informed.
The NIV Application Commentary says it this
way:
“We give ourselves to God as his sacrifices
when we understand His grace and its place in our lives. We offer ourselves not
ignorantly like animals brought to slaughter, but intelligently and willingly.
This is the worship that pleases God.”
This living
sacrifice, Paul says, is not some outstanding, over the top, above and beyond
the call of duty response. Paul says is it a “reasonable” response to God’s
grace and mercy based on understanding just how special His grace and mercy
are.
So what is worship?
Matt Redmond,
singer and song writer tells the story of worship at his church:
“There
was a dynamic missing in their worship time, so the pastor did a pretty brave
thing,” Matt recalls. “He decided to get rid of the sound system and band for a
season, and we gathered together with just our voices. His point was that we’d
lost our way in worship, and the way to get back to the heart of worship would
be to strip everything away.”
Reminding his
church family to be producers in worship, not just consumers, the
pastor asked, “When you come through the doors on a Sunday, what are you
bringing as your offering to God?”
What do you bring?
Do you even think about bringing worship or do you merely watch
worship? Pastor Steve and the band are here to lead us in worship, and
they do a great job of that, but we should be active participants in worship.
Matt Redmond wrote
the song “Heart of Worship” as a result of this experience of stripping away
all of the trappings of worship that had replaced honest, heartfelt worship in
their church. Our worship should never
be dependent on a band, a sound system, lighting, smoke, etc.
John Piper defined
worship this way:
The inner essence of worship is to know God
truly and then respond from the heart to that knowledge by valuing God,
treasuring God, prizing God, enjoying God, being
satisfied with God above all earthly things. And then that deep,
restful, joyful satisfaction in God overflows in demonstrable acts of praise
from the lips and demonstrable acts of love in serving others for the sake of
Christ. – John Piper
Worship is how we
live every day all day. It is not just what we do on Sunday mornings before the
message.
So now that Paul
has explained that this living sacrifice is something that sets us apart from
the world, it is pleasing to God and it is based on an informed understanding
of what God in His grace and mercy has done for us, let us look more closely at
this word, sacrifice.
Sacrifice.
That’s a word we
don’t use very often. The first thing I think of when I hear the word sacrifice
is a sacrifice bunt or sacrifice fly ball in baseball. In professional baseball
there is a batter who is probably getting on base less than 1 out of 3 times
who instead of taking a 1/3 chance of getting on base deliberately tries to
make an out in order to advance a runner who is on base. For this, the batter is
rewarded by not actually having the turn at bat recorded in his batting average.
This is not really much of a sacrifice is it?
The other thing
that comes to mind when I hear the word “sacrifice” is people sacrificing
something for Lent. People give up chocolate, coffee, desserts, video games and
other things they like during Lent as a type of fast to God. There is nothing wrong with people
sacrificing something for Lent, but Paul is talking about a much more
meaningful sacrifice.
The people who
comprised the church in Rome would have had a very different idea of the word
“sacrifice”.
To the former gentile
pagans, the word sacrifice would have reminded them that in their former lives
they would regularly sacrifice to their different gods. The killing and
sacrifice of animals was the center of their worship to their gods. They had
lots of gods. Big gods controlled the destiny of nations and lesser gods that were
responsible for assistance with family matters. All of these gods had to be
kept happy and the way to do that was through sacrifices to the gods.
To the Jewish
Christians, the word sacrifice would have reminded them of the sacrifices in
Jerusalem. No doubt some of the readers
or listeners to this letter had traveled to Jerusalem to offer a sacrifice.
Once they arrived at the temple they would have purchased an animal and then
taken it to the priest. They would have laid their hands on the animal as a
symbolic gesture of transferring their sin to this innocent animal. They would
have had to watch as the animal’s throat was slit. Animal sacrifice for the
Jews was gruesome because God wanted people to understand just how ugly sin is
to Him.
In the ancient
world, religion meant sacrifice. There was no such thing as a religion without
sacrifice.
Today, we don’t
think much about sacrifice. For many
people today, religion does not mean sacrifice. Instead, today people view
religion as something they say they believe which may or may not influence the
way they live. I cringe every time I hear a politician say that while
he or she belongs to a particular church, they do not let that influence the
way they vote or live for that matter.
For many who call
themselves Christians, the teachings of Christ are mere suggestions not
requirements. These people feel free to pick and choose what portions of the
Bible they will follow and to what extent they will adhere to them.
For many in the
church today, God’s grace and mercy have become licenses to live pretty much
anyway one desires as long as one says he or she “believes”. Sacrifice is not a
part of many so called believers’ lives.
So what is Paul
asking of us, when he says he urges us to offer ourselves as a living sacrifice?
Many of our
brothers and sisters around the world don’t have to ask themselves what this
means. To become a Christian is to become a living sacrifice. We have seen videos
of ISIS killing people because of their faith. We have read the stories of
those who have escaped from being tortured, imprisoned and persecuted for their
faith. For them, sacrifice is a daily
occurrence.
The Center for
Studies on New Religions recently reported that nearly 90,000 Christians were
killed for their faith in 2016. This
same report said that: “Christians continued to be the most persecuted group
across the globe in 2016”.
Many followers of
Christ have no church building in which to gather to worship and learn more
about the God they serve. In order to meet, they must hide. To publicly
proclaim that they are a Christian means certain persecution or death.
We, on the other hand,
come to a building that has a cross outside proclaiming to the world that
Christians meet here. We even have a sign announcing the times of our services.
That would be suicidal in many parts of the world.
I was studying
Romans last winter while Joan and I were in Florida, We attended a church that had one or two
missionaries speak at each of their Wednesday night services. One night a
missionary couple came with several young women. The missionaries ran a home for young women
in one of the former Soviet Bloc countries that is predominately Muslim.
Fortunately, these Muslims are more moderate than their ISIS counterparts, but
these young women who came to Christ were kicked out of their families. They
were left to fend for themselves in a country that does not treat Christians very
well. The home that these missionaries run gives the women a chance to grow in
their faith while getting themselves established in a hostile environment. The
missionary said that in order to accept Christ in this country, the women had
to literally offer themselves up as living sacrifices. They were giving up
every aspect of their former lives, family, friends, and stability – essentially
everything they knew - in order to become followers of Christ.
Many followers of
Christ around the world understand this word “sacrifice”. SadIy, I don’t think
we do.
I know, we are
blessed. We don’t have to hide in order to worship God. We typically don’t lose
our jobs when we become followers of Christ. We may lose some friends or family
members, but generally, we in America don’t have to sacrifice very much at all to
become followers of Christ.
We are blessed in
that no one is making us sacrifice. Instead we get to willingly sacrifice,
AND YET many times we are very reluctant to do so. Offering our bodies as a
living sacrifice means being all in for Christ – total surrender. There is no
such things as offering ½ of a lamb as a sacrifice. The entire animal died as a
sacrifice to God. We want to offer only parts of ourselves to God while holding
back some for ourselves.
So what does a
living sacrifice look like for us in America?
I’m pretty sure it
does not look like, “I’ll go to church when I feel like it.”
It does not look
like, “I don’t have any money left over for God this month. I’ll get Him next month.”
It does not look
like, “God, you want me to do what?”
A living sacrifice
means I look more and more like Christ and less and less like me.
A living sacrifice
looks like being a servant or slave to God. It means total surrender of my
life, my desires and my will to His.
Jesus spoke of this
throughout His ministry.
Matthew 16:24
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must
deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
Matthew 10:38
Whoever does not take up their cross and
follow me is not worthy of me.
Mark 8:34
“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny
themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
Luke 9:23
“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny
themselves and take up their cross daily and
follow me.
Luke 14:27
And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
It seems as though
being a follower of Christ, that’s what a disciple is, involves a cross. Carrying
a cross, which is what Jesus did, indicates two things: 1) obedience and 2)
denying one’s self.
It also seems as
Francis Chan says, that God is lot more serious about this than we are. Dying
daily. Carrying one’s cross. Submitting my will completely to His. This sounds
pretty serious. I know God is serious. Are we serious abut our relationship
with Him?
Some might be
thinking that maybe I have overstated this. Our first reaction might be to
think maybe these scriptures are taken out of context. I encourage you to look
them up for yourselves. I doubt that you’ll find any other context other than
this: following Jesus involves dying to self every day and submitting to His
will for our lives.
So what are we to
do? I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t have this all figured out, but we are
headed in that direction.
In some cases, it
may take some time to arrange our lives to be in total submission to God’s
will. I understand that and I believe that God understands that we cannot make
major changes to our lives overnight. The more obligations we currently have,
the longer it may take to become totally submitted in all aspects of our life
to Christ. But are we at least moving in the direction of total submission? Are
we freeing up more money to give to God’s work? Are we freeing up more time in
our lives to spend in His word and His work? Are we listening to the Holy Spirit
when he tells us to fix an area of our lives?
My challenge to all
of us today is to answer these questions.
In what ways am I living sacrificially?
Does my sacrifice in any way show that I am
grateful for God’s mercy and grace to me?
Am I working in any area of ministry?
Am I giving financially in a sacrificial manner?
Am I sharing my faith?
To conclude the
message this morning I want us to watch a short video. The woman portayed in
the video had a simple life. She had no family and no demands on her time, so
she could make changes to her life more quickly than we can. Our lives are more
complex, maybe too complex at times, so it may take some time to declutter our
lives so we can live more sacrificially.
But as you watch this
video and ask yourself this: “What gives me the right to offer Jesus anything
less than this woman in the video?”
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