How To Worship

It has 60 trillion cells most of which are dying. It has an on-board computer which functions at only 6%. It smells peculiar; it reproduces in a very strange way; it ingests dead animals and excretes fertilizer. It takes in oxygen and exhales a poisonous gas. It is subject to all manners of illnesses. It is so strange looking that most people cover theirs with expensive garments. Most of us are really not all that happy with ours. Many of us would like someone else's.

And yet God asks us to present this thing to him as a living sacrifice, as an act of worship. Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, because of the mercy of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God — this is your spiritual act of worship.

God wants my body. This is amazing!

There are three very important words in this text: (We miss them at our peril) Therefore, Living and sacrifice. When I was in High School, I remember a teacher who taught English saying to us: when you see the word therefore you need to ask What is the therefore, there for? The word therefore always points back. It is a connecting word.

If we don’t understand the significance of this word therefore in Romans 12:1 we might think that we are able to earn God’s favour by giving him our body; that salvation is gained by keeping our body healthy, not having sex outside of marriage, not taking illicit drugs or eating too many fatty foods. If we think that way, we make a huge mistake. That would be to ignore the first 11 chapters of Romans.

And yet millions of people in our world have skipped right over this word ‘therefore’. Recently, a researcher surveyed seven thousand Protestant young people from many different denominations, asking whether they agreed with the following statements:

• The way to be accepted by God is to try sincerely to live a good life. More than 60 percent agreed.

• God is satisfied if a person lives the best life he can. Almost 70 percent agreed.

• The main emphasis of the gospel is on God’s rules for right living. More than half agreed!

You would have thought the Apostle Paul had never written Romans. The first 11 chapters of Romans are about the mercy of God, about God’s grace, about how there is nothing we can do to save ourselves, about how we are not saved by works but by grace. Now in chapter 12 we come to the turning point in the book of Romans. We come to the same place every sermon ought to come to – So What? God saves us by grace alone. So What?

Preaching, Bible teaching has really not taken off until it has answered the question ‘So What?’ And Paul being a good preacher deals with the question: So what? In this text he is basically saying, it is time to leave the great doctrines of Romans and apply them to our lives. What does the grace of God, the mercy of God have to do with my marriage, my plans of university, my money, my job, my friends my retirement.

Beginning in chapter 12 the rubber meets the road. From now on Paul answers the question ‘So What?’ Because of the mercy of God, we are to present two things to God. Two things everybody has. A body and a mind.

Because of God’s mercy we are to present to him our bodies and our minds. We don’t earn God’s favour by presenting him with our bodies we present our body because we have received his grace.

So, the first important word in this text is ‘therefore’. The second important word is ‘living’. We are not talking about martyrdom. We are talking about a living body given to God. This was a very strange idea when Paul wrote Romans.

The peoples of the ancient world were accustomed to dead sacrifices. Not living sacrifices. When Paul penned these words the great Jewish Temple in Jerusalem was still functioning with daily sacrifices of animals. It would be 10 to 20 years before Herod’s Temple would be destroyed by Titus. The pagans around the Empire knew all about animals being killed to atone for sin. And in the very remote parts of the first century world child sacrifice was still practiced. These people knew about dead sacrifices.

But the word the Holy Spirit uses is ‘living’. In the rough and tumble of everyday life we are to present our body to God. While we are still living, breathing we are to offer up to God our bodies. What did your week look like? How was your day?

You get up. You run to the washroom. You mumble that you have nothing to wear. You go have your usual breakfast – steel cut oats. You rush off to work or if you’re retired you might shop or walk, or you look after grandchildren. You might squeeze a bit of Bible reading in someplace but before you know it, it’s time to get dinner and then a bit of TV or a good book and it’s time to go to bed. That is living for most of us. And we are to do our living as an act of worship. We present our living body to God.