LIVING SACRIFICES
OPEN: Today, we get to talk about human sacrifices! This should be fun! Any volunteers?
TEXT: Romans 12:1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is your spiritual act of worship.
I suppose that little word "living" is kind of important
To begin, notice the word, "Urge". Paul writes, "I urge you" He does not demand. He does not order. He pleads. He beseeches us to decide for ourselves... to choose.
What is he urging us to do? He is urging us to choose.
I. CHOOSE
What are we to choose? He writes, "I urge you to choose... to offer your bodies as living sacrifices..."
A. Offer our Bodies (He doesn't ask us to offer our spirits or our souls)
Why are we to offer our bodies? (our wrinkled, diseased, overweight bodies with our near-sighted eyes and deaf ears?) An Old Testament sacrifice was to be flawless and without blemish. I fear that I don't measure up! But, we must remember, Paul is not asking for us to offer our bodies as a sacrifice for sin to appease God's wrath (Jesus Christ already took care of that). The sacrifice that Paul is asking us to make is not a "Sin Offering", but a "Thank Offering" (An offering of praise for what Jesus has already done!).
It is not about how our body looks - but how the body behaves.
It is not about the beauty of our bodies - but making Christ beautiful.
We, collectively and individually, are the body of Christ
(See Romans 6:13, Philippians 1:20; 1 Corinthians 6:19-20)
B. Offer our Bodies as Living Sacrifices
A sacrifice is a commitment. A living sacrifice is a lifestyle devoted (committed) to God.
Eugene Peterson's, The Message, says it like this: "So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life— your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering." (Romans 12:1)
God is not asking you to crawl up on the altar and die. He is asking you to jump off the altar and live! For Him!
Let every act of your living body demonstrate that God is your greatest treasure!
Hebrews 13:15 talks of committing our lips to declare His name & praise God. Hebrews 13:16 talks of being committing to doing good and sharing with others. This is what a LIVING sacrifice looks like.
WHY?
Why should we CHOOSE to devote our lives as "living sacrifices" to God? Paul says, "Therefore...”. "Therefore" points back to all that we have studied in the Book of Romans (ch 1-11) leading up to this point!
The Wrath of God
The Penalty of death
No One is Righteous
God's Grace
The Atoning Sacrifice of Jesus Christ
The Peace that we can have through faith in Jesus Christ
Paul writes:
1. In View of God’s Mercies! (The mercies Paul writes about in Romans 1-11)
SO... In View of God’s Mercies (all that God has done for us through Christ - Our Righteousness), we offer our bodies (our flawed bodies with all its blemishes) - NOT as models for Victoria Secrets - but as models of God’s Mercy (Living Sacrifices).
Paul says...
2. This is pleasing to God.
3. This is how we worship! The New Living Translation says, "This is truly how we worship Him." (Worship is more than singing three songs on Sunday morning) To be a living sacrifice is an act of worship! This is the rational, reasonable response of a grateful soul - a soul that recognizes and responds to God’s love. God loves us, not because we do everything right, but in spite of our failures.
(TS) Paul encourages to CHOOSE... to CHANGE
II. CHANGE
ROMANS 12:2 says, "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind."
A. Do Not Conform
John Piper writes “We are perfectly useless as Christ-exalting Christians if all we do is conform to the world around us.”
If we hate, lie, kill, steal, lust, blaspheme, divorce, etc...
NOTE: Not Conforming is not the same as Avoiding bad behavior. (You can avoid all kinds of worldly behaviors and still not be Transformed)
(TS) THE GOAL:
B. Be Transformed (Greek: Metamorphosis. Same word used of Jesus at the transfiguration in Matthew 17:2 "There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light.")
We are to be transfigured... transformed... (Matthew 13:43 says, "Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father." Matthew 5:16 says, "In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven."
NOTE AGAIN: Being transformed is NOT trading in a list of things not to do for a list of things to do. It is being spiritual - instead of worldly.
It is being led by the Spirit - instead of our flesh. It is producing the fruit of the Spirit.
Are we shining like the Son? Are we producing fruit?
(TS) How do we do this?
HOW?
1. The Renewal of your Mind (Romans 12:2)
For our bodies to be living sacrifices, our minds must be renewed.
What’s wrong with our minds?
What’s wrong with the human mind?
Why does it need to be renewed?
How do we renew it?
What’s the answer? More education? No! Education will only help us do evil more intelligently (We are seeing this with ISIS who apparently are quite sophisticated with social media - Technically savvy).
The problem with the mind is that it is HOSTILE TO GOD! Remember Romans 1:18... we have suppressed the truth... therefore God gave us over to depraved minds - which is the natural result of living in rebellion to God - which WE ALL DO!
Peter writes, “... prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance" (1 Peter 1:13-14).
He diagnosis our minds as being ignorant before we experienced the grace of Christ.
Paul writes in Ephesians, "So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts (Ephesians 4:17-18). He says their ignorance came from hardening their hearts...
He says.... "The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God" (2 Corinthians 4:4). He says we are blind! The minds of unbelievers have been blinded! We are suppose to love the Lord our God with all our MINDS - but we are not!
The problem is: Our minds are not “God-worshipping” minds - they are “self-worshipping” minds by nature. This is WHY our minds need to be renewed.
HOW? (How do we renew our minds?)
2. By the power of the Holy Spirit
The only other place in the Bible that this word “Renewal” appears in the Bible is Titus 3:5, which says, "...he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit..."
This is what the Spirit does as we submit, as we surrender, as we are led by the Spirit.
HOW?
a) Through Hearing Truth
b) Through Prayer
RANT: New York Daily News, in response to the prayers being offered for the St Bernardino victims, plastered their front page with the words "God Isn't Fixing This" (Dec 3, 2015). Their message: “Prayer is useless.” My Message: The only hope for America is for a transformation that will only come by the renewal of our minds through the work of the Holy Spirit as we pray... as we cry out to God... and as we listen to God... as we humble ourselves
Listen to 2 Chronicles 7:14, "If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land."
c) Through Attaching to the Vine
Rick Lawrence writes, "I’ll get right to the point. As I talk to youth pastors, listen to conference speakers, and read youth ministry books and resources, I hear a prevalent myth about discipleship and spiritual growth bubble to the surface over and over. And I don’t like it.
It goes like this: 'You’ll grow in your faith when you understand the biblical principle(s), then apply it to your life.' Sound innocuous enough, right? My take is that this supra-rational, linear, I’m-in-control philosophy is not only suspect as a strategy, it’s not all that biblical.
First, this popular framework for discipleship implies that mere understanding leads to transformation. That’s not biblically or experientially true. Satan understands the Bible enough to debate it with Jesus in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-11). Understanding isn’t the same as transformation.
Second, this unspoken formula is based on our ability to “apply it to our life”—so what exactly does “application” look like, and is it anything like painting my house? “Apply to your life” sounds like we can simply download our transformation, but the truth is that transformation happens when we draw near to God, because he’s the only one who can really change us.
Jesus defined discipleship and growth in botanical terms—we are dying branches in desperate need of attaching ourselves to a growing Vine, and the Vine is himself (John 15). Get closer to Jesus and you’ll find life, and the life will literally transform you, and your transformation will produce fruit, which will look a lot like the fruit of the Spirit, the same stuff that we’ve been told to 'apply to our life.' In the popular apply-it-to-life version of discipleship kids are supposed to grab what fruit they can and sort of duct-tape it to their souls. In the Vine-and-branch version, they produce fruit because of Who they’re attached to. I say, out with “application” and in with 'attachment.'"
(TS) CHOOSE: to offer your bodies as living sacrifices...
CHANGE: be transformed by the renewing of your mind...
III. SO...
You can:
1. KNOW THE WILL OF GOD
ROMANS 12:2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Does this mean that by a) being transformed, b) by the renewing of our minds, c) through the power of the Holy Spirit, that we will be able to know God's sovereign will? I don't think so. I don't think anybody could have foreseen that Christ came to be crucified and resurrected. If you want to know what God intends to do in the future by His sovereign Will, you don't need a renewed mind, you need a crystal ball. That's not transformation. That's divination!
However, Being transformed by the renewing of your mind will help you discover God’s revealed will. Deuteronomy 29:29 says, "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law." God very much intends for us to know (and obey) His revealed will! (That which he has commanded us to do for our good and his glory)
Examples:
1 Thessalonians 4:3... "It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality..." (God’s will: To be holy, sanctified, sexually pure)
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18... "Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus." (God’s will: Be joyful, be prayerful, be thankful)
1 John 2:17... "The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever." (God’s will: That we would do his will and have eternal life)
God want us to know His will. But more importantly, God wants us to
2. DO THE WILL OF GOD
A parallel passage of Romans 12:2 is in Hebrews 5:14 which says, "But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil." Notice the word "Distinguish". How do we know God's will in the everyday decisions we must make? What does the Bible reveal about what car I should buy? Where to live? Who to date? Who to marry? Where to work?
The point of the text is to tell us that If we offer ourselves as living sacrifices (living for God’s glory... as an act of worship), if we allow ourselves to be transformed by the renewing of our minds by the power of the Holy Spirit, then our everyday decisions will be shaped and govern by discernment that comes from knowing God’s will - his good, pleasing and perfect will.
A transformed mind is not about accumulating more information. It’s about developing discernment - which comes from offering ourselves as living sacrifices (dying to ourselves daily).
Once again, The Message says, "Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you." (Romans 12:2)
APPLICATION
(“Attach”)
1. Respond to THE GRACE OF GOD ("in view of God's mercies")
2. Respond by FAITH IN CHRIST (OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS)
3. Respond in GRATEFUL WORSHIP (Expressed in a lifestyle of commitment to God, because of His mercy)
This will lead to a RENEWED MIND
And DISCERNMENT OF GOD’S WILL (His good, pleasing and perfect will)
