Day of the Living Dead
Introduction
Soren Kierkegaard described Christian worship as a performance in which God is the audience, the congregation is the performer, and those who stand up before the congregation (preachers, readers, choir, soloists) are the prompters.
Someone has suggested that the popular mentality of American Christians changes it around so that those who stand up front are the performers, the congregation is the audience, and God is, at best, the prompter.
Every week we come to worship services. This morning we will take a closer look at what worship is.
The Imperative of Worship
The dividing line between those who belong to God and those who don’t has always been worship
Those who know God, worship Him
Those who love God, worship Him
Those who have received that free gift of salvation – the gift Jesus paid dearly for, but which He gives away for free – those who are saved, worship Him.
This is not just a New Testament idea.
The first of the 10 commandments tells us to have only one God, and the second, not to worship any idols
It’s clear that the Bible teaches that worship is critical to being one of God’s people. So what is worship? Could you give a definition if you had to? We refer to the hour we spend together on Sunday mornings as “worship.” So is going to church synonymous with worshiping God?
In the Old Testament, worship had to do with the sacrifice of animals (as well as grain and other non-animal sacrifices)
This was not something unique to the Jews: all ancient religions offered animal sacrifices to their gods.
It was a way to atone for sins committed
A way to make oneself pleasing to God
When, in the New Testament, Christ made the ultimate sacrifice, there is no longer a need for the blood of animals to be shed to cover sin.
Jesus’ sacrifice paid the price for our sins.
Now think for a minute: if all of your life, worship was synonymous with animal sacrifice,
What is worship if you don’t need to do that anymore?
Our passage this morning tells us that:
Worship is an act of total commitment
Do you know what the difference is between involvement and commitment? Just look at a plate of ham and eggs. The chickens were involved; the pig was committed!
Unlike Paul, and everyone else in Paul’s time, we didn’t grow up seeing animals sacrificed as a part of worship
On the rare occasion we hear of some cult performing such rituals, it’s offensive
But in order to get the impact of these verses, imagine for a minute that whenever you heard the word “sacrifice,” you didn’t think of giving up chocolate, you thought animal sacrifices.
Now you’re sitting in church and listening to a letter the great Apostle Paul has sent to your congregation.
And you hear these words, “I am urging you brothers, present your bodies to God as a living sacrifice.”
I think my blood would have run a little cold!
My feet might have run out the back door!
I really don’t like hearing “my body,” and “sacrifice” in the same sentence!
When the title for this sermon popped into my head, I hesitated to use it.
It sounds kind of creepy
Kind of sensational!
More appropriate for a horror movie
It doesn’t sound like the kind of thing nice people say in church – especially in reference to preaching God’s Word!
But I couldn’t get away from the idea that every 1st Century reader or listener would likely have gotten the same sense when they heard “offer your body as a living sacrifice.”
In the 1st Century, a sacrifice was something that started out alive and ended up dead.
Now Paul says, “We don’t sacrifice animals in our worship. In our worship, YOU’re the sacrifice!”
Maybe your mind flashes to the Old Testament story about how Abraham almost sacrificed his son Isaac, but God stopped him.
Still, you don’t really want to be laying on that altar hoping God will stop the knife!
But then you think, “Wait a minute! He said a living sacrifice. What does that mean?”
To someone of that time, the phrase “living sacrifice” was an oxymoron,
Like jumbo shrimp or old news or Microsoft Works.
Whatever else may be going on in your head, Paul has certainly gotten your attention.
What is this “living sacrifice” which is “the true worship we should offer”?
In our day, when we talk about worship, we often mean, “Speaking or singing words of praise to God,”
What is the relationship between that and what Paul is saying here?
When we praise God, we are taking the time to focus on various aspects of His nature:
His love
His mercy
His goodness
His faithfulness
We also are thanking Him for all He has given us, all He has done for us
The word “worship” originally came from the word for “worth”
When we “worship” we ascribe worth to God
In the process, we remind ourselves that He is “worthy.”
But someone can’t just be worthy, they have to be worthy OF something:
Worthy to receive the MVP award
Worthy to get a full scholarship at Harvard
Worthy to get paid every week
To say God is “worthy of worship” is almost redundant
Like we’re saying “He is worthy of being called worthy.”
So what is God worthy of?
He is worthy of committing our lives to
He is worthy of being the center of our existence.
Like the man who sold all that he had to buy a precious pearl, he is worth all that we are and all that we have.
If I asked you how many of you have “committed your lives to Christ,” I imagine most, if not all of you would say you had.
If I asked you to describe the experience, you might tell me you were at a retreat or camp or maybe that you were at the absolute bottom of the barrel and you threw yourself at the mercy of God.
You committed your life to Christ, which is not all that hard to do when it feels like your life isn’t worth a plug nickel.
Or when you are in an exhilarating camp experience and following Christ seems like it would be a permanent “high”
So at some point, you committed your life to Christ
You put your life on the altar
But there’s a funny thing that happens after lives have been put on the altar. When things get better (or sometimes if they get worse) that living sacrifice starts trying to crawl off.
Paul tells us that there is an “act of worship,” a conscious decision to lay our lives on the altar
to be a living sacrifice
But that is not the end of it
There are a lot of folks who were baptized at a certain age, but that was kind of the end of it.
Once they’ve gone through it, they say, “Well, I’m a Christian – I was baptized when I was 12.”
Since then they may not have attended church
Read their Bible
Or taken even one serious step towards living for Christ.
They performed an act of worship – for baptism is the symbol of dying to self and living to Christ
It gives a vivid picture of what a “living sacrifice” is.
WORSHIP IS AN ACT OF TOTAL COMMITMENT
But being a Christian does not consist of fulfilling one act of worship. Something is supposed to happen as a result of that act of commitment.
If you go to your high school reunion – I don’t mean just these little 5 and 10 year jobs, I mean the 20, 30, 50 year ones. – and someone comes up and says, “You haven’t changed a bit!”
Assuming there is no touch of sarcasm in their voice, it makes you feel pretty good! And it is good if you can keep your face and body in shape for decades after you’re 18.
But if you committed your life to Christ sometime in the distant past, and people can look at your spiritual life – at your inner being – and say, “You haven’t changed a bit!” that’s not great.
If your relationship with God is doing nothing to transform your life, you should be very concerned about that. Maybe you’re no longer a worshipper of God. You come to a worship service, but your life is not a service of worship.
To live the Christian life is to live in a state of continual transformation.
J.B. Phillips translation of Romans 12:2 says,
Don’t let the world … squeeze you into its mould
That expresses powerfully what Paul is trying to say.
I would argue that the culture in which we’re living invades our homes and impacts our lives more effectively than any culture in the history of humankind.
The major tool of that invasion is television
Along with the increasingly powerful presence of the Internet.
It is virtually impossible for parents to create little islands of morality and godliness in their homes these days.
Because a flick of the remote or a click of the mouse can take your kids to places that, 20 years ago, they would’ve had to run away from home and go to a major city to experience.
And when you are taking in these cultural messages day after day and year after year, they impact you.
The world begins to squeeze you into its mold
It shapes your thinking and your behavior
Your standards are no longer based on moral absolutes – the commands of God
You begin to accept the world’s standards – often without even noticing it.
There is a powerful message that gets put across in shows like “Will & Grace,” where two of the main characters are homosexual.
It’s a funny show
It’s well-done
It doesn’t argue about whether homosexual behavior is right or wrong, it just displays it as a natural part of life in America.
They’re smart enough, at least in the couple episodes I’ve seen, not to show much physical activity
although they sure talk about it more than enough
They know if they go too far, they’ll turn people off to their presentation of homosexuality as a completely acceptable lifestyle
Maybe you refuse to watch shows like that, but a whole lot of folks are watching them
And every time they watch, there is a little less sense of the immorality of homosexual behavior.
It is a very effective in shaping our thinking.
I’ve talked about one TV show focused on one issue
The argument could easily be multiplied a hundred times
There are shows – it seems like almost all of them – that promote sex outside of marriage as “normal”
There are shows that encourage drinking, abortion, recklessness, disrespect for authority and on and on and on
And if you spend a lot of time watching this stuff, I’ll guarantee you that the world is squeezing you into its mold.
And you may come to church every week
You may read your bible every day.
But if you are allowing this stuff in your head for several hours a day, it is almost certain that the world is winning the battle for your heart and soul and mind.
You are continually being transformed, all right, but not into the image of Christ
You are being squeezed into the mold of American culture.
Your standards of behavior, your values and priorities are no longer being shaped by the Word of God, but the Images of the World.
When you look at your life, do you say, “Where am I not not fulfilling God’s will for me? What is God trying to teach me? How is God wanting to transform me?”
Or do you say, “Hey, I’m OK. I’m better than most folks I know! – You should meet my neighbor! What I do is nothing.”
That’s not the way true worshippers look at their lives.
WORSHIP IS AN ACT OF TOTAL COMMITMENT RESULTING IN A LIFE WHICH IS CONTINUALLY BEING TRANSFORMED TO GOD’S WAYS, NOT CONFORMED TO THE WORLD’S WAYS.
How does that transformation happen? Paul is not telling us to be continually transforming ourselves, but that we should be continually ALLOWING God to transform us. We cannot transform ourselves, just like we cannot save ourselves, but I believe we can help the process.
Paul says that we are to be transformed by the “renewing our minds”
This tells me that the key to living a life which is continually being transformed is what I put in my mind.
That shouldn’t be too surprising!
How are we squeezed us into the world’s mold?
By allowing our minds to be filled with things that express the values, priorities and standards of the world.
So how are we to be transformed to God’s ways?
By allowing our minds to be filled with things that express the values, priorities and standards of God.
By reading the Scripture
By coming to worship regularly
By prayer
By listening to Christian music
Does it mean we can never watch secular TV shows or listen to non-Christian music?
No – but it does mean we need to monitor what we’re putting into our minds.
We need to take an honest look at what we’re watching, reading and listening to and seeing what kind of fruit it is producing.
If you spend 10 minutes a day in devotional time and three hours a day watching soap operas, you’re not going to be transformed into the person God made you to be
You’re going to be squeezed into a tiny little mold the world has for you.
Are you a worshipper of God?
HAVE YOU MADE AN ACT OF TOTAL COMMITMENT THAT HAS RESULTED IN A LIFE WHICH IS CONTINUALLY BEING TRANSFORMED?
Respected Bible scholar D. A. Carson said this:
"People do not drift toward holiness.
Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. "
A life of continual transformation into the image of Christ doesn’t just happen
If we follow the path of least resistence, we will be squeezed into the world’s mold
People think they are so independent apart from God
They’re not
They just go where the world tells them to go
They do what the world tells them to do.
They’re just stamped out with a cookie cutter of the world
To be transformed into the unique and beautiful person God created you to be, you must be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Conclusion
There is a story of a little boy who was inspecting a plaque which had been hung in his church in memory of several former members. The little boy asked his mother who the people were whose names were on the plaque. She answered, “They’re people who died in the church.”
His face grew serious as he asked, “Did they die in the 8:30 or the 10 o’clock service?”
WORSHIP IS AN ACT OF TOTAL COMMITMENT RESULTING IN A LIFE WHICH IS CONTINUALLY BEING TRANSFORMED TO GOD’S WAYS, NOT CONFORMED TO THE WORLD’S WAYS.
To follow Christ, we lay our lives on the altar – but he gives back so much more! He gives us back a life transformed by His marvelous love and grace and mercy.
Listen again to these two verses as J.B. Philips has translated:
With eyes wide open to the mercies of God, I beg you, my brothers, as an act of intelligent worship, to give him your bodies, as a living sacrifice, consecrated to him and acceptable by him. Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-mould your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity.
