INTRODUCTION
This week, I heard a sound I had not heard for at least six weeks. I was sitting at one of our city’s notoriously long red lights. There were a couple of cars in front of me, and when the light turned green, and the guy at the front of the line had was also slow off the light. In that instant, a long blast of the horn came from the guy behind me. When I heard that horn, it dawned on me that I had not heard that sound since September 11. It saddened me to hear it, because I’m afraid that in some sense, it might be signaling what we have feared - that we may be returning to our old ways again.
If that is indeed happening, it’s a sad thing. After all so much has changed about our country since September 11. When the sunset on September 11, we took to bed with us a completely new set of values. An America where New Yorkers were our dearest friends. Where police officers and firefighters and emergency personnel became our newest heroes. We became an America where selfish CEO’s rallied us around charitable causes. There’s been a renewed sense of community. People are praying more. People are giving blood in record numbers. And the Star Spangled Banner is more than just a prelude to a good ball game.
So the sound of a loud horn scared me a bit. Perhaps getting a 7/10ths of a second head start at the stoplight is becoming important to us again.
A RETURN TO OLD WAYS
But this is not just something that happens in our national life. It happens in the Christian life as well. I mean, you remember when you first came to know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. You remember how alive you felt. You remember how the sins that once satisfied you no longer seemed to satisfy. You committed yourself to Christ and became a new creation. The thought of living a sold out life so energized you. Back then, you wouldn’t dare miss a worship service, for fear of missing a blessing. You wouldn’t dare miss a Bible study, for fear of missing out on a fresh understanding of God. You wouldn’t dare get up and start your day without committing time in prayer. You wouldn’t dare think of leaving God out of your life in any way, because life without him just didn’t make any sense.
But sometimes that passion can slip into a routine. Before you know it, we’re honking the horn of our sin again. We start caring more about maintaining a comfortable and sometimes worldly lifestyle than about living a life sold-out to Jesus.
THE NEED FOR REVIVAL
This ought to be a concern to us, because as you know in the last few weeks we have looked at the primary functions of the church. We’ve gotten a glimpse of what the church is supposed to look like. We’ve seen what church is supposed to do. But now the question is how do we do it. How do we become that church that God has called us to be?
The answer is that it begins with you and I being entirely and completely sold out to God. In fact you and I both know that we will never reach our vision until we have a spiritual revival in our midst. Because unless you and I are sold out to Jesus Christ, we won’t be the church God wants us to be. As long as we are living with one foot in the world and one foot in Christ, we won’t grow. The truth is we need a spiritual awakening like never before and to rediscover the fire of our faith again.
THE STEWARDSHIP INDICATOR
This morning, I want us to take inventory of our own spiritual condition. I want us to reexamine what it means to be sold-out to Jesus Christ. What we need is some kind of gage to tell us where we are in the Christian life. God makes it clear that there is a way. It’s what I call the Stewardship Indicator. What is stewardship and what does it have to do with the spiritual life? First of all, according to my dictionary, stewardship is “the management of someone else’s finances, property, or other affairs.” So in religious terms, stewardship is our management of the finances, property and other affairs that God has entrusted to us.
Is there any better way to evaluate our spiritual condition than by the way we use the resources God has given us? If you want to see just how sold-out to God you are, then tell me about how you use your time, your money, your relationships, your opportunities, your material possessions, your gifts, your abilities, your energy. These will tell you how spiritually rooted in Jesus Christ you are.
If you wonder why the church seemed so powerless in the world, then look no further than the fact that only 8% of Christians even tithe. If you wonder why evil so dominates our culture and why Halloween is a bigger deal to our culture than Easter, then look no further than the fact that only one out of four Christians actually attend church on any Sunday other than Easter.
In the words, there is a direct correlation between our use of God’s resources and our spiritual condition. If you look at our vision, as we’ve talked about it in the last five weeks, you see that it’s all about our use of God’s resources. They’re all about the commitment of time and commitment of money and commitment of self. And the only way we will be able to accomplish that vision is if we are spiritually grounded and rooted and alive in Jesus Christ. If we’re going to be the church God has called us to be, then we must be willing to give not just some of ourselves. Not just ten percent of ourselves, but all of ourselves to Christ. That’s where it starts.
LIVING SACRIFICE
And Paul understood this. In fact look at what Paul demands of the Christian life. He says in Romans 12, “I urge you therefore 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.” Now if you look at these words carefully, there’s some pretty heavy stuff there. Paul says that a stewards of God’s resources will offer their what? Their bodies. Now, we could talk for an hour about what the word “body” means, whether it means mind or soul or spirit. But let’s cut to the chase. It means all of oneself.
And we are to take that body and offer it as what? A living sacrifice! This sounds even worse! Now what does Paul mean by “living sacrifice?” This idea of a “living” sacrifice must have been quite a novel idea to the Jews of that day. Jews had only ever offered a dead sacrifice. Remember, each year, in order to atone for one’s sin, the people would bring an animal to the priest, and the priest would kill it. They would offer a dead sacrifice. This dead sacrifice would stand as a payment for their sins. But it didn’t stay this way forever. What happened? Jesus Christ came as a perfect, final sacrifice, and on the cross, he died for my sins and yours. Jesus Christ was the final substitute for our sin. There was no longer any need for a dead sacrifice. That’s why Paul says in Romans 8, There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus!”
Now, Paul says, in view of this. He says, in view of God’s mercy – in view of Jesus offering his body as a dead sacrifice, now you ought to offer your body as a living sacrifice. In other words, through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, God gave us life and life eternal. Paul says that the Christian gives his life back to God as a living sacrifice.
A DEAD SACRIFICE
But sometimes what we offer God is a dead sacrifice. A dead sacrifice is when we offer something to God that is of no sacrifice at all to us. It’s when our heart is not in the offering of ourselves. It’s like when we come to church to just do our time, thinking God will be happy if we just show up each week. Now the preacher will be happy if you show up each week. But for God, that’s a dead sacrifice. The same can be true of our money. If all we do is throw money at the cause of Christ and our hearts are not alive in the work of Christ, then we’ve offered a dead sacrifice.
God wants a living sacrifice. He wants us to give out of the overflow of life that is in us. He wants us to give out of a deep desire to give. A living sacrifice is much more than just giving ten percent or meeting a quota of church attendance or doing our time in a committee or ministry team. A living sacrifice is an offering of ourselves that flows out of an abundant life in Christ.
DOSTOEVSKY AND THE FIRING SQUAD
The famous Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky told the story of the time he was arrested by the czar and sentenced to die. The czar, though, liked to play cruel psychological tricks on the people who rebelled against him by blindfolding them and standing them in front of a firing squad. The blindfolded people would hear the gunshots go off, but would feel nothing. Then they would slowly realize that the guns were loaded with blanks.
Dostoevsky went through this experience himself. He said that going through the process of dying believing he was really going to die had a transforming effect on Dostoevsky. He talked about waking up that morning with full assurance that this would be his last day of life. He ate his last meal and savored every bite. Every breath of air he took was precious to him. Every face he saw, he studied with full intensity. Suddenly, every experienced was etched in his mind.
As they marched him into the courtyard, he felt the heat of the sun and appreciated its warmth like never before. Everything around him seemed to have a magical quality to it. He was seeing the world in a way he had never seen it before. He was fully alive!
When he realized that he had not been shot and that he was not going to die, everything about his life changed. He became thankful for everything about his life. He became grateful to people he had previously hated. It was this experience that convinced him to become a novelist and write about life in a way that before would have never been known to him.
You see, Christians ought to be fully alive like this. We’ve stared death in the face. If you are a believer in Christ, then you came to the understanding at some point in your life that your sin would lead you to eternal death. We all were doomed to die. But God sent his Son Jesus Christ to die in our place, and because of that we live. And because of that – in view of God’s mercy, Paul says – offer your bodies as living sacrifices. Live and give as fully alive people of God.
I DON’T FEEL IT
But you say, David, I would love to live as a fully alive person giving myself as a living sacrifice, but I don’t always feel it. I don’t always feel that kind of spiritual aliveness in my life. We live in a world that teaches us that unless you feel something, you can’t do something. In other words, many of us do not live as living sacrifices because we do not feel it. in fact when I talked about revival earlier many of you equated that with a spiritual feeling. But spiritual revival and being a living sacrifice is not about feeling. It’s about transforming the way we think about ourselves.
Look at what Paul says in verse 2 Paul says, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. “ Paul says nothing here about feelings when it comes to being a living sacrifice. In fact, Paul says that it is in the renewing of our minds that we are transformed. In other words, our minds make a choice as to whether were will conform to the mold of this world or whether we are going to exist as a living sacrifice, pleasing to God.
In fact, in the previous verse, the NIV calls being a living sacrifice as your spiritual act of worship. But this is not the only way to translate this verse. The KJV calls it your reasonable service. It could be translated both ways, and some have argued that Paul meant it both ways. That being a living sacrifice is both a spiritual act of worship and a reasonable, mindful choice. I believe it is.
REASONABLE SERVICE
In other words, if we are going to be good stewards of God, we cannot wait for the feeling to strike us. If we are going to experience the fires of spiritual renewal in our lives, we must do more than feel it. For if we rely on our feelings to get us through, then we all know that our living sacrifice will be short lived. We know that feelings don’t last.
That’s the reason that inevitably, America will probably – more than likely – go back to her old ways. September 11 created some new feelings in the American conscience, but unless we allow that to renew our minds and change the way we think, then we will not experience a permanent change as a nation.
And so, if we allow our giving to be directed by emotions and feelings, then we too will go back and forth between total commitment to Christ and to conforming to the pattern of this world. Paul says we must simply make a choice. We must decide, not feel, whether or not we will choose God’s way or our way.
MOTHER TERESA
It’s like when Mother Teresa visited Australia. A new recruit to the monastery in Australia was assigned to be her guide and “gofer” during her stay. The young man was so thrilled and excited at the prospect of being so close to this woman. He dreamed of how much he would learn from her and what they would talk about. But during her visit, he became frustrated. Although he was constantly near her, he never had the opportunity to say one word to Mother Teresa. There were always other people for her to meet.
Finally, her tour was over, and she was due to fly to New Guinea. In desperation, the friar had his opportunity to speak to Mother Teresa. He said to her, “If I pay my own fare to New Guinea, can I sit next to you on the plane so I can talk to you and learn from you?” Mother Teresa looked at him. “You have enough money to pay airfare to New Guinea?” she asked. “Oh, yes,” he replied eagerly. “Then give that money to the poor,” she said. “You’ll learn more from that than anything I can tell you.”
The problem was the young man wanted to experience a feeling when he needed to simply learn by doing. And by doing, he would transform his thinking, and by transforming his thinking, he would experience an inward change that would go deep to the core.
And that’s what God wants from us. He wants us changed at the core. He wants us not to feel our way through the Christian life fluttering back and forth between Christ and the world. He wants us to choose him and him alone. He wants us to offer our entire selves as living sacrifices – sold out and on fire for God through and through. Have you given it all to him or are you holding back?
