Amen! What a mighty God we serve, the name above every other name, worthy of every breath. And when we’re in there, we live for you.
My question to you this morning is, is that actually true? Do we actually live for God? Do we actually live and give everything that we have to our Heavenly Father, who has loved and cared for each and every one of you?
This morning, we're going to be in Romans chapter 12, but I want you to be thinking about this: are you really living for God? If you remember growing up, your parents would tell you to clean your room or to pick up after yourself. I imagine we didn't always want to do that. We didn't always want to do the rest of us. And if you've got children, you've probably experienced that on the other side, like, "Oh, now I know what my parents would always get upset about."
Just talking about children, they just don't do what they're supposed to. They tell you over and over again, and they still won't do what they're supposed to do. Your heart's not in it. When you look at cleaning up, it's probably like that with our houses. We don't always want to clean up our house. We like the clean house; we just don't like what it takes to get to it.
We have to think about all these things. Our hearts are not in it, and we say, "Well, I'll do it tomorrow. Yeah, I'll get there eventually." And maybe we do, maybe we don't. Or maybe somebody asks you to do something, to go and help them out. You have those friends like, "Oh, I'm moving this weekend. Can you help?" I mean, you've got to be really tight friends, first of all, for somebody to be able to ask you that. And second of all, for you to actually do it.
You know, sometimes our heart is not in it. "Hey, I'll put toward the U-Haul, but I'm not helping you move on the third floor with no elevator. I'm not trying to have it." But there are some people that we are close enough to that we would literally drop any and everything that we have in order to support them, take care of them, and encourage them.
There are some people like that in our lives because when we think about the bond that we have with those, whether they're family or friends or whatever it is, when we think about the bond that we have with them, it's like they've been with me through thick and thin. I would do whatever it takes.
Think about God and who He is. Think about what He's done for you. Your friend may have been there in some troubling times, but there were a couple of times you picked up the phone, and they didn't answer. There have been a few times where you needed somebody by your side, and you felt like there was nobody around.
I'm here to tell you today that you are not alone. You are not alone. God is there with you. He's with us now, and He was with you then, through whatever you were going through, and He will be with you in the future.
My question to you is, are you living your life for Him? Are you so grateful for who He is that you're willing to drop everything and do whatever it takes? I wonder, as we talk about Christianity and being Christians, being Christ followers, what exactly is expected of us?
People call themselves Christians, but you look at their lives, and you’ve got to wonder. There might be some of you here today. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: your lineage does not get you entrance into heaven. Just because your grandmama believed doesn't mean that it works for you. You've got to do your own believing on your own behalf.
And fortunately, we have to ask ourselves, what am I willing to do? What has God done for me? How am I supposed to live if that be true? I bet if we asked 20 different people that question, we’d get 20 different answers. What are you supposed to do as a Christian? How are you supposed to live?
I would imagine each of us in this room would have our own answer to that question. And we all know the church people, right? We've been around. They dress a certain way, and they say, "You gotta—well, if you're a woman, you gotta wear the long skirt. If you're a man, you gotta wear a certain tie." Like half of us are already disqualified right off the bat.
Well, you gotta go and do this, and you gotta go and do that in order to be a Christian. These are the things that you gotta do. You gotta look like everybody else; you gotta do all the same things. But then we got other folks that claim to be Christian, and you know, on Sunday mornings, they might look the Christian way, whatever that is, but Monday through Saturday, it's a different story.
We spend our hour at the appointed time here, and we put on the garb and the look and the mask to fit in and act like we're okay and everything is all right. But we go home. I'm not gonna go too deep there. Other folks just live differently outside of church than they do inside a church.
We have to ask the question: what is expected of me? God did all this stuff for me, and yes, He accepts me the way that I am, but He didn't bring you here so you can just do the same old thing over and over. He didn't bring you here so you can be the same. He brought you here so that you could be changed.
So thankfully, in Scripture, we're given some direction as to how our Christian conduct ought to be and what our walk with the Lord looks like. This morning, we're going to see that our lives are the most rewarding when we're committed to God and when we're in alignment with His message. That's where we get the most fulfillment.
You don't have to go and travel and go find yourself and read all these self-help books or none of that stuff. God tells us specifically that if we're committed to Him and we're aligned with His word, we will find His purpose for us. You don't have to go find it and figure it out for yourself.
Look with me in your copy of God's word, Romans chapter 12. We're only going to do two verses today. Romans 12, starting in verse 1, it says, "I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect."
Now, this is only two verses, but Paul packs a punch in these two verses. There's a lot of words here. There's a lot of doctrine here. There's a lot of instruction here in these two verses.
When we open up chapter 12 of Romans, Paul begins by saying, "I appeal to you." In the King James, it says "beseech." Other translations use "urge," "plead," or "implore." Like Paul is on his knees begging and pleading with his kinsmen here. If Paul was in a court, it would be like he's requesting a higher court to look at a judgment from a lower court, like they got it wrong at this court; you gotta look at this again.
Paul is begging them. There's some urgency in his voice, and he wants his hearers to respond to this instruction. He knew that there were folks around him that would get distracted. He knew that the world was coming at them and telling them to do different things and go astray from who God is and what He wants.
So he's like, "Listen up! Pay attention! Stick with me here! Focus your eyes on me! Don't be looking around! Put all these distractions away! I want you to hear this."
He says, "I appeal to you, dear brothers." And then one of our favorite words, "therefore," makes us ask, "What is therefore, therefore?" Paul makes this shift in this new chapter, and he's building upon the case that he's already started to present in Romans in chapters 9 through 11.
He's put out this case, and Paul talked in these chapters about God's mercy. He's talked about God's grace and the salvation through Christ that we see.
Remember with me in Romans 9:15. It says, "For he says to Moses, 'I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.' So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy."
For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "For this very purpose I have raised you up, that you might show my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth." So then He has mercy on whoever He wills and He hardens whoever He wills.
Paul here is focused on the salvation of the Jews, and he wanted them to know that God was not neglecting them. Even though you've kind of tried to choose your own way, you've added all these rules, you've done all these things, God is still there. God still wants to have a relationship with you.
But they could not be saved in any other way than the finished work of Christ on the cross. That's the only way in the direction that they needed to go.
So he says, "I appeal to you therefore, brothers or sisters, by the mercies of God." You see, when we're in Christ, as I mentioned a moment ago, we are not alone. When we're faced with adversity or temptation, we're not there trying to just grunt it out by ourselves. The Lord is with us, and He enables us to walk upright so that we can live for Him.
I know it can feel tough. I know the challenges the world makes us feel lonely sometimes, but Christ is there. Even in our time of weakness, God reveals His mercy to us because as bad as things seem to be, they could always be much worse.
I don't know how people walk through life and they don't trust in the Lord. How helpless, how just unending life must be for them. They just have no hope. They just want things to work out and try to do things, but I just imagine the world is falling in on them because they don't have anything. They choose not to believe in a Christ who has the answer.
I can't imagine that because even in the worst times, I know that the Lord is still there. I know He still saved me. I know He's still working out things in my life, and even if He were to take me today, I know exactly where I'd be.
I don't know how you would live life without those beliefs and thinking in that way, but it helps us to remember that even in those times of temptation, those times of despair, that we remember God. He put on flesh and walked among us, and like us, He was tempted as well. He endured the same temptations that we're faced with. He understands what you're going through. He's been there, and so He can help you walk through those things as well.
He's strengthened us because He's there with us, and then He guides our steps. He equips us to endure so that we can get through and give Him the glory. That is amazing to me.
Ephesians 2:4 talks a little bit more about this. It says, "But God." I love when you see something in the Scripture, you see those two words, "But God." You know something good is about to come after that.
"But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, what did He do? He made us alive together with Christ. It is by grace you have been saved."
That should give us hope and encouragement here today. Like I said, I don't know where you are today. Some of you are going through some stuff, but just remember these words and encourage yourself with them. Go seek the Lord on these things.
So already in this first verse, Paul reminds his hearers of who God is and what He's done. And then in the last half of the verse, he tells us what our response should be.
Look with me again at Romans 12:1. It says, "I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship."
You know, some of us have been in the spirit for a while, following Christ and more mature in our walk, and some are maybe less mature. You might ask the question of living sacrifice. Time out! Wait a minute! What does Paul mean by this?
Notice that he doesn't say, "Make sure that the person next to you submits their body." Isn't that interesting? My version doesn't say that. So make sure it's yours. It doesn't either. He doesn't say for us to make sure that the folks around us are acting right and then to point fingers at their failures. That's not what my version says either.
It's easy for us to consider the lives of others, but when it comes to ourselves, it's a little harder. It's easy for us to see, "Well, they ain't doing this, and they should be doing that." But when it comes to our own selves, we’ve got a blind spot. It's much more difficult to look at ourselves in the mirror and see the things that we ought to be doing and how we're not acting right.
Jesus warns us about this type of hypocrisy. He does so in Matthew 7:3-5. It says, "Why do you see the speck in your brother's eye but do not see the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye' when the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite! First take the log out of your own eye, and then you'll see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye."
People say, "Well, we shouldn't judge, and I'm not going to do all this kind of stuff, and you tell people they're doing wrong." That's not what the Scripture says. It says get the log out of your own eye so then you can better see the speck in your brother's eye and be able to help them and coach them up and then encourage them.
But we skip this stuff. We try to move the log around and try to get a better vision, and that's not what it's asking us to do. You can't make others act right or force them into the kingdom, and you're not responsible for anybody but yourself.
So let's take care of that first. If everybody fails to submit to the Lord, that has nothing to do with you. You are responsible for you. You're responsible for your walk. Are you doing what you're supposed to? Do you spend time reading the Scripture to get to know God? Are you spending time on your knees in prayer with the Lord? Are you giving to those in need?
It got quiet in here, but these are questions we need to ask ourselves as we look at our own lives and we look at the lives of others. We need to make sure that we are doing the things that we're supposed to do.
And praise God that He puts us together as a body of believers because of this blind spot. You know, my brothers and sisters can say, "Hey, Pastor, I noticed this. I don't know what's going on, but maybe we should think about it." The Scripture says, right, to walk alongside one another so that we can course-correct, that we can be encouraged.
This is personal. You submit your body as a living sacrifice. This living sacrifice is a complete and total surrender. I'm sorry I haven't asked you your question yet, but what does that mean? What does it look like? What does it really mean, and what does it look like for us in our lives to be a living sacrifice?
I heard Pastor Tony Evans explain it this way, and this you'll know why it speaks to me in a moment. He says it's the difference between the offering of a chicken and a pig that they bring to a bacon and egg breakfast.
Because you see, a chicken makes a contribution, but the pig gives everything. So we've got too many people walking around giving contributions, giving eggs to the cause, but not enough people that are giving the total and complete sacrifice. He wants ham and bacon. He wants total surrender. This is what true worship is.
You know, it's a lot easier for us to give some money to a cause than it is to give our time sometimes. Or maybe for some of us, it's easy to give up an hour on a Sunday morning but not much else. Is that total sacrifice? Is that giving your all to God?
Well, Pastor, you don't understand. I'm busy. I got all this stuff to do. I got stuff to do too. And that stuff that you've got to do, you can bring glory to God. I firmly believe that.
God, vocation today, you could be a Starbucks barista to the glory of God, stocking shelves to the glory of God, delivering packages to the glory of God. I've never seen anybody deliver a package that way. I've never seen somebody who cares for the people in the restaurant the way they do.
What is it about them? And maybe they might ask the question of you, "Why are you so happy? Why are you so joyful?" You can tell them why. You can tell them about Jesus and what He's done, who He is.
So we need to look at how we can be a living sacrifice and what that looks like for us in our lives. The prophet Amos rebuked folks who had religious ceremonies but didn't live in an obedient manner. Amos 5:21 says, "I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies."
Man, what if the Lord came back and He started talking to us this way? The stuff that you think you're doing for me? Nah, I don't like that. It goes on, "Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them, and the peace offerings of your fat and animals, I will not look upon them. Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps, I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream."
This is not something we want to hear. People go to churches for the feel-good moments, and I don't know if we hear this verse too much. But we have to. We need to. We've got to understand that going by and trying to put a check mark in the box is not sufficient.
Going and doing things, "Oh, I gave so much to the United Way. I did all these things to discourage some of the tax requirements," and then to go and talk about it in front of somebody like you did something—that's not what the Lord is looking for.
The Lord wants us to give ourselves to Him each and every day, totally and completely. Everything you've got.
Think about this: what would the church be like if the body of Christ, if everybody in the body of Christ was like you? You've given a little bit here and there, showing up when you could or when you wanted to, like, "Oh, somebody else is going to take care of that. Somebody else will help to fund these projects."
There might be poor people out there, but the government will take care of them. What if everybody was like that? I know this is a hard pill to swallow. You can get mad at Paul; don't get mad at me. Paul is revealing to us that half-hearted effort is not enough.
God has been so amazing to us. How can we dare to withhold any part of ourselves from Him? Casual service to the Lord will never be pleasing to Him. He wants us to be hot or cold. He wants us to be in or out.
If you call yourself a Christian, you can't continue to go on and play the fence when it comes to serving Him. We are expected to offer ourselves as no less than a living sacrifice. That means we should be willing to crucify our flesh to the Lord. He alone is our priority. He alone is our passion.
Everything we do, in word or deed, ought to be done in a way that glorifies Christ. Everything! Because everything you have is from Him anyway.
I'll be the first one to admit that dying to self ain't easy. I'm not here just preaching to myself, to be honest with you. It's not easy. I'm convinced that the Lord has called me to pastor as a means of sanctification and to humble me, just being point-blank and honest.
Because I'm extremely introverted. If I had my way, I would rather be in a corner off by myself, not dealing with anybody. As a younger person, I would have told you I didn't even like people. I didn't like talking to people. I didn't like being around people, being in big groups. I hate small talk. I had little empathy, lacked emotion. I'd rather run away and hide somewhere than speak in front of a group of people.
But this, I gotta believe God has a sense of humor. It's like, "I'm gonna take this introverted young guy, and I'm gonna do something with him." Things that he wouldn't even think or imagine.
Once I put Him first in my life and submitted to Him, things started to change. It was crazy. It was pretty weird because over time, God just continued to work on me and take me out of my comfort zone.
I'd be walking down the street, and people would stop me on the street and tell me their life story. I'm like, "Why is this guy talking to me? What's happening right now?"
I remember one time I was in a restaurant, just minding my own business, reading my Bible, and a guy walked—he got out of line and came and said, "Is that a Bible you're reading?" I'm like, "Oh no, not again." I said, "Yes, it is," and he started asking me questions about the Bible.
"Oh wait, I've always wondered about this, that, and the third." And we had a long conversation. But this is what the Lord did for me and through me.
I don't want you to hear this as a humble brag because I didn't want this life. I tried as much as I could to run from my calling, but the Lord kept pulling me back in. He grabbed me up by my neck and said, "Hey, no, this is your purpose. This is the plan that I have for you."
But I didn't seek it out. It was because of what Christ did for me. I had to learn to put something else in front of my own wants and desires. And what happened is, even though these things were natural to me, I started to find joy in them after the Lord made it clear what He was doing in my life.
The things that I used to do didn't bring me as much joy. The way He was transforming me changed everything. There was joy in being able to serve others. There was certainly joy in being able to walk with you all spiritually and emotionally.
There's joy when I get to stand before you all, and when I get asked to preach elsewhere, and to be able to proclaim God's word. There's joy in discipling other Christians—joy that I wouldn't have imagined.
But we must be willing to crucify our flesh daily. It takes work. It ain't easy. But we must continually and consistently bring our bodies into subjection for the Lord.
1 Corinthians 6:20 says, "For you were bought with a price, so that you can glorify God in your body."
So my question for you is, are you willing to die to self in order to please the Lord? Are you willing to seek Jesus and His desires above your own?
This is not a rhetorical question, by the way. Are you really willing to do this to bring glory to God?
So here's the thing: if Christ is your Lord and Master, you don't have a right to do anything you please. Remember, as we talk through Romans, you've got two choices, right? You either follow Him or you follow the evil one. You're a slave to sin or a slave to the Savior. It's either darkness or light. Again, there's no in-between.
Romans 6:19 says, "I'm speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification."
Righteousness leads to life, and Christ leads to life. Choose not just any life, by the way, but a life filled with abundance where we experience the presence and the power of God in wonderful and exciting ways. This is what's in store for us.
Let's look at verse 2. Then it says, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect."
What's interesting about this is that we're not the ones doing the conforming or the transforming of our minds. You know, the U.S. mantra will tell you to pick yourself up by your bootstraps, try a little harder, go with the hustle culture. Now a thing, you gotta do more and more and more.
God says, "I got this." God says, "I'm the one doing the transforming." So we've given all of ourselves to God, and the world has none of us. That's the goal and the aim.
And then once we do that, then God does the work of renewing our confused minds. And we are confused. There's a lot of confusion going on when we live in a world today where we're having an argument about what a woman is. We can't even define what a baby is. Everybody's got a different definition of what even marriage is.
Conforming to the world breeds confusion. I mean, when we're talking about what words mean, changing those definitions, and then we have the prominent voices in the world that constantly change, what are we supposed to do? How can we stay sane before this?
God is the same. This is how we know what our goal is—that He brings our thoughts in line with His. Who has understood the mind of the Lord?
The world molds us with the times, but people would say, "Well, what the world says about sexuality?" Even in Paul's day, Scripture was counter to the Roman thoughts of their day. But the point is, we serve in a new way of the Spirit and not of the old way.
The mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. The way we do this is by filling our minds with what's good. We fill our minds with what is right, what is beautiful.
So if you're spending time consuming all the media and music and stuff going on, you're feeding your mind with this stuff that's going to confuse you. We need to spend our time feeding our minds, feeding our hearts, our souls with the Scripture to combat everything that's going on in the world.
If you're consuming Scripture, you ain't got no room for all this stuff happening out in the world. Philippians 4:8 says, "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there's any excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise, think about these things."
We have to fill our minds with Scripture. Psalm 119:37 says, "Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things." May that be the prayer of each and every one of us.
You richly teach and you know lots of us expect of me: where is God leading me? Holy surrendering our lives to Him. You're going to have two job offers. Give me the opportunity for people to know you.
What's up? Congratulations! More so, 20, 50, 100 times. Man, this is amazing how vast our God is and that He is knowable to me. If you would just submit to Him, you love Him, and seek Him in your life, you find things that are pleasing to Him.
That is what we're looking for when it comes to worship. God is worthy of our singing. He's worthy of our gathering together. He's worthy of us giving sacrificially, financially. He's worthy of all these things.
But worship is so much more than this, and the Lord calls us to worship in life every day, every moment. It's not just what we do here on Sunday mornings.
Malachi 6:6 says, "With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with a thousand rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?"
He has told you, O man, what is good and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.
Brothers and sisters, have you offered yourself as a living sacrifice to God? Are you living totally and completely for Him? Like I said, it ain't easy, but we got to think about these things and continue to ask ourselves, "How do I bring glory to God in this moment?"
If you're here today seeking a way to have peace and fulfillment, I'm here to tell you there's only one way, and that's through Christ.
So if you have questions about what we talked about here today and what it looks like for you and your life, that's what I'm here for. I'm here to walk alongside you to help you understand what this looks like, how you work this out in your own life, to walk alongside you and help you out when you are at the fork in the road.
What should I do? What does God want from me in this moment? Let's talk about that. Let's have a conversation. What does it look like for you to totally submit your life to Christ?
And if you are a Christ follower and you're like, "I'm just stuck. I'm doing things, and I know better, and I need help," again, that's why we're here, so that we can encourage one another.
I want to be able to pray for you. We pray to pray with you so that we can work this out together.
Let's pray.
Lord God, thank you so much for the powerful words that you displayed for us today. It is necessary for any growth to happen in our lives that we ask ourselves hard questions, that we be challenged with the things that we've thought and accepted over time, and really come face to face with your truth, with what you have called for us to do.
Lord, we love you because you first loved us. Help us to do what is pleasing in your sight. Help us to not fool ourselves but to live totally and completely for you. Help us to live in such a way that people might look at us and be able to just ask the question, "What's going on?"
And they might ask, "What must I do to be saved?" And that you would give us the confidence, the assurance, the courageousness to share the good news with them as well, so they might have hope in their own lives, so that the world, everyone, would be able to know the name of the Lord.
So, Father, we thank you so much for all that you've done for us and the things that you are yet to do. We thank you in the precious name of Jesus. Amen.
on Nov 05, 2023
