The Bible Top 40
Romans 12:1&2
If you listen to the radio much, watch TV, or get mail, you have probably heard someone talking about planning for your future. Your insurance guy wants to talk to you about his new retirement planning guide. The radio and TV are full of ads for companies that have the best insight into the future of the stock market, and your portfolio should be with them! Are you planning for your kids’ college education? You know, it’s never too soon to start. There are even ads that want you to plan ahead for your funeral!
You hear those ads year round, but at the beginning of the year they are especially prevalent. As we stand at the threshold of a new year, we naturally look to the year ahead and wonder what might be in store.
Last week, when we were looking at Joshua 1:8, we said that we had God’s promise to go with us into the new and uncharted land of the coming year just as Joshua had God’s promise to be with him as he entered the unknown challenges of Canaan. As we continue our journey into 2003, wouldn’t it be great to know where God wants us to go and what He wants us to do? Sure it would! To be able to know that I am proceeding through my days in keeping with God’s will for me would be so reassuring!
Is it God’s will for me to work at this job, or that job?
Should I move to this city or that one, or stay where I am?
Which college should I attend, or should I take a year off – or join the military?
Should I watch this movie, or turn off the VCR?
In our study of the Bible’s Top 40, today we are going to look at a passage of Scripture that tells us we can know God’s will and direction for us. It is found in Romans 12:1&2:
I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
If you have a New International Version, it reads this way,
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. 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.
In these two verses, we see we can only experience this type of relationship with God when we offer Him ourselves – body, mind and will.
We need to be clear that this is not a call to salvation. Paul is not urging people to become Christians. Whenever he addresses “brethren,” he is directing his words to people who have recognized their need for a Savior. They are already believers. These are people who have tried their best to make it on their own, and found that they were unable to keep their lives in order. They realized that on their own, they could never please God. They have been impressed with the knowledge of their sinfulness, and have asked Jesus to forgive them, to cleanse them, and to establish a right relationship with the Father through Him. If you have not done that, then the rest of this message is not going to be very meaningful. It is simply impossible for us to have a relationship with God and experience His direction and presence in our lives without accepting Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. He is the only way.
These words of Paul are written to people who have believed the claims of Jesus, and Paul is urging them to take the next step – to go further – beyond belief - beyond conversion. Theologically, this process is called sanctification. It is the process of becoming more and more like Christ, and less and less like the world. Paul is challenging, he is pleading with them, and us, to give ourselves completely to God.
1. Offering
our Bodies
Primarily, Paul tells us that we need to give God our bodies. “I urge you to offer your bodies as living sacrifices…”
This is a decisive act. The tense of the verb, “to offer” signifies a point of action rather than a continuous action. Total commitment was never achieved by osmosis, or by means of an occasional half hearted effort, or even by winning small spiritual skirmishes along the way. It begins with a decisive step that affects all other steps we take from that point on. The Biblical way of sanctification, I believe, is for a believer to commit his life once, with full knowledge of what he is doing, to the Lordship of Christ. And then to reaffirm and practice that dedication in more and more areas of life as the Holy Spirit brings them to our attention.
This is an all-encompassing act. Why is it that God asks us to present our bodies, rather than our souls, spirits, wills, or hearts? I wonder if its not because the spiritual is somehow easier to agree with. We’re glad to give God our hearts, as long as our eyes, hands, feet and tongues are allowed to do what they please. On the other hand, if we give God our bodies, we in effect give Him all we are. I Corinthians 6:19 says, “Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. Therefore honor God with your body.”
This is a priestly act. These verses would have brought up vivid images to the believers in Rome of the work done by the priests at the temple. The verb “to offer” is actually the same word used to describe the work of offering sacrifices at the temple. The word “service,” is also a word that was used to describe the work of a priest before God. William Barclay writes,
True worship is the offering to God of one’s body and all that one does every day with it. Real worship is not the offering to God of a liturgy, however noble, nor a ritual, however magnificent. Real worship is the offering of everyday life to Him. Take your body; take all the tasks that you have to do every day; take the ordinary work of the shop, the factory, the office, the home; and offer that all as an act of worship to God.
But there is a huge difference between the offerings the priests gave at the temple and the offering Paul talks about here. The difference is that God is now calling for living sacrifices, not dead ones.
I imagine that if I asked around the room this morning, “how many are willing to die for Christ?” the answer might be impressive. I would imagine a number of us would raise our hands, mostly because we see the question as hypothetical. But the question God asks us today is, “How many are willing to live for me?” That is not a hypothetical question. It is very practical.
You may be familiar with the story of the chicken and the pig. While walking past the local church, they noticed the name of this week’s sermon, “What can we do to help the poor?” They pondered if for a few minutes and the chicken exclaimed, “I know! We’ll do a ham and egg breakfast for all the poor in the city!” After a moment’s thought, the pig said, “Hey, wait a minute, for you that’s just a contribution, for me it’s total commitment!”
God asks us today, “How many are willing to live for me?” After thinking about it for a few minutes we might feel like that pig – “Hey, this is no longer a contribution, it’s a total commitment!” We can make all sorts of contributions – sing, teach, clean, help in nursery – but God wants more from us than a contribution, He wants commitment!
A transformed life that knows God’s will begins with a decisive, thorough, priestly act of dedicating our bodies to God. There’s now other way, there are no short-cuts. Without such a commitment it is not possible to experience real spiritual victory. So let me ask you: “Have you ever laid your body on the alter to God as a decisive act of worship?” You may have spiritually given Him you heart, but have you practically given Him your body?
2. Offering our Minds
But as important as offering our bodies to God is, it is only one step of three listed here. The second step is to give Him our minds. The world wants to control our minds, to conform them to its own pattern, but God wants to transform them. I have seen a shirt at the High School cafeteria that reads, “You laugh at me because I’m different, I laugh at you because you’re all the same.” The world wants us to all be the same, to all act the same, walk the same, talk the same, and watch the same stuff. If you don’t believe it, be different. Tell your co-workers that you don’t do Halloween with your kids. Refuse to go out with the rest of the guys to the strip club on that business trip. Tell your friend that you do not accept that all kids will have sex as a teenager – you expect yours children to be chaste until they are married. They will look like you like you are from Mars! Do you remember when Gwen Moulton, the missionary from Japan was here, she said that there was a saying in Japanese culture that “the nail that sticks up will be pounded down?” The world is like that. If you do not conform to the pattern of this world, it will do all it can to pound you down.
But God wants to transform our minds. The word transform here is the same as the word transfigure in the gospels when Jesus was on the mount of transfiguration. In that instant, the disciples who were with Him got to see Him in His heavenly glory. It is a Greek word from which we get our word “metamorphosis.” It describes a change that comes from within. The world wants to change our minds from the outside, but exerting pressure – to make us “conform.” God wants to change us by the power of the Holy Spirit being released within us. The tool that God uses to do this transformation happen is His word. As we spend time meditating on the word of God, as we discussed last week, then God will gradually make our minds more and more spiritual, and it will be transformed into the mind of Christ.
3. Offering
our Will
Thirdly, we need to yield God our will. Our mind controls our body, but it is our will that controls our mind. We see that painfully evident at this time of the year. On New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day we make a decision in our mind to control our body. We are going to exercise more, eat less, stop smoking, stop drinking, give up the couch and TV, all things that are decisions of the mind over the body. But within a few days, or weeks at the most, we are back to our old habits. Why? Didn’t we make a decision? Isn’t it good for our bodies? The reason is that we are using our mind power – and it won’t work until we use our will power. The mind knows we should make those changes, the will doesn’t want to!
The same thing can happen to us in our spiritual lives. We get out of shape spiritually, and we decide we’re going to do something about it – but pretty soon, we’re right back where we started – and we wonder why. It’s not because we don’t know better, it’s that we don’t want better.
We can only surrender our wills to God through disciplined prayer. Think about the greatest example of person surrendering their will to God’s. Jesus Himself, on the night before He went to the cross, prayed, and asked God if there was any other way they could achieve their goal, but then, in the ultimate act of submission, prayed, “Not My will, but Your will be done.” He prayed about it, He expressed His will, but in the end, He made His own will subordinate to the Father’s.
Before we look at how to make this all practical, let me share with you one more observation from this text. Notice that word, “urge.” In the KJV it reads, “beseech.” Some have rendered it “I plead with you…” That is an interesting choice of words, don’t you think? Usually, we read words like “THOU SHALT NOT!” in our Bibles, but here it’s, “I urge you…” What is implied by that word?
It’s optional. We can choose to go through our lives not knowing or experiencing all that God has for us. We can refuse to present our bodies, minds and wills to God. Are we still saved? Yeah, I believe so – remember, Paul is writing this to “brethren,” but who wants to go through their Christian life like that? Do we really want to live a frustrated, defeated life? Do we want to stand before God one day and have nothing at all to show for our life’s work as a believer? One day we will all stand before Jesus, and we will be rewarded for our faithfulness to Him. If we have been faithful, we will be rewarded. If we have not, we will receive few, if any rewards. But the key motivation for us should not be to gain rewards – look at the first verse – it says, “in view of God’s mercy…” Our motivation for giving ourselves completely to God is the mercy and love and grace of God that caused him to give Himself completely to and for us! How can we not give ourselves to Him? How can we not respond in humility and awe before this One who loves us so?
So here’s a practical way to make this passage a reality in our lives:
Each day, we need to formally place our body on the alter of God. Maybe you do it as you get out of bed and stretch. Or maybe in the shower – the shower can be a great place to spend some solitary time with God. Then you need to spend time in the Word of God, and let Him transform you mind and prepare you thinking for the day ahead. Read His word; meditate on some truth from it that impacts you for that day. Review a verse that you are memorizing. Then pray, and in that prayer, submit your will to His. Tell Him that you want to let Him work in your life as He sees best.
As we move into this New Year, go ahead and look over your stock portfolio to make sure you have the right diversity; make a resolution to save for your kid’s education. You may even want to plan you funeral. But all the planning you do will not get you through the future secure in the knowledge that you are walking in step with God’s plan for you. That will only happen as you apply these verses, yield your body, mind and will to Him. Then you will be able to know the perfect will of God – you will have the confidence of knowing that He is guiding your every step.
Prayer.