Markham Baptist Church Sermon

Preached in Markham Baptist Church, October 10, 2004

Let me remind you of the path that we have taken. Last week we examined Luke 17:6-10 and discovered that we are servants of Christ. He is the Master and we are the servants. We seek to serve Him. It is the message of the extinguished life – as we seek to have Christ live in us and through us so that we can glorify God, that is, show what God is like.

Now, I want to look back at this text again briefly and ask the question, “What is the supper that we bring to our Master Jesus Christ?”

I’m not speaking of communion, or the Lord’s Supper. That is the supper that He gives to us, what is the supper that we bring to Him and give to Him?

Some may say, “We bring praise and adoration. ”Yes, that is correct, but when you think of it, it really is only the appetizer, the caesar salad. What is the steak that we offer to Him?

Some other will say, “We offer our material offerings.” Yes, that too is correct, but when you think of it, it really is only the silverware of the supper. What is the main dish? What is the steak that we offer to Him? To find the answer, we move to 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.”

What is the main dish that we offer to God? It is our very selves. So the message of the gospel is not only the extinguished life, we die to self, the message of the gospel is the relinquished life.

We are the supper that we offer to Christ. So you can imagine as we come to Jesus Christ in obedience, wanting to follow in His way and His Word, Jesus pulls out a napkin and He nudges the angels and says, “Here comes my favourite dish!”

We are the main course - this idea is supported in other passages of Scripture. In the opening chapters of the book of Revelation, Jesus is speaking to seven churches. And in Revelation 3 He addresses the church at Laodicea. He has some harsh words for them, saying, “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other. So because you are lukewarm neither hot nor cold – I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” (Revelation 3:15)

Notice the imagery. It tells us that we are the main dish. Not only is Christ in us, as we have discovered these last few weeks, but we are to be in Christ. We are the main dish that we serve our Master.

So we read in Luke 14 that the kingdom of God is like a man who holds a great banquet and invites many guests. You may have read the parable, and each guest offers an excuse as to why they cannot come. And do you notice that the banquet cannot begin until the hall is full? Do you ever stop to think that God invites us to a banquet and we are the main dish?

Or in Revelation 3:20 Jesus says, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”

We can read that to read, “I will supper you”. He wants to receive us. We are the main course. You may not like the image, but it is a biblical image to convey the idea that we are given fully to Christ, To live the Christian life means relinquishing life to Jesus.

So Romans 12:1 reads, “Offer your bodies as living sacrifices.” Now lets unpack this verse for a bit, and try to come to a clearer understanding of what it means to be the main dish that we serve to God.

Notice that this offering of ourselves is an act of worship. This is the point that Rick Warren makes in our book study. Worship is not an event that happens on Sunday morning but a lifestyle. So Rick Warren states, “Worship is not part of your life; it is your life.” (page 66).

You see, we are the main dish that we as servants offer to our Master. And it is as we offer ourselves to Him that we are truly worshipping.

But let’s unpack this verse from the beginning.

It begins, “therefore”- this is an important word in Scripture. When you read it you have to stop and ask yourself what it’s there for. It has a purpose, and in this case its purpose is to point us back to all that has come before. Not just the previous verse, or chapter, but the previous 11 chapters. "Therefore, I urge you in view of God’s mercy", and in the last 11 chapters Paul has outlined God’s mercies - it is plural - the NRSV has it right.

He demonstrates in these 11 chapters that everyone has fallen short of the purpose for which we were created – to glorify God. No one has been able to show what God is like, except for one – Jesus Christ. And now if we place our faith in Him, we are free from trying to please God by keeping the law. Jesus Christ has pleased God on our behalf and we can have Him cleanse us and live in us if we believe in Him and receive Him.

He tells us plainly that we have, through faith in Jesus Christ, been purchased out of the household of sin and missing the mark to a new household, a household where Christ is the Master, where He is now the one we serve.

And then he says, “Therefore”. In light of that glorious message, in view of the fact that you have been released from sin’s penalty through Christ and sin’s tyranny through the Holy Spirit – in view of the “mercies of God” (NRSV) I urge you to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God.

This is important for us to grasp, or else we think that God is waging His finger at us saying, You had better serve Me! You had better give yourself to Me! But that’s not what God says. It’s always an invitation - one you can either accept or decline. But what a wonderful invitation to respond in light of God’s great mercies He has given to us in Christ. It’s a choice, always a choice with God. Look, look what God has done, says Paul, and in view of that offer your bodies as living sacrifices. Present yourselves to God as the main dish!

This is important to grasp too, because sometimes we might think that God asks too much of us. He wants the whole of us, He wants our attitudes, He wants our agendas, He wants our relationships, He wants our money, He wants our cars, He wants our house, our cottage, our work, and coin collection we have under the bed. He wants it all. We might think this is too much - But my friends read the text – In view of God’s mercies! - what?? This is a bargain!!! You mean I get to be a servant of the most high God?! I get to be a servant in His kingdom?!! It is a kingdom of peace, and joy and life and love. What a bargain – I would give all I had and it all again to serve in this kingdom!

My friends, if you think that God asks too much it may be you don’t understand the wonder of God’s mercies. You know Jesus said, “If you don’t forsake everything for me then you are not worthy of me.” That means that you don’t understand what you are getting. It is like giving a diamond to a little child. And when you give the child a chocolate, he drops the diamond because he doesn’t understand what he has in his hands.

If you think God asks too much of you it is because you haven’t thought or reflected on the wonderful mercies of God – peace, love, joy, forgiveness. In view of God’s mercy, offer your bodies as living sacrifices. You are the main dish.

Now think of the nature of this dish? It is a sacrifice, says the text. A sacrifice, as you know is an offering, a gift which cost us something, which demands something of us.

What is it that we could sacrifice that would be pleasing and reasonable – and then we look at our text and discover it – our bodies – that is our very selves. Offer your bodies as living sacrifices.

Now Paul doesn’t elaborate on this too much for here but he has presented this idea in chapter 6 verse 12-14: “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desire. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. For sin shall not be your master, for you are not under the law, but under grace."

The truth is that even after we give ourselves to Christ, sin can still control our bodies if we allow it. To be sure the sinful nature becomes dull as we continually give ourselves to Christ but it is never fully eliminated. So this is important that we offer our bodies as living sacrifices, offering ourselves to God and not to sin. You see now we have a choice – whereas before all we could do is offer ourselves to sin, now with Christ in us we can offer ourselves to Him. It is the relinquished life.

So Augustine, that great early Christian thinker who came to faith after years of living an immoral life, once encountered one of his old friends. She was a prostitute with whom Augustine had spent some time, she smiled at him and said, “Augustine it is I.”

He looked at her and replied, “But it is not I,” and turned away.¹ Augustine acted on the fact that he was dead to his sinful flesh; consequently, he would not allow sin to reign in his mortal body, nor would he yield his members as “instruments of unrighteousness to sin.” (Romans 6:13)

So instead of offering your bodies as instruments of sin, we are offer God our bodies as instruments of doing His will, of showing forth His character and this, my friends, is our purpose.

This includes our minds, our eyes, our mouths, our hands, our feet. It includes the whole of us.

It is so easy to fill our minds with junk, isn’t it? To come home at night and watch CSI or The Apprentice, or The Simpsons. We just want to relax. Don’t let the devil fool you, we sometimes think we can handle it, so we play around with sin and temptation and we expose our minds to all sorts of crud in the movies we watch and the books we read and the web sites we visit. Violence, sex, pride, slander, gossip, - and we think that it will never develop beyond simply a mental enjoyment of it. Don’t you believe it.

All the more reason to say to God, "God, here is my mind - transform my thinking as I read your Word. Renew my mind with pure thoughts and holy thinking as your Holy Spirit takes control of me. Let my thinking about ethics and morals be your thinking."

You get the picture – in view of God’s mercy offer your whole self to God.

You know so often we pray, I pray, “Lord be with so and so.” Or I pray, “Lord please be with me.” And I’m not sure that’s helpful. God has promised His presence with us all the time. What perhaps would be better is not, “Lord be with me” but “Lord may I be with you”. You see that’s a better prayer because that is what God is looking for, people who are willing to make themselves totally available to Him, with no strings attached.

D.L. Moody the great evangelist was walking with a friend one day and his friend said to him, “The world is yet to see what God can do with a man who is completely devoted to him.” And D.L. Moody rose to the challenge and said, I will be that man. And he was - so much so that when he was in Europe a group of pastors were considering having him come to preach a series of evangelistic messages, and one pastor objected saying, “All I hear about is D.L. Moody, D.L. Moody, isn’t there someone else we could find? Surely he’s not the only one who has all of the Spirit."

And another pastor responded saying, “It is true that D.L. Moody is not the only pastor who has all of the Spirit. That’s not why we are considering him. We are considering him because we know that the Spirit has all of D.L. Moody."

But not only are we to present our bodies as living sacrifices, we are to present them holy. This means they are to be separated, or dedicated completely to God. It also means that there are to be pure – we have been freed from sin’s dominion through Christ now we are able to offer our selves holy to God.

The next word Paul uses to describe how we should present our bodies to God as living Sacrifices is pleasing. If we do what Paul has urged us to do, then we will also find that what we have done is pleasing and acceptable to Him.

That is an amazing thing, when you think about it, that God could find anything we might do to be pleasing. But it is so. To think that my offering myself to Him should somehow also please Him when I know myself to be sinful and ignorant and half-hearted even in my best efforts – that’s amazing - that’s grace, isn’t it?

And this brings us back to the last part of the verse - offering of ourselves to God is an act of worship. It is the way we say to God, “Thank you for what you have done for me in Christ." Many of your versions will read that this is your reasonable act of worship – The NIV put it in the footnote – this is a good translation – it is a reasonable act of worship. In view of God’s mercy this is a reasonable thing to do – it is reasonable because it is what God has done for us in Christ.

It is reasonable because it is God’s will for us, his good, pleasing and perfect will. It is reasonable because it God is worthy of our best. We are the main course.

Juan Carlos Ortiz tells of a time when he was in London on a preaching tour and he was very hungry and wanted a good steak. So a friend took him to a nice restaurant. He was preaching morning, noon and night. He ate the steak but he was not feeling that well. And Juan Carlos says, “As soon as the steak arrived at my stomach the gastric juices said, “Good afternoon.”

The steak said, “Who are you?” “Well we are the gastric juices. We have come to work on you to dissolve you and to help you be digested.”

"What is does that mean, digested?" "It means that you are going to disappear and that you are going to become part of Juan Carlos Ortiz's body."

The steak said, “Me disappear? Never. It is enough that he ate me, but disappear? No way. I will suffer to be in his stomach, but as steak. I don’t’ want to lose my identity, nor my individuality."

I say, “you can’t. You have to be digested.” “O no, no, no. I want’ to retain my individuality as a steak." “You can’t!”

Now suppose the gastric juice would have lost the battle. After a while I would have to say to the driver, “Is it far to the place where we are going?” "Are you okay? You are looking kind of pale? "

‘No, no, I’m okay, no problem." "Pastor Ortiz you are pale!"

Pastor Ortiz stops and vomits, because the steak cannot remain in the stomach forever like that. It has to be digested or vomited. So Juan Carlos states, “You know, I don’t doubt that all Christians are in Christ, I don’t doubt that, the question is, where in Christ are they?”

I imagine Christ with such a huge stomach that He cannot almost walk. Everybody there, and the gastric juices working but all stomach - short legs, short arms, all stomach - and He not trying to vomit us. Maybe there are some here today who need to be fully lost in Christ.

Thank God in my case that is not what happened. At last the steak gave in. You know something? I was talking to the steak two or three days later as I was traveling by the farm I saw a cow.

And the steak said to me, “You know Juan Carlos I was so glad that you ate me. Before you ate me, I was part of a cow, a dirty cow, behind an unknown hill. Now I am part of you. I am traveling in 747s I am in the best hotels. They applaud me when I come up to the pulpit. I would prefer a thousand times to be Juan Carlos than to be a cow!^{" 2}

“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.”

ENDNOTES:

1. Stephen Olford, Not I But Christ, (Wheaton Illinois: Crossway Books, 1995), p. 58

2. Juan Carlos Ortiz in an untitled sermon.