1 GIVING OURSELVES TO GOD IN WORSHIP! ROMANS 12:1 SERMON Some years ago, my younger sister attended a seeker-sensitive church close to our home town in California. Leslie invited us to attend the church one Sunday when I was on vacation. Our three children went with us and we drove to a high school gymnasium for the worship service. Upon entering the worship service, we were greeted warmly by some friendly church members and noticed the great and abundant food on the rear tables, as well as an Espresso machine at the very front, near the stage. We were encouraged to grab a bagel, fruit, make ourselves an espresso, and we did! Our kids loved it. The two older ones were teenagers and had bottomless pits for stomachs so they could easily manage a second breakfast. While we were still eating and seated in our seats, the pastor came out on stage to start the service. He said, Hey! We want you to feel welcome to our service, so please just keep eating and if you want to go back and get some more food, feel free to do so. The Espresso machine will be operating throughout the service, so feel free to get up and grab an espresso whenever you want! With that, the music team started the service and my family all looked at each other, with the same questioning expression, are we supposed to eat or worship? What exactly should we be doing? My sister kept looking at me throughout the course of the service, trying to determine what I thought of the whole thing. I tried to put on a good, positive face for Leslie but I must tell you, I had a hard time worshipping God with all the distractions! Charles Swindoll, one of the great preachers of our generation said, We have become a generation of people who worship our work, work at our play and play at our worship. How true! Today, I invite you to join with me as we consider the theme of giving ourselves to God in worship. Worship involves giving ourselves to God! If you turn to the middle section of your bulletin you will see the point on the top of the sermon outline: Worship involves giving ourselves to God! Let me read our Bible verse for the morning again: 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 you spiritual act of worship. We give ourselves to God in worship by offering our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to him. In the Old Testament, the Jews would slaughter certain prescribed animals and offer them to God as part of their worship. They would place these slaughtered animals on the altar in the Tabernacle or Temple. In the New Testament, Jesus sacrificed his life on the cross and shed his innocent blood for our deliverance from sin. Jesus became God s perfect and final sacrifice. So, we no longer have to slaughter animals on an altar and offer them to God. Instead, Paul calls us to worship God by offering our lives as living sacrifices! Worship involves giving ourselves to God! Let s examine Romans 12:1 carefully. vs.1 The word Paul uses for mercy has been the context of his teaching in the previous eleven chapters. In the original text the word for mercy is plural as it almost always is in Greek. What does Paul mean in referring to the mercies of God? In the previous eleven chapters, Paul wrote of mankind s desperate, sinful condition and God s forgiveness of our sin in Jesus Christ. Through Jesus and the salvation he purchased on the cross for us, we experience forgiveness, peace, union with Christ and life in the Spirit! God s mercies abound in Jesus Christ! Note the next phrase in Romans 12:1, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices. The word for offer means to present for someone s use. In worship, we present our bodies to God for his use! In Romans 6:13 Paul uses the same word for offer three times. Listen: Do not
2 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. When Paul uses the term bodies he really means our whole self: body, mind and spirit. Paul labels us as living sacrifices in Romans 12:1. Instead of a dead animal sacrifice, we present our bodies to God for his use as living sacrifices. Someone once said the problem with living sacrifices is that they keep crawling off the altar! That s one reason we have to keep offering ourselves to God each week! We keep crawling off the altar! We want to pursue our own agenda, control our own lives; follow our own course in life! Worshipping God, offering our lives to Him as living sacrifices, helps us remember the great importance of recognizing and affirming God s great worth! It also helps us reset our spiritual compass for life and the week ahead. Further, worship helps us regain perspective! Worship enables us to keep our Christian life in proper perspective! Paul described our worship as, holy (set apart) and pleasing to God. We want our worship to be set apart for the Lord and pleasing to him. We should strive to give God our very best in worship! Paul concluded with a summary, defining statement when he wrote, this is your spiritual act of worship. When we offer or give ourselves to God in worship, what exactly do we give? 1.In worship, give God your present relationships and future dreams. Offer God your relationship with Him. You might feel close to God or you might feel very distant and estranged. Whichever way you feel, offer your relationship to Him. Offer God your family relationships, including your marriage if you re married, your children or grandchildren, your extended family, friends, relationships at work, your neighborhood, friends in the church. Ask God s blessing on all of these relationships as you offer them to Him. Ask God to help you make all of them godly relationships! Perhaps you re encountering some problems in one or more of your relationships. Maybe you and your spouse have been having some problems. Or, your best friend at school suddenly decided to drop you as a friend. Perhaps your teenage daughter has really been challenging your parental authority. Commit these problematic relationships to God in worship! Offer your future dreams, plans and aspirations to God in worship. These dreams might include finishing school and getting a job, finding and marrying the right person, raising your children in such a manner that they will love the Lord and serve Him and marry a Christian spouse. Perhaps you dream of retirement and more time for leisure. Or, you dream of a wayward child returning to the faith in which they were raised. The Lord wants us to offer our dreams and goals to him. Remember Nehemiah? A Jew, Nehemiah lived in Babylon during the Jewish exile. A trusted, honest man, he worked in a very responsible position: cupbearer to the King of Babylon. This meant that he made sure the king didn t get poisoned! Nehemiah heard from some travelers of his countrymen s plight, that many of them in Judah were experiencing great suffering and hardships. The scriptures tell us that when Nehemiah heard this he sat down and wept. But Nehemiah also prayed. In his prayer, in this time of worship, he prayed that God would give him success as he spoke to the king and asked permission to return to Judah to help his countrymen. Some months later, the Lord gave him opportunity to ask the king, and the king granted his request!
3 Nehemiah offered his dreams and hopes to the Lord. He longed to return to Jerusalem, to repair the wall around the city and help his fellow Jews. The Lord helped Nehemiah fulfill his hopes and dreams! Worship consists of offering our relationships to the Lord, our relationship with Him, our family, friends, co-workers, our dreams and aspirations. 2. In worship, give God your time, spiritual gifts and treasure. God wants us to offer him our time. Time s a very precious commodity for most of us. Experts tell us that Americans have less discretionary time today than we did 20-30 years ago. People work longer hours today. Many occupations have become specialized and complex. I find it interesting that the fancy, technological devices we have invented to help us save time often become the very culprits of more demands on our time. Pastor and author John Ortberg shared the time he called a good friend for some advice about spiritual direction. At that time, John and his family had just moved to Chicago and he described the hectic pace of life to his mentor. John asked this trusted, wise man what he should do to be spiritually healthy. There was a long pause on the phone. The mentor said slowly, you must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life. John told him okay, I ve written that down. Now what else? Another long pause ensued. There s nothing else. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life. God wants us to offer our time to Him! Ask God to help you use your time effectively and wisely whether at work, school, home, or in a ministry in the church. We learned a phrase in one of my seminary classes: work hard but work smart. In other words, use time effectively! Second, offer God your spiritual gifts. The Bible teaches that God has given every Christian at least one spiritual gift. God wants these gifts, the gifts He has given you and me to build up his church. My gifts are faith, teaching and leadership. Can you identify the gifts that God has given you? If you don t know your gifts, join us for our next Pastor s luncheon in January and the follow-up Membership class in February. In the Membership class, we take a Spiritual Gifts Inventory and review it to help you begin the process of discovering your spiritual gifts. Stay tuned for the exact dates! Third, offer God your treasure. The Bible teaches that God owns everything we have! Do you recall the Parable of the Rich Fool in Luke 12? The rich fool made a critical mistake in believing that all of his stuff, his barns and grain and other goods belonged to him. One day, he decided to take life easy, eat, drink and be merry. Do you remember what happened to him? The very night he decided to relax and enjoy all the stuff he had spent his life accumulating, he died! The rich fool never had a chance to enjoy the fruits of his labor! He spent his entire life working hard to build bigger barns and amass more things. But all of his efforts turned out to be entirely futile! Jesus warned us not to make the same mistake! When you offer God your treasure, release it, let go of your material goods, investments, retirement funds, college savings plans, let go of all it and give it up to God! It all belongs to God anyway! As we release our treasure to God, we discover great freedom from worry. 3. In worship, give God your joys and sorrows. In worship, learn to be open and candid with God. The psalmist reminds us that God knows us better than we know ourselves: O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. Psalms 139:1-2
4 God knows us so well! Since God knows us intimately, we can be open and candid with him. In worship, tell God the innermost secrets of your heart. Pour out your heart to him in worship! Offer God your joys! Praise God for answered prayer, for help in securing the new job, getting an A on the Geometry test, getting your driver s license, for the teacher at school who cares so much about your child, for healing your mother from the bad bout with the flu. Offer God your heartaches: frustration with your job, conflict with the neighbor, anxiety about a medical problem, argument with your spouse, problems with a certain friend at school. God cares about our heartaches! Offering them to God can give us an incredible sense of freedom and release so that we can recognize God s supreme worth! Unfortunately, many of us prefer to hold on to our problems and heartaches. We want to solve them on our own terms under conditions we agree to and approve. We don t like releasing control. But, something amazing happens when we let go of our problems and give them up to God. We gain a tremendous sense of emotional and spiritual relief and freedom. When this happens, our worship of God becomes more altruistic and less selfish. We discover a new capacity to concentrate on God rather than our personal concerns and problems. Finally, 4. In worship, give your body to the Lord! We should offer our physical body to the Lord. We function as the hands, eyes, feet and mouthpiece of our Lord. We lift our hands to the Lord in praise of Him for His death on the cross for our sin; we lift our hands in surrender, acknowledging Jesus Lordship over our lives. We fold our hands to pray for others who need God s touch of grace. We use our hands to build homes in ministries such as Habitat for Humanity or cook food for others or hug others or hold hands of fellow believers and pray for fellow believers who have needs. We use our hands to place our tithes and offerings in the worship basket when it s passed to us. In using our hands for the Lord, we worship him. We use our eyes to see the important symbols of faith in our sanctuary which assist in our worship of God; symbols such as the communion table, the pulpit, the cross all have great significance and meaning for our faith! Our eyes help us read the Word of God so we can learn and grow in our faith. They help us see our community of faith, other brothers and sisters in Christ who worship with us! We can see friends who might need a word of encouragement or hope. We use our feet to get us to worship on Sundays! We use our feet to take us to the homes of those longing for hope. We use our feet to take us to places like Mexico where we build homes for the poor and destitute or to Honduras where we help in medical missions. We use our feet to run the race that Paul described in Philippians, pressing on for the goal of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Finally, we use our mouths to pray. We also use our mouths to share with the others the way God has answered prayer. In doing this we celebrate the awesome power of God! We use our mouths to speak words of encouragement to the discouraged and faint hearted. We use our mouths to share with unbelievers the truth of Christ. So, we offer our hands, eyes, feet and mouths to the Lord when we worship. In worship we offer our bodies to the Lord. Worship involves giving ourselves to the Lord! We give him our present relationships and future dreams, our time, spiritual gifts and treasure, we give the Lord our joys and sorrows and we give the Lord our bodies. I pray that the worship experience for all of us would grow and deepen in maturity. Let us pray.
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