A Reasonable Worship

, well, we've been worshiping God through the songs that we have sung, and now we will worship Him by listening to him this morning. And so let me invite you to turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 12, Romans 12, and we'll listen to what God wants to say to us from Romans chapter 12, verse 1, this morning. as you guys will recall, we, we spent a year and a half doing a study through Romans 567 and 8, learning. in rich detail as Paul unfolds it for us, the glories that belong to us in, in Jesus Christ in the gospel.

Since we have completed our study of those four chapters, we've been asking the question, what then shall we do? What do we do with this? How do we unleash this in our lives? And how do we live differently given, these, truths that Paul has been laying out for us.

It's, there's not a lot of commands. There's really only 3 imperatives or commands that are found in those 4 chapters. and so we're, we've been asking that question and we've been inferring certain things that we can and should do in response to what we have been learning, but we will infer no more. Because we now come to the part of the book of Romans where Paul says, you don't have to infer, I will tell you exactly what to do with these things that I have been explaining to you.

And the very first thing that he's going to present us with is a call to worship in verse 1 of Romans 12. So the answer to the question this morning, what then shall we do? In response to these things, the answer today is worship God, worship God, and therefore, if you want to give a title to the message this morning, it would be a reasonable worship, a reasonable worship. Before I read the verse, Romans 12:1, cause that's all we're gonna be able to look at today.

Let, let me set the stage for you so you can understand how this unfolds leading up to this verse. As Paul has been presenting to us the truths of the gospel, and Romans 5 and following, we, we're not just being taught by a guy who's simply teaching, we're being taught by a man in worship. In fact, in Romans chapter 5, he, he talks about we've been justified by faith, in Christ, and therefore we have peace toward God literally. Through whom, through Jesus, we've obtained.

Accessed by grace, and this grace in which we stand, and what, what's Paul doing in the presence of God, beholding God having been declared righteous? He says in Romans 5:2, we exult in chapter 5, verse 3, we exalt. In chapter 5, verse 11, we exalt 3 times. He says that we exult in the presence of God.

The word that is translated exalt is a term of worship. And this word is actually used in the Psalms as a part of the call to worship. For example, in Psalm 32:11, David, having been forgiven of his sins, amazingly by God, and therefore righteous in the sight of God, not because he deserves it, but because God has graciously granted that he delivers a call to worship, and he says, be glad in the Lord and exalt you righteous ones, and shout for joy. And the Greek word translated exalt there in the Greek translation of the Old Testament is exactly the term that Paul uses in Romans 5:2, 53, and in 5:11.

Basically, in Romans 5, Paul says, I am a righteous one. I murdered people before I was saved by Jesus. I've committed countless sins. I was a violent aggressor, a blasphemer of Jesus, and I tried to get others to blaspheme him.

I was a persecutor of the church. I ravaged the church like a wild beast would ravage its prey. There's so many sins that I have committed, but in Christ, all of those sins have been forgiven, and the perfect righteousness of Jesus has been given to me. And what I'm going to do?

I'm going to respond to this call to worship, and I will exalt. I exalt, I exalt, I exalt. Paul is worshiping God. And then he continues to unfold the beautiful themes of the gospel, the luxuries that belong to us in Jesus.

And as he comes to the second half of Romans 8, as we learned when we were back in that chapter, Romans 8, the, the second half of it, one writer said, this is perhaps the best thing found in written literature anywhere in any era. The most beautiful thing that's ever been written. There is a lyrical quality, a song-like quality to the last half of Romans 8 and repetitions that Paul gives voice to. One writer describes the second half of Romans 8 as a rhapsody, a poem, a song.

Of grace, moving Christians joyously to praise God for His faithfulness. The gate of heaven in the second half of Romans 8 is thrown wide open. One writer describes Paul in the second half of Romans 8 as being in a state of spiritual ecstasy, being borne along by a thermal current of God's assurance in Christ, and Paul is worshiping as he speaks the words that he speaks in the second half of Romans 8. And then you come into Romans 9, and Paul just mentions Christ, just the mention of his name, and he breaks out in a little episode of worship.

In Romans 9:5, Paul mentions Christ, and then he says, who is over all, God bless forever. Amen. And then he continues to unfold in chapters 9, 10, and 11, how that God in His amazing sovereignty used the Jews' rejection of the Messiah to be the means by which the gospel and salvation would come to us Gentiles. And yet God is still faithful to all of his promises to the Jewish people, and a day will come when all of Israel will be saved.

This is a reality that we ought to be profoundly grateful for. That God has given to us this salvation. In Christ. Paul then giving expression to all of that, he comes to the end of Romans 11 and breaks out in another episode of worship.

He says in verse 33 and following, oh, the depths of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments and unfathomable, his ways. For who has known the mind of the Lord or who became his counselor, or who was first given to him that it might be paid back? To him again, for from him and through him, and to him are all things to Him be the glory forever. Amen.

See what's happening in this section of Romans, it's kinda like Paul is saying, hey, don't mind me, I'm, I'm gonna be teaching you, but while I'm teaching, I'm gonna be doing a little worship as I go. He's worshiping while he is teaching. And so we see the buds of this worship coming out and sprouting in these chapters and so it's not surprising at all that when the teaching portion of Romans 1 through 11 comes to an end, and Paul begins the commanding section of the letter or the practical section of the letter telling us, here's what I want you to do.

It's not surprising that the very first words out of his mouth, basically in terms of telling us what to do in response to these things is worship God.

He says in Romans 12:1, therefore, I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service of worship. He's basically inviting us, join me in the worship of God. Present yourself to God. In worship.

The term that is translated service of worship is the, the word la rea. from which we get like our word liturgy that speaks of a form for worship. It speaks of service that one might render, like a priest in the temple, that he might render, service that one might render in preparing for worship and actually worshiping, or in Facilitating and aiding in the worship of other people of the true God. That's what this term means.

Anything you do by way of preparing for worship and actually worshiping God and helping others in the worship of God, you would use this word la rea to speak. Of that. And Paul says the appropriate response, the appropriate response to this God of all grace, who's done all of these things for us in Christ, is that we present ourselves before Him and do la rea. Paul says, and what I'm asking here, the world may think us crazy, but let me just tell you that this la rea that I am going to be exhorting you to do and how to go about doing it, this is reasonable.

It's your reasonable service of worship. Some of your translations. have the word spiritual, spiritual service of worship. I, I would suggest that reasonable is, is, a translation that is closer to the idea.

The Greek word is logicos, from which we get logic and logical, and some would suggest that even the word logical makes sense here. He's, Paul's not talking about deductive reasoning logic in that sense, but what he's saying is what I'm, what I'm exhorting you to do here. is logical, it's reasonable, given your circumstances now in Christ, and who God is and what God has done and continues to do and will forever do for you and in you and upon you, given your gospel circumstances, the worship that I am calling forth from you is perfectly Reasonable.

It makes sense.

It's logical, given your gospel circumstances. And so Paul here is delivering a call to worship. And if you, if you sit down and read the whole book of Romans, you might be able to catch on to this that actually what's happening now in chapter 12 verse 1 is Paul is bringing us full circle. Because you remember back in Romans one, Paul describes the downward spiral of the lost into sin.

and into ruin. And that downward progression, what's the first step in that downward progression into spiritual ruin? It's a refusal to worship God. In fact, in Romans chapter 1, verse 21, Paul says, for even though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or give thanks.

For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and latruo. This is the same word, it's just a verb form of the word that Paul uses in Romans 12:1. They worshiped, and they served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen, and thus begins the downward progression to spiritual ruin.

Man's fundamental error is that he knew God and refused to give thanks, to glorify, to honor, and to worship this God, and plunges into sin instead and worships everything and anything else, including himself, except this God. And yet Paul narrates the story. of how God makes worshippers, how that God comes to man in a sin, He sent Jesus into the world to die the death that we deserve to die for our sins, and providing atonement. He raised Jesus from the dead, which is the receipt that validates the fact Christ's death is sufficient to atone for all of our sins.

He ascended Christ to his right hand. Christ is at the right hand of God interceding for those who believe in Him, and all who simply abandoned their own efforts at self salvation, and look at Jesus and say, he's the savior for me. And they believe in him and call upon him, they are instantly forgiven, they are instantly made righteous. They are instantly freed from the guilt and the power, the slavery of sin, freed from all condemnation.

And They're now able to be in God's presence to worship Him. Every time we are in God's presence worshiping him, something very ancient is being reversed in human history as we are coming back to him rather than running from him, and it's the gospel. It's God's work through Christ that brought us back to this place to where we can now worship Him. Paul then delivers this call to worship.

It's the first thing he wants to tell us to do. There's many other commands in this section of Romans, but Paul says, first and foremost, here's what to do with what I've been telling you, worship God, worship God in a way that is reasonable. And Paul's now going to unfold for us what reasonable worship is. And the way we're going to break it down today is we're going to observe six characteristics of reasonable worship.

And when we say reasonable, the world may think us crazy for doing what this verse says, but we would say, you don't understand our gospel circumstances. If you understood them, you would know this is perfectly reasonable for us to do with this God. 6 characteristics of reasonable. Worship that is appropriate to our gospel circumstances in Christ.

Characteristic number one is it is motivated and fueled and informed by the gospel. This worship that we're being called to render to God, we're being told that it must be motivated and fueled and informed. By the gospel. Look what Paul says in verse one.

Therefore, Therefore, I'm about to give you an instruction. I want you to forever understand and see this instruction as tied to everything that I have just been saying. Don't, don't do what I'm about to say in a way that is untethered from what I've been saying up to this point. Therefore, I am urging you, brethren, by the mercies of God, essentially, to worship God.

So Paul is seeking to motivate us to worship. He's saying, I want you to worship God. I want you to do la trea. But I want you to do so being motivated by the mercies of God.

Paul would say, God does not want your worship. He wants your gospel motivated worship. He wants you to be motivated to worship by the tender mercies of God. Paul does not motivate us to worship by scolding.

He does not motivate us to worship by threats, but by mercy. He does not motivate us to worship by fear. But by grace. He's saying, I want you to worship God, but I want you to be motivated by the gospel.

This word mercies literally has the idea of tender pity. It implies that before Christ, our state was pathetic. Pitiable We were, we were enemies of God, utterly helpless, unable to save ourselves. Our condition and the state of our soul was utterly despicable and spiritual poverty and ruin.

And God has saved us. He has forgiven us, and he has brought us into this incredible luxury in Christ. And it was the compassion of God, the tender pity of God that moved him towards us. It's not that he saved us or moved towards us because he was impressed with some good thing we did.

No, if he was moved by anything he saw in us, it was by, how pathetic and helpless our condition was. That's what caused us to catch the eye of God, but he moved and oh how he moved on our behalf through Christ. And Paul says, I want you to worship God, being moved by the tender mercies of God that I've been telling you about up to this point of the letter. Basically, you can take all Paul has said in Romans 1 through 11 about all that's true of us in Christ, you can draw a circle around it and then label it the mercies of God.

And Paul says, I want you to do Latrea, being motivated by this. I want this to be the fuel of your worship. another way of looking at what's happening in Romans 12:1 is imagine, imagine that Paul begins the book of Romans and just imagine that on his brain at the very beginning of the letter is, I really want to enrich the worship of the Roman Church. I want to call them to worship God.

So how do I do that? Do I start off saying, hey, I'm Paul, an apostle, I'm writing to you, the church, Christians in the Church of Rome, Romans 1:3, I exhort you, brethren, by the mercies of God to present yourselves as a sacrifice to God and dolarea in his presence. He could have done that. I don't know that we would have thought anything odd if he had immediately called us to worship.

But he doesn't do that. So imagine he's got this instruction on his brain, he wants to enrich their worship and call them to worship, but he's like, I, I can't just go right to them right now and say that. I need to, to give them some information and encourage them and love them with the gospel before I deliver that command. And Paul spends 315 verses.

Just laying out in rich, vivid detail, all of these incredible facets of the gospel. And it's not until he's done doing all of that, that he then 300+ verses later says now. Here's what I want to tell you to do, worship God. The fact that Paul spends so much time explaining in such vivid detail what belongs to us in Christ and in the gospel before he delivers the call to worship should teach us volumes about the role that the gospel must play in our worship of God.

We probably don't normally think of Romans as a worship manual, but it is. And Paul is gonna deliver a call to worship, but before he does that, he says, let me, let me lay the groundwork for you. Imagine we came in this morning into this service and Daniel said, Daniel Peterson said, well, I'm, we're gonna worship God in just a moment, but before we do so, I, I just want to read a little something. And he opened up the Romans 1:1 and he read Romans 1 through 11.

And then said, now I call you to worship. That's basically what Paul does in the book of Romans. Paul wants our worship to be motivated and fueled and informed by The gospel. We've just been enjoying these truths, but what's been happening is Paul has been pumping us with gospel fuel to power the worship that he's going to command of us in Romans 12:1.

We need to make sure that our worship is informed by the gospel., we always want to be careful about being overly critical of, of the way that, other diff, methods of worship, but there are times where, you see people worshiping God in a service and, and it's passionate and it's great. But it's, there's, there's not a lot of content there. It's like, God, I, I love you and you're my BFF and I want to touch you and, and it's, it's all this touchy-feely stuff and I'm not saying that that's at all bad, but sometimes 30 minutes later, at the end of this time of worshiping God, you're, there's an emptiness, a hollowness because nothing's been said even one time about anything that God has done.

For those in the audience that are worshiping, it's all what we do and what we want to do and want God to do, and that's, that's legit.

But, but look at how much time Paul spends in developing our understanding of the gospel so that that can inform and inflame. And fuel and motivate our worship of God. Paul himself, as he's been rehearsing these themes, he, he can barely restrain the worship. It just keeps popping out as he goes.

And now I think with great passion, Paul in chapter 12, verse 1 is just thundering this exhortation to all of us, and he's saying, join me, and let's worship God. There's a second characteristic. That we observe about this worship, and I don't know a better way to say it. so let's say it this way, that it is communal in its expression.

It's, it's, it's corporate in its form, and its manifestation, and in its expression. Now, a lot of the English translations don't bring this out. So look at the screen because this is, a reflection of the wording as you find it. In, in the Greek text.

and it's, it's not a huge deal, but I just want to point it out here. Paul says, therefore, I urge you guys, plural. He's talking to individual believers, brethren plural, by the mercies of God to present your bodies plural. And we'll talk about this in just a second, but when he says present your bodies, he's basically saying present your whole selves, including your bodies to the Lord.

So all of you guys, brethren, And gals, present your bodies, and then notice he doesn't say, present your bodies as living and holy sacrifices, plural. Some of your translations say sacrifices, but it's not plural in the Greek text. What he's saying is present your whole selves, including your bodies as a single sacrifice to God. What does that mean?

What it means is this, if Paul were here today and delivering this command to all of us, I don't know, maybe there's 170 people in this room right now. Paul would call us to worship and he would say that I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God to present your whole selves to God. Not as a bunch of individual sacrifices. God does not want 170 sacrifices.

What he's commanding of us is for us to come together to link up our lives together, our arms and our hearts together. And as a corporate entity, we step forward and present to God a single corporate communal, community sacrifice to God. Does that make sense? This is a corporate call to worship.

If there's factions in our church and, and, that aren't getting along and divided relationships, and everyone's individually coming to God saying, I'm a living sacrifice to you, and I'm worshiping you, and there's 170 different individual sacrifices, that's not what God is asking for in this passage. What he is asking is for all of us to move together. And then step forward together as a single corporate sacrifice to God. Cornerstone is many things.

One of those things is Cornerstone is a community, sacrifice of worship to God that you are invited to be a part of. We observe in this verse that worship is more than a song. It's a lifestyle, it's how you live your life, and it's more than how you live individually. It's more than how you live when you're by yourself, it's how you live in community with other people.

And so we're not surprised at all that, that beginning in verse 3 and beyond, Paul begins to explain the mechanics of here's how to go about living in community with your brothers and sisters in the local church. But this worship that is reasonable is a worship that is corporate. It's, it's communal and it's expression. The gospel does its work in us and creates this, this urge that moves us together as a community and then as a community to God as a corporate sacrifice.

A third characteristic of This reasonable worship that God says is reasonable given our gospel circumstances is that it involves us giving ourselves in complete surrender to God. true worship, guys, involves surrender. It's surrender to To God. it's not coming to God and giving them a few songs.

Here's some songs for you, Lord., it's Sunday morning, and, like all week, you've not listened to, to any worship music. You've, you've not been reading God's word. You got 1000 songs on your iPod, and not a one of them, not a one of them has a thing to do with anything that's recorded in Romans 1 through 11. Of the greatness of God and His grace towards you and you're thinking, well why would I put a song on that?

Why would I take up space on my iPod for something like that? And you, you live your week that way and then you come on Sunday morning and you're like, alright, God, I'm gonna give you 5 songs of worship. And even that's half-heartedly delivered. And God would say, I don't want your songs, I want you.

The whole reason I sent my son into this world to die for you and to save you is to bring you to myself so that I could have you. I want us to be in relationship with one another, more than anything else, I want you. And worship is saying, you can have me. God.

Look what Paul says, therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God to present your bodies. A living and holy sacrifice. Let me say something about bodies here. When you read that, don't, don't read that and go, oh, OK, so that's all I need to present to God is my body.

I don't have to present my soul to him. I don't have to present my spirit to him. I don't have to present my, my heart, my mind to him, just my body that I need to present to him. No, that's not what Paul is trying to convey.

He mentions bodies to denote the extent of what we surrender to God. What he's saying is that I want you to present your whole selves to God, all the way down to the physical part of who you are. See, during Paul's day, there were people, and you see evidence of this even in First Corinthians, who believed that God cares about the non-material part of us. He cares about our spirits, he cares about our soul, but he doesn't care about the body.

So there were some, even in the Corinthian church who had bought into the notion, we can do anything we want with our bodies, and God doesn't care about our bodies. And Paul says, no, God does care, Jesus died. To purchase the rights to your body. Your body belongs to him.

God does care, and he says in Romans, God cares about your body so much that his spirit has made your body his home, and the Spirit is going to raise your body from the dead and glorify it in a future day. God cares about your body. And so Paul is saying, present your whole self to God, all the way to the extent of your physicality. Your bodies to him.

It is a full surrender, holding nothing back. You give your eyes to him. These are your eyes, Lord, you give your ears to him. These are your ears, Lord.

This brain is now yours. And this, this mouth is now yours. I, I surrender all that I am and all that I have to you, Lord, and there's a handing over, that's the essence of sacrifice. As one writer says, the gift back in the Old Testament economy, the gift which was brought to the altar became consecrated to God and no longer belonged to the one who offered it, but to God.

Someone couldn't offer some animal as a sacrifice and then expect to take that home with them afterwards. He was handing that to God. This now belongs to him, it's consecrated, it's God's and it's no longer mine. There's a handing over and so this is the essence of worship is surrender.

It's a handing over of ourselves. To God. This is what Christ wants. CS Lewis says it this way, Christ says to all of us, give me all.

I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work. I want you. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half measures are any good.

I don't want to cut off a branch here and a branch there. I want to have the whole tree down. I don't want to drill the tooth or crown it or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked, the whole outfit.

I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you myself. My own will shall become yours. Christ is saying, give me everything, everything.

And you may say Vastor Mountain, total surrender. Like everything. That's, that's the worship that God says is reasonable. It's reasonable of him to ask that of us.

And you may say, Pastor Milton, total surrender. Giving everything to him, that's hard. what's harder? Half surrender.

Only surrendering some. And not all, surrendering stuff around the edges of your life, but not surrendering the core. CS Lewis goes on to say it this way, it's like that here, the terrible thing, the almost impossible thing is to hand over your whole self, all your wishes and precautions to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead, for what we are trying to do is to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life and yet at the same time be good.

We are all trying to let our mind and heart go their own way, centered on money or pleasure or ambition, and hoping, in spite of this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what Christ warned us, you could not do. Isn't that true though? Like we're just, we're still our own God, we're still in control, we're not surrendered.

And we've got our ambitions and the things that are important to us and everything orbits around that. And if those things are not honored, then everyone's gonna pay for this because that's my God, that's my deity, and we don't say it that way, but our actions demonstrate that. And, and even though our lives orbit around ourselves or money or pleasure or some ambition or goal that we have, we hope at the same time that we can obey some of God's commands. And, and live a decent life, even though we're not fully surrendered to God.

That's hard. That's the hard life, and it's harder than the life of full surrender to God. here's the motive though. So we're like, all right, so I gotta hand myself totally over to this God.

that's, that's scary, and Paul would say that's exactly why I spent over 300 verses just explaining to you who this God is, as revealed and In the gospel and how he spared not his own son, but delivered him over for you and he's not going to hold anything back from you, and God's going to work everything out for your good and for His glory and nothing's ever going to separate you from, from his love. As for his son, he gave you his Son. As for his spirit here, and he pours out his spirit into your heart in effusive abundance.

God the Father says, here, you can have my spirit, you can have my son.

I bring you into my presence. You can have me. And look at the love that I have for you and what I'm dreaming for you already through all of eternity. Our response ought to be.

I can give myself to him. Like I can get myself to no one else. I Understanding all of this in the gospel, my distrust and natural suspicion of God is cut at the root. And I can give myself wholly to this God and to His love.

As one writer succinctly says so beautifully, if God loves the whole person, and we see that he does in the gospel, then the only fitting response is to return the whole person to that love, to offer our bodies as living sacrifices. That's what worship is. It's us looking at the love of God and the wisdom of God and saying, You can have me. I, I surrender to this love.

That's worship. You said, well, I don't know, Pastor, I don't know about trusting God with, with everything. Well, everyone's trusting their life to someone. You say, well, I'm not trusting my life to anyone.

No, you're trusting your life to yourself. You're not giving yourself in full surrender to God. So who has it? You have it.

Like you're more trustworthy than God. Look back over your own history. What job have you done in taking care of yourself? How many times have you made a decision that seemed right in the moment?

It seems so right to you, but you look back with hindsight and see how stupid and how sinful and hurtful it was to you and to other people. What do you think you've done to earn more trust? Then God. So think about the insanity of that, to, to say, no, I'm not gonna fully surrender my life to you, God.

What we're either saying is I'm going to surrender my life to something or someone else, or we're gonna entrust our lives to ourselves. When we've given our own selves plenty of reason. To not make that call. God loves us.

We see that in Christ and the surrender of worship is surrendering ourselves to this amazing love. There's a 4th characteristic of this worship that God calls forth from us, that God says this is reasonable, given your circum given who I am and your luxuries in Christ that I have bestowed upon you, this is perfectly reasonable. And that is that this worship involves living on the other side of dying. Living on the other side of dying.

You see, guys, we, the way of the half surrendered. It is excruciatingly hard. Jesus says, if you, if you hold on to your life, you're gonna lose it. If you let it go, you're, you're gonna gain it.

But when, when we entrust our lives to us and we don't entrust it to God, then we got to bear that burden of deity. Which is unsustainable. And if your burden is, your life revolves around the fact that you got to be right in every situation, you got to win every argument, you got to hold on to your agenda and make sure that your agenda for personal happiness or whatever it may be, that that must be fulfilled. And if not, everyone's going to pay for that.

If, if you're living that way, If, if, if we're living that way with that lifestyle, no wonder we're fed up and worn out and neurotic and depressed and exhausted. We can't sustain that. God says, just, just give it to me. Give me, give me, you, I want you.

And that's why I have saved you, to bring you to me so that you can surrender yourself to my love. And that, that brings us to this 4th characteristic of this worship because we, we come to understand the mechanics of how this works, and that is that true worship involves finding life on the other side of layers of dying. Paul says, I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God to present your body as a living. Sacrifice.

And you cannot have more of a contradiction in terms than sacrifice and living. This word for sacrifice, it speaks of something that was tied down, cut in the throat, bled to death, killed, ultimately, and then set on fire and consumed. OK? In fact, the, the verb form of this word sacrifice is thuo, that means to let something go up in smoke.

And that's what we are to do with, with our, our lives. We present ourselves to God and we know that this surrender, and these moments of surrender that it involves something that feels very much like cutting. And, and killing and, and burning, and it's not, it's not pleasant. These are difficult decisions.

It is sacrifice. But we have come to understand that there is life on the other side of those layers of dying. See, in the mind of the world, death is the end. But we in the gospel understand that death is the gateway to life.

Jesus says, unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, it remains alone and it bears no fruit, but if it falls to the ground and dies, then, then it grows and it produces manifold fruit. If you hold on to your life, you're gonna lose it. If you lose it, you're going to To gain. If you seek your life, you're never gonna find it.

If you lose your life, you will, will find it. Jesus himself even said, watch me, and I'll show you how this works. And he went to the cross, and he got himself crucified and he died. And on the 3rd day he was raised from the dead and ascended ultimately to the right hand of God.

Experiencing life like we cannot imagine. And honor and exaltation and intimacy with the Father. John 1:18, he's in the bosom of the Father. He's in the embrace of the Father.

showing us and he's saying, I'm showing you the way to life and it comes through death. We all say, yeah, I want to experience the power of the resurrection. But no one wants to die. And resurrection can only happen if we die.

And so embodied in this is a promise that we come to God, and we surrender to Him and he says, present your whole selves, all the way down to your bodies as a sacrifice. That finds life on the other side of the cutting and The bleeding and the dying and the consuming of the sacrifice, there's life on the other side of that. When a man is, his hormones are raging, and sin within him rises up and his eyeballs are screaming to look. At the computer screen and gaze upon pornography.

That's an incredibly opportune moment for a Christian man. To worship God And to say, God Everything in me seems to be screaming for this. But I'm gonna die right here. And I'm going to let this be cut.

and killed. And consumed. And I'm willing for that to happen because on the other side of this is life and relationship, and intimacy, and honor and exaltation. With you See, God says, you, you do the sacrificing part, I'll take care of making sure that you find life on the other side.

Of that when you're in a conflict situation. And everything in you screams out, you wanna be right, you want everyone to know that you're right, you can't lose this argument, others you can lose, but not this one. I'm not gonna stand down, I'm not gonna stand down. That's an incredible opportunity to worship.

They come to God and say, God, I'm going to let this be cut. and bled and killed. And consumed. I'm gonna let this go up in smoke.

Because I know in your economy, I will find life, true living beyond this layer. Of dying See, when you begin to understand how it works in God's economy, and, and the power of it, you, you can get greedy for this death. Your attitude can start to be, no one's gonna take this dying from me. No one's gonna take this death from me.

And you seize upon moments, like you start getting a taste of that life on the other side of death, and you seize moments, the opportune moments to worship God by dying. God says that's the world looks at that and says, you're crazy. You are crazy. And we're like, well, you don't, you don't understand my gospel circumstances.

If you understood who my God is, and the way things operate in his economy, and you understood the degree to which he has shown his love to me, you would know that this lifestyle of dying and living on the other side of death is perfectly reasonable. See the reasonableness of this. Though the world may think you crazy, we must hasten on. There's a 5th characteristic of this worship that God says is perfectly reasonable given our gospel circumstances, and that is it involves holiness of life.

We've already basically defined what that is. He says that we are to present our bodies a living and holy sacrifice, and the idea of the word holy is something that's set apart. set apart from the world, set apart from sin, set apart from, even the normal, just like what everyone else thinks is normal, saying I am fully devoted to God. I totally belong to him, and therefore, there is to be nothing in my life that is not serviceable to God.

Anything that's not pleasing to him, anything that doesn't serve his purposes, does not belong in, in my life. And yet how often do we stop and think as believers, does, is this serviceable to God? Is this something that, that I can easily understand how this fits into God's economy and into His kingdom? This brings me closer to God.

This can be useful to God and what he's doing in my life and maybe what he wants to do in the lives of others through me. We're set apart. We're holy. When there were utensils that were dedicated to the temple, those utensils could not, no one could take those spoons or forks and And go use them for a common meal.

They were devoted to God and to use in the temple. And we are the same. We are devoted, set apart to, to God. God is not pleased when in one moment we're, we're just giving ourselves to the world and giving ourselves to things that are totally contrary to God and His ways, and then in the next moment, we're giving ourselves to Him.

We're not a holy sacrifice, if that's how we're living our life. There's a 6th and final characteristic of our worship that God calls forth from us in Romans 12:1, and that is that it is a worship that is motivated by a desire to be well pleasing to God. He says, therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, and then for some reason, the newer American Standard translators and other translations, not all, but some, just use the word acceptable.

That is so lame compared to what this word actually means.

the word here is, it's the word pleasing. And then with a prefix in front of that to intensify that literally meaning well pleasing, or extremely pleasing to God. And so our goal is that we, we, we offer our lives to God, and our ambition is not just to be acceptable to God, nor even to simply be pleasing to God, but to be extremely pleasing to God. Acceptable?

No, we go way beyond that. If my wife prepares a meal for me. For the first time and I'm partaking of that meal, and she's like, what do you think, what do you think? And if I said, well, honey, it's acceptable.

I don't, I'm just guessing, but I don't think that's going to, to make her happy or go very far with her. But if I said to her, this is pleasing, this is well pleasing, this is extremely pleasing to me. That would be satisfying to her. And so just in your mind as you understand what Paul is saying here, just, and the reason I emphasize this is because there are many times where our focus is, I just, I don't want to do anything that's going to make God angry, and that's as high as our ambition goes.

Or is this acceptable? Is this, is this possible? am I allowed to do this? Can I get by with this?

Is this, would, would God make allowance for this? Is this acceptable to him? But imagine that you're always asking the question, this thing that I'm going to watch, this thing that I'm going to listen to, this thing that I am about to go and do, is this extremely pleasing? To God.

Just add that question to whatever list of questions you have. And, and strive for those things that are extremely pleasing. Often we fill up our lives with things that we think are acceptable, or maybe pleasing that there's so little room left over for things that we know already are extremely pleasing to God. Well, Paul has And this verse delivered a call to worship, and as we see the full scope and the texture of it, we're like, wow, what a call to worship.

This is more than a song. This is a lifestyle in community with others, and it's fully or, full surrender, full devotion. It involves dying and finding life on the other side of that. My goodness, this is a really deep and profound call.

And Paul would say, now why I spent 300+ verses. Preparing you for it. And spend some time marinating in the gospel, beholding who your God is, what he's done for you in Christ, and you will find yourself just like we see Paul in the previous chapters, breaking out in the worship of God, and your worship, more and more day by day will take on the texture and the color and the depth of what Paul is calling forth from here in Romans 12:1. Let's pray together.

If you're here today and you've never put your trust in Christ, Never had your sins forgiven, you've got an opportunity today right here to become a worshiper of the true God. Will you come to him and confess your sins to him, repent and believe in Christ and call upon him for salvation and say that's, that's, that's the one I want to entrust my life to. That's the love I want to give myself to. For those of us that are believers, As we've already said, as if we live this lifestyle, there are people around us who are gonna think we're crazy.

But it is so not crazy, given our gospel circumstances. This is reasonable. And wonderful and beautiful. To fully devote ourselves and surrender ourselves.

To God Lord, help us to live fully surrendered lives rather than the painfully hard life of half surrender or no surrender at all. Help us to be done with lesser things and to give ourselves to this phenomenal love that comes from you through Christ. What a God you are. We give our bodies to you, to where we, we get up tomorrow and we're asking, what are we gonna do with God's eyes, and God's brain, and God's hands, and God's feet, all that I am, what will I listen to right now with God's ears?

My ears belong to him. What, what will I do with his ears? What will I make his eyes look at? Make us a surrendered people.

And to the degree that we fall short of that, may we be moved into a deeper experience of this worship, not by threats. Not by fear. But by this mercy that melts our hearts and endears you to us and cuts the root of our innate suspicion of God. And make us true worshippers of you.

We thank you, Lord, for the opportunity to give of our offerings to you, receive these funds that we give to you right now and do much with them for the glory of Jesus. At the same time, we surrender ourselves to you, and we do so in the name of Jesus, and all God's people said, Amen.