“Worshiping God Requires Living Sacrifices”

Romans 11:33-12:2

March 18, 2001

Introduction: One day a young Austrian nobleman strolled into a small church in a European village. As he tarried in the middle aisle, his attention was drawn to a painting hanging on the wall of the crucifixion of Christ. The soul of the artist had been flooded with love for his Savior because the Lord Jesus had redeemed him from a life of sin and folly. Underneath the picture of the Suffering Savior, the artist had written the lines,
“All this I did for you,
What have you done for Me?”
The young nobleman saw the love depicted in every feature of that divine face and was drawn to the bleeding brow and pierced hands of Jesus. Having slowly viewed the varied aspects of the picture, his gaze rested on the couplet under the picture. “All this I did for you, What have you done for Me?”
A new revelation of the claims of Jesus Christ gripped his heart. Hours passed as the young nobleman gazed on the face of his suffering Savior. The lingering rays of the afternoon sun fell on the bowed form of Nicolaus Zinzendorf, worshiping in humble devotion the Christ whose love had not only saved his soul but also conquered his heart.
From that little church Zinzendorf went forth to become the leader of the mighty missionary activities of the Moravian church. Their missionary efforts reached to the ends of the earth. Their example portrays for us the very response that the apostle Paul yearned for on the part of every believer. Paul wanted every recipient of the Gospel to be motivated by a gripping realization of the mercies of God.
What we are going to find out in our study today is that there is an extremely important connection between worship and mercy. We could be so bold as to say that our worship will lack meaning to the extent that we do not understand God’s mercy. Said another way, the mercy of God is the key motivation for our worship.
The text for our study today is a familiar New Testament passage that speaks to the issue of worship from references to mercy. When Paul wrote to the believers in Rome, he said something to them about a ‘spiritual service of worship.’ And that’s what we want to explore together this morning.
Our text is Romans 11:33-12:2.
“Oh, the depth 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 has 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. 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 spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 11:33-12:2)
Now, thus far in our series on worship we have looked at John’s Gospel and we have studied Psalm 95. We know from John’s Gospel that worship must be in spirit and in truth, that mood, feeling, forms, and styles are secondary at best. And the Psalmist has taught us some things about music, celebration, and communion with the Creator.
Today we want to look at worship from one more viewpoint and learn what is involved in pleasing God through it. There are three dimensions to worship found in this Romans text. One, worship grows out of a foundation of mercy. (It will be hard to worship God if we don’t understand ‘mercy’.) Two, worship finds expression in the sacrifice of ourselves. Three, worship can happen only with a dynamic resistance to drift, resisting whatever causes us to wander.
Now, briefly, our text.
Mercy, and our understanding of it, may be the most significant element in our worship that pleases God. Mercy forms a foundation, a diving board, a jumping off place, that plays a motivation role for our worship. So, what is mercy?
When Paul writes, “Therefore, I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God…”, he is following up on the concluding section of Romans 11. In Romans 9-11, Paul has been dealing with Israel and God’s relationship to her. She has been disobedient, God in His sovereignty has put her on the shelf, and that act of God’s has opened the door for salvation for all the Gentiles of the world.
For people outside the covenant of God with Israel to be given the opportunity to be saved is a marvelous, breath-taking concept for this little Jewish convert to Christ, the apostle Paul. He is overwhelmed in his realization that God has a master plan to spread His mercy to the far corners of the earth. God is due great praise and great glory for His wisdom, knowledge, judgments, and His ways.
Count with me the number of times Paul uses the word ‘mercy’ in the three verses just before our text.
“For just as you once were disobedient to God (‘you’ being the Romans who are receiving this letter), but now have been shown mercy because of their disobedience (‘their’ being a reference to Israel), so these also now have been disobedient, that because of the mercy shown to you they also may now be shown mercy. For God has shut up all in disobedience so that He may show mercy to all.” (Romans 11:30-32)
It is God’s great mercy that shut everyone up under disobedience so that everyone could come to feel the need to be saved. That mercy would find expression in a multitude of ways, and that leads Paul to use the plural form of mercy in 12:1 – “Therefore, I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God…”
So, what is mercy? Mercy is the sympathy God has shown to us in His work of redemption through Christ. How about a modern-day parable to define mercy?
In “The Whisper Test”, Mary Ann Bird writes: “I grew up knowing I was different, and I hated it. I was born with a cleft palate, and when I started school, my classmates made it clear to me how I looked to others: a little girl with a misshapen lip, a crooked nose, lopsided teeth, and garbled speech.
When classmates asked, ‘What happened to your lip?’ I’d tell them I’d fallen and cut it on a piece of glass. Somehow it seemed more acceptable to have suffered an accident than to have been born different. I was convinced that no one outside my family could love me.
There was, however, a teacher in the second grade whom we all adored – Mrs. Leonard was her name. She was short, round, happy – a sparkling lady.
Annually we had a hearing test. Mrs. Leonard gave the test to everyone in the class, and finally it was my turn. I knew from the previous year that as we stood against the door and covered one ear, the teacher sitting at her desk would whisper something, and we would have to repeat it back – things like ‘the sky is blue’ or ‘do you have new shoes’?
I waited there for those words that God must have put into her mouth, those seven words that changed my life. Mrs. Leonard said, in her whisper, “I wish you were my little girl.”
That, friends, is mercy. When Mary Ann Bird needed someone outside her family to love and accept her, there was Mrs. Leonard, an agent of mercy. Mercy is God’s favor expressed toward men and women who are miserable, who are in misfortunate circumstances, who are distressed. Mercy is God cleansing, healing, restoring, accepting, and justifying.
Mercy is the King of Babylon, Evil-merodach, taking the imprisoned king of Judah, Jehoiachin, out of his chains, speaking kindly to him, giving him an allowance, and setting his throne above the thrones of all the other kings also held in Babylon. (2 Kings 25)
Mercy is God looking upon the distress of the children of Israel, hearing their cry, remembering His covenant with them, feeling sorry for them, and making them objects of compassion in the presence of all their captors. (Ps. 106)
Mercy is the request of the rich man in Luke 16 who pleads from hell: “Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire!”
Mercy… what a marvelous gift to give and receive.
My friends, it is incredibly difficult to be consistent in our worship of God if we lose track of the concept of God’s mercy. Mercy is the lever that moves us to acts of service and worship. And when we are in the Scriptures, when we take time to be quiet and reflect on what God has done for us, mercy prompts our worship. “All this I did for you, What have you done for Me?” Have you had an experience of God’s mercy of late? Did it prompt you to worship? I know it did. What form did your worship take?
Now with an understanding of mercy comes sacrifice. Mercy becomes the motivation for the very real sacrifice that service is. And that service is an expression of worship. Mercy leads to worship which leads to a life of service. See how Paul says it? “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 spiritual service of worship.”
God says to us through Paul that our bodies are the agents of our actions. It is with our bodies that we accomplish acts of service that can be rightly called worship. The body is the vehicle that implements the desires and choices of the redeemed spirit within an individual.
So Paul encourages these believers to offer their bodies to God. He suggests that they place their bodies at God’s disposal. And the language Paul uses implies that this action has finality to it – this offering is not to be retrieved at some later point in time, when it’s no longer convenient, when it’s no longer comfortable. This offering, this placing our bodies at God’s disposal, is for life. The Old Testament sacrifice, which went up in smoke before God, could never be retrieved. The grammar of our text suggests the same thing.
Paul uses three adjectives to describe our action of placing our bodies at God’s disposal. Our sacrifice is to be living, it’s to be holy, it’s to be acceptable to God.
‘Living’ says that our sacrifice carries with it the newness of life which marks the ministry of the Holy Spirit within us. It’s not that our bodies are just alive; they are alive with the imprint of God’s Spirit upon them. Paul had already written to these Roman believers “that as Christ was raised from the dead…, so we too might walk in newness of life.” (Rom. 6:4) This living sacrifice has upon it the marks of the Holy Spirit, the One Who imparts the life of Jesus into our living bodies.
I’m reminded of the young man, Timothy, and how Paul described him to the Philippians. Paul said, “But I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you shortly, so that I also may be encouraged when I learn of your condition. For I have no one else of kindred spirit who will genuinely be concerned for your welfare. For they all seek after their own interests, not those of Christ Jesus. But you know of his proven worth, that he served with me in the furtherance of the gospel like a child serving his father. Therefore I hope to send him immediately, as soon as I see how things go with me…” (Philippians 2:19+)
Timothy, living for the interests of others, was obviously energized with life from the Holy Spirit.
When we place our bodies at God’s disposal as living sacrifices, we are giving Him a body that is energized by the new kind of life the Holy Spirit imparts.
This sacrifice is also characterized by the adjective, ‘holy.’ Our bodies, placed at God’s disposal, marked with the kind of life the Holy Spirit is known for, are also set apart from sin, separated from unethical practices, sexual vices, unsavory conduct. ‘Holy’ means we are devoted to God and His work in this world and we are no longer at liberty to use our bodies in unholy ways.
This sacrifice is thirdly characterized by the phrase, ‘acceptable to God.’ When we place our bodies at His disposal, He is extraordinarily pleased. Whether handicapped, mutilated, sin-stained, whatever… we can be assured that God is well-pleased with our offering placed at His disposal.
Because of God’s mercy, we ought to place our bodies at God’s disposal. These bodies are to be energized by the life of the Holy Spirit, they are to be holy, they will be acceptable and pleasing to God.
I love the story of the young man, Epaphroditus, found in Philippians 2. He’s a gambler in the positive sense of that word. The text tells us that he risked his life for the work of Christ. Literally, he ‘tossed the dice’ with his life at stake for the cause of Christ. He put his body at God’s disposal, and he came close to death in his service for the Good News. He presented his body as a living sacrifice to God, for whatever purposes God wanted its use, and God was well pleased. God gave Epaphroditus back his life, He spared Paul sorrow upon sorrow, and the Gospel made more advances against the dark kingdom.
Mercy leads us to worship and worship leads us to service, because we are no longer our own; we’ve been bought with a price, and we have put ourselves at God’s disposal.
Paul finishes this segment with a warning. Worship is always endangered by a drift into conformity with the world. “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” The good, acceptable, and perfect will of God is the very arena of our service. It is that, the will of God, that we want to be doing! But we have this tendency that lets the world squeeze us into its mold. We need a dynamic resistance to this dangerous drift.
Paul uses an interesting term here for the word ‘conformity.’ It’s a compound verb that suggests a conformity that is external and foreign to the believer’s inner life. It’s like we prefer blue shirts, but mom or wife presses a brown one on us. The noun form of this verb, ‘scheme’, also denotes a pattern of life that does not come from within but is imposed from without. Thus, Paul’s warning is directed against a type of life that does not come from what believers are in their inner being as born-again children of God.
And further, this conformity, which is the result of pressure from the world, must be constantly resisted. The world wants us to sin, to be estranged from God, to be self-willed, self-seeking, to be rebellious. Paul’s verb says we have a part in either accepting the pressure and being conformed or resisting it and being transformed.
Robert O. Anderson is now 87 years old. When he was in his early 20’s, just out of the University of Chicago, he worked for Malco Refining Inc. Malco Refining was a small oil refinery in Artesia, New Mexico and Anderson was convinced that production could be doubled at the plant.
As part-owner, perhaps through the help of his father who was a vice-president at First National Bank of Chicago, he brought in new equipment and experimented with refining the oil at different temperatures. When his ideas were met with skepticism, doubt being expressed with the words, “That’s never been tried before,” Anderson would say, “Well, let’s try it NOW!”
He became famous for his response to the phrase, “We don’t do it that way.” His response: There’s only one place for that phrase: in the garbage. Before his retirement, Anderson had become the CEO of Atlantic-Richfield Company. In his own secular way, he refused to be squeezed by the pressure of his world.
Paul had said we could either accept the pressure and be conformed or we could resist it and be transformed.
‘Transformed’ is our word ‘metamorphosis’ which describes the amazing change of a lowly worm into a beautiful butterfly. So to be transformed means more than something superficial on the outside. It has in mind a vital change that reveals a new life! ‘To be transformed’ looks at the work of the Holy Spirit in a progressive, on-going manner. We just have to maintain the connections and the conditions under which God brings about the changes. Our minds get renewed, and our perceptions, our judgments, our understanding, and our feelings get washed clean from the stains left by sin.
And out of transformed minds comes actions and conduct of the body that are pleasing to God. That is the only way we resist the drift toward conformity to our dark world.
This twofold challenge, daily resisting conforming to the world and daily being transformed in Christ, is foundational to all Christian living. It weans us from the world, it keeps us in touch with mercy; it keeps us worshiping; it keeps us serving.
“When he heard the shouts, Robert J. Thomas looked up from reading his Bible. Korean soldiers were boarding the ship, waving long, flashing knives. When he saw that he was going to be killed, he held out the Korean Bible to them saying, ‘Jesus, Jesus.’ His head was cut off.
Robert J. Thomas, the first missionary to Korea, survived only a few months in that country. He had been ordained on June 4, 1863, at a little church in Hanover, Wales. He and his wife left for Korea in July, sent by the London Mission Society. His wife died soon after their arrival in Shanghai, China.
Thomas went on alone to Korea, where he began to learn the language and evangelize. In 1866, Thomas rode the American ship, The General Sherman, along the Taedong River. When the Sherman ran aground on a sandbar, the Korean soldiers on shore became suspicious, boarded the ship, and killed the foreigners, including Thomas.
Twenty-five years after Thomas’ death, someone discovered a little guesthouse in this area with some strange wallpaper. The paper had Korean characters printed on it. The owner of the house explained that he had used the pages of a book to paste on the wall. Not only the owner, but many of the guests would come in and stay to read the walls – to read the pages of the Bible Thomas had given to his murderers.
There is a church that grew up in that area and it still lives. The brief work of Robert J. Thomas, the missionary, continues on. Today, more than a hundred Christian families secretly worship Jesus Christ in this area of North Korea.”
If we are tempted to call Thomas’ years of preparation a waste, recognizing that he only worked for a short three months, never converting even one person, giving up his life and the life of his wife… then we don’t understand the ways of God.
He shows mercies in a multitude of ways, He expects that mercy to motivate our worship, and out of that worship He wants our service. And He wants us to stay unspotted from the world so that we see His mercy clearly, and we are motivated to worship Him in such a way that we are moved to serve Him… like Nicolaus Zinzendorf and Robert J. Thomas. Mercy comes first, then worship, then service. And all that is enhanced by our moving away from the patterns of the world.
Mercy always triumphs over judgment!
Worship is so much more than a good feeling here on Sunday mornings.
Service is the sequel to spiritual worship.
Resisting the drift into conformity with the world is a sobering obligation.
A few questions as we go: How have we seen His mercy this past week and what did we do with that experience? In what ways did we worship? What attractions of the world draw us away from that mercy, worship, and service? What ungodly undertows are drawing us away from our communion with Him? How do we become genuinely concerned for the interests of others, like a Timothy? When did we last roll the dice, take a risk, for the Gospel’s sake? Have we given anyone the whisper test recently? Mercy is Jesus saying, “All this I did for you.” Worship and service has an answer for “What have you done for Me?” Being transformed, refusing to be conformed, draws us deeper into His mercy.


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