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Printer Friendly VersionI. Introduction
A. Earlier in this season of Epiphany we explored Jesus’
revelation of true worship
1. By Jacob’s well in Samaria he had disclosed that
a) Authentic worship was no longer a location
b) The seeker was/is God
(1) The goal is those who worship in spirit (Spirit)
(2) The location is everywhere
2. Now we come to Holy Scriptures’ detailed description
of that worship
a) Paul has brought us in Romans through a detailed description
(1) Of the failure of the Old Covenant
(2) Of the inability of the flesh (physical) to meet God’s
requirement
b) To an actual description of the spiritual life (Romans 8)
3. Now he calls us to a life of worship
a) This is a call into the very mind of God
b) He concludes the first chapters in a Doxology
c) Romans 11:33 O how beyond explanation and discernment is
the depth of the wealth of God’s wisdom and knowledge – how impossible
to comprehend are his decisions and ways! For who has known the mind of the
Lord, or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him that he
might be repaid?
II. Beyond our Corruption
A. What we are about is LIFE
1. Paul’s appeal is to more than a decisive act
a) This is where we begin
b) But the call is to an ongoing life
2. Paul exhorts (partakalo) us through God’s compassion
a) Literally “by means of God’s mercy” 2 Corinthians
1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of
mercies and God of all comfort,
b) God being the Father of all of our mercies
3. That we present ourselves (in the plural in the ancient tongue)
a) Paul chose liturgical language here
b) This word was used of an ancient priest in the sacrificial
act of worship
(1) Present in the writings of Josephus as he describes the
Jerusalem Temple rites
(2) Rarely used in the New Testament – but is used by Luke
for the presentation of Jesus in the Temple by his parents
4. Paul makes a call for us to bring our sacrifice to God
5. If we are not careful this will be about church
a) Or religion
b) Or the community
c) Or ministry
6. The issue here is life and its Creator
a) Here we are called to think beyond a service of worship
b) To see spirituality as God sees it
c) Isaiah 55:8-9 My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither
are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the
earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
B. Yet how shall we know God? How are we to grasp him?
1. This calls for revelation
2. God must disclose himself
a) John 1:18 No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son,
who is in the Father’s bosom, who has made him known.
b) 2 Corinthians 5:19 God was in Christ reconciling the world
(cosmos) to himself, not holding men’s trespasses against them.
C. Scripture says God has made himself known:
1. Colossians 1:15 He is the image of the invisible God, the
firstborn of all creation.
2. Here it is
a) God was in Christ reconciling
b) In Christ God revealing
c) And presenting life
3. Jesus claimed this revelation in himself
a) John 5:37-40 The Father who sent me has testified about me.
You have never heard his voice or seen his form, and you do not have his word
abiding in you, because you do not believe him whom he has sent. You search
the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it
is they that testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life.
b) John 14:9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all
this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen
the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?”
D. The issue is life itself
1. Life that originated in God
2. And is defined by God
a) This is the life we are now called to offer to him
b) In Christ God gave his life for us
c) We are now to give ours to him
(1) He died for us.
(2) We die while remaining to live
(a) This is a reciprocal surrender of self
(b) To meet in a mutual crucifixion
III. Beyond the Momentary
A. Let’s trace briefly what Paul has said in this message
to believers in Rome
1. God has summed up all humanity as disobedient:
a) All have sinned
b) All are gone from the right
2. Life is not the way it is supposed to be!
a) Romans 1:21 Though they knew God, they did not honor him
as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and
their senseless minds were darkened.
b) We did not glorify God as God
c) Nor were we thankful
3. We became less than we were intended to be
a) Originally created in the image of God
b) We now lived in the image of Adam
B. We lived to the momentary – to the NOW
1. Life was lived centered in preservation of self
2. As a natural or animal man
C. The Gospel is a call to live in Doxology
1. Beyond the momentary
2. Beyond our self
a) In the power of God we can live
b) Jude 24 Now to him who is able to keep you from falling and
to present you faultless before his presence with rejoicing in glory, to and
through the only God and Savior, Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty,
dominion, and authority before all time and now and for ever. Amen.
IV. Beyond Trivial Pursuit
A. Paul’s call to a spiritual sacrifice is all encompassing
1. We give our whole being
a) Life in the present tense
b) While we are alive we are slain in Christ
(1) Romans 6:10-11 The death he died to sin, once for all, but
the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves truly
dead to sin while alive to God in Christ Jesus.
(2) This produces the life Paul calls free from sin (6:20)
B. This requires a non-conformity
1. Even in Christ we must learn to live beyond the petty
a) The church, and you as a believer, are always being pulled
into the trivial and out of the eternal
b) Colossians 2:8 See to it that no one makes a prey of you
by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to
the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ.
2. Romans 6:7 For whoever has died is freed from sin.
C. God has revealed himself in Christ
1. The center of that revelation is the crucified One
2. Who calls us – whoever we are to unite our being with
his in a world- transforming new creation
D. Beyond our little causes
1. Fundamentalism – fossilizes the Scriptures
2. Dogmatism – freezes the spirit
3. Legalism – deadens the intellect
4. Secularization – (opening the church to the world) leads
to the abandonment of the cross and the essence of Christianity
V. Into the Absolute Reality
A. God has established his own righteousness
1. Determined by the Divine nature
2. Not according to us
3. Not established by us
a) Given in Christ
(1) We had lost the image of God in which we were originally
created
(2) Christ came in the fullness of that image
(3) And calls us to return to our original design – God’s
will
b) Measured by the fullness of Christ
(1) Philippians 2:5-11 Have this attitude in yourselves which
was also in Christ Jesus, who, though existing in the Divine nature did not
regard unity with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking
the nature of a slave to be born in human likeness. When assuming human nature,
he submitted himself in obedience to the point of death – even death
on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that
is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
B. The nature of godliness
1. Achieved by and in God alone
a) God in Christ gave his life for us
b) We are to be conformed to him
c) This all comes in a sacrificial act
d) Mark 8:34 He called to him the multitude with his disciples,
and said to them, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself
and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will
lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will
save it.”
(1) Christ embraces the cross in his Father’s will
(2) We correspond in our everyday life
(3) Jesus is the crucified Lord of a crucified people
C. All of this opens up the “discerning of the will of
God”
1. This is the center of spiritual worship
a) That we might know the mind of Christ
b) And be conformed to him
c) Galatians 6:14 having put on the new nature, which is being
renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.
VI. Conclusion
It is all from God
Through God
For God
And exists only through him
That we might be like him – living as though we were not our own –
walking in Christ – knowing the good and perfect will of God