RESPONDING TO GOD’S AMAZING MERCIES
God is good! He is exceedingly, abundantly good! His love endures forever and he loves us without wavering. Even when we were lost in our sins he loved us. God gave us Jesus, His only Son when we hated him and despised God. He loved us when we were unlovable. God is gracious to us!
Now how do we respond to a God like this?
Worship!
That does not mean turning in your hymnal to song number seven (though I do love that song) or gazing upon the wall. It has less to do with liturgy or form than we typically think. We need organized worship times but this is not what I am talking about.
One evening when Sharon, Katy and Ethan were out and I was left alone with the dogs, I went to the backyard for the dogs’ sake. I was struggling. I needed to hear from God. More Bible study would not help, so I turned to my iPod to play my favorites.
I tell you this not to brag; I believe the Lord brought it to my mind to share. In fact, I would rather keep it private. I needed to worship God with my heart. Three songs helped me particularly: We remember (Newsboys); Living Water; and Rich Mullins “sing your praise to the Lord.”
My heart was broken by these songs. The songs were not worship. No, inside of me there was a yearning for God in my time of struggle. Eventually I fell to my knees, my arms went up in praise, tears coming to my eyes. Yes, part of me wondered what my neighbor thought, since the music was in my earphones and all he could see was a guy silent on his knees arms outstretched. It didn’t matter.
What part of this was worship? Some of it. All of it. None of it. The part that was from the heart.
What is worship?
We are going to look at two verses this morning in chapter 12 of Romans. These two verses have immensely more to say about worship than I can adequately convey. But we are going to unpack them and begin to study the practical chapters of Romans. Now that we know that God loves us so much, what are we going to do about it?
1. Offer your body to the Lord
The Apostle Paul calls on all who have understood and received God’s salvation to worship him. Here he provides the “how” of worship and urges believers to respond appropriately.
We begin with a significant “Therefore.” Did you know there are four “therefore” statements in Romans? In the NIV there are five, but for our point let’s stick with these four. Romans 3:20 is the “therefore” of condemnation: “Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.” Romans 5:1 is the “therefore” of justification: “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Romans 8:1 is the “therefore” of assurance: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” And Romans 12:1 is the “therefore” of surrender.[i]
Paul is saying that even though we were condemned by our sins we have been saved through faith in Christ and the condemnation is gone. This is his entire argument of chapters 1-11, and now he is saying in light of all this, we should surrender to God. How?
In view of God’s mercies…for some reason the NIV translates this singularly as “mercy.” But when you read the text of Romans you are compelled to agree that God’s mercies are abundant and many.
In view of God’s mercies, Paul first urges us to surrender our bodies to the Lord. Isn’t that strange? I believe that as Christians we value our bodies the least. We believe in the resurrection of the dead and the hope that our misshapen bodies will be made new in eternity. Most of us might look at our bodies as agents of sin. We have believed the lie of the ancient Greek philosophers that taught that our bodies are evil and only the spirit is good.
But God wants our bodies. That says a lot about how God views our bodies right now. A few chapters back, Paul had written, “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” (Rom 6:13).
The body is where action takes place. This is movement and presence. Whatever we do, wherever we go, we bring our bodies with us. What we do matters. Our bodies are instruments of worship. The opposite of offering our bodies to sin is to offer them to God as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God.
Someone said that the problem with living sacrifices is that they keep crawling off the altar. No, that’s only true if someone else is doing the offering. You must offer yourself.
Douglas J. Moo wrote, "Worship is not merely, or even mainly, what we do on Sunday morning. Worship is a 24/7 matter. We worship God when we give ourselves to him in service. We worship God when we show love to others, when we do our jobs faithfully and with integrity, when we play with our kids and nurture our families. God wants us always to be bringing glory to him by the way we live."
“This is your spiritual act of worship.” It is too bad, scholars say, that translators used “spiritual” instead of “rational” or “reasonable.” For it is the mind that Paul is thinking of in respect to worship, because the mind of the sinner is what was messed up. It is the mind that is retrained in chapters 1-11 to consider what God has done. Now Paul calls upon the Christian to exercise his or her mind to conclude that the worship of sacrificial service is the only proper response to God’s mercies.
When we offer our bodies in sacrifice like this we profess that our bodies belong to God. My life is not my own. This body is surrendered to the Lord’s purposes, to do, to speak, to act according to what is pleasing to God. This becomes our driving desire: to please God.
Our response of gratitude must be to give back to God as a sacrifice of praise. It is a living sacrifice expressed in service. Worship is not a Sunday morning activity then, it is a lifestyle.
2. Renew your mind in Christ
Paul has hinted at the place of our minds in worship, now he comes directly to the point. You can bring your body to a worship service but unless the mind is engaged you may as well be a corpse in a pew.
Tony Evans says, “If you limit worship to where you are, the minute you leave that place of worship you will leave your attitude of worship behind like a crumpled-up church bulletin.”
The same is true for the lifestyle of worship. Our minds are thinking all the time. Even when we go to sleep our minds don’t quit. What are you thinking about? We might say, “I can’t help what I think,” but this is not true.
Paul wrote, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world…” (12:2a). The word “conform” in Greek is where we get our word “scheme” from and sometimes is translated “fashion.” In other words, don’t follow the scheme of this world; don’t be fashioned by society’s values.
Those values are primarily selfish, not selfless. One of those annoying weight loss commercials featured a man who said to his wife, “If I lose X amount of pounds, I’m going to buy myself a new boat for my birthday.” Another joyfully proclaimed, “Now I can go out with my friends.” Why couldn’t she go out before? Here is a creature created in the image of God denying others the joy of knowing her because she is overweight.
When believers are conformed to the values of this world others can see little difference between a Christian and everyone else. One value that the world needs to see in us is “selflessness.” There is enough selfishness already.
“…but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (12:2b). That word “transformed” refers to an inner change. We get the word “metamorphosis” from this Greek word. A metamorphosis is not something we can do on our own. If we present ourselves as living sacrifices and reflect upon the mercies of God as evidenced in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit will transform our minds.[ii]
This is the same word that is used for the transfiguration of Jesus in the gospels. Although the evangelists say that his hands, his face, and his clothing shone, Mark is clear that Jesus himself was transfigured before them.[iii] A complete change came over him. When Paul uses this word of us he speaks of a similar transformation where fundamentally our character and conduct change from world values driven to Christ values driven.
One man expressed these values exceptionally this last week. Whether he is a follower of Christ or not, I don’t know. This man is a Winnipeg Transit Bus Driver and as he was bringing his bus through the Portage and Main intersection he spied a homeless man with no shoes. He stopped the bus, an unscheduled stop, and hopped out to give the man his own shoes.
Our knowledge of Christ and our relationship to Him and with Him is attractive, so much so that others are drawn to the mysterious, they are drawn to that "something about you" which haunts their thoughts and wets their appetite for what you possess. As we go about our daily lives with its demands and challenges and in the process of life demonstrate joy and peace; when we respond to humanities pain and needs around us, a fragrance is released. People wonder, "What was that? Why did you do that? Why do you care what happens to me?" The fragrance of the knowledge of Christ is released and lives are touched and changed.[iv]
It is in these moments we become living and holy sacrifices; in these moments, we WORSHIP.
This is how our minds are renewed in Christ. “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph 4:22-24). The new self is Christ. Living like Christ is worship.
3. Surrender your will to God
Worship is surrender of the body; worship is the surrender of your mind; and worship is the surrender of your will. The body represents our movement, conduct and actions; the mind represents our thought life, our reasoning, our logic and our values; the will then, represents our purposes, our agendas and ambitions.
Once you give your body and your mind to God, then Paul writes, “…you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will” (12:2c).
When we think of the will of God we may be tempted to think of “the will of God for my life.” It is not that specific to me in my situation; that’s not what Paul means. There is something much broader in mind.
To the Ephesians Paul wrote that they should understand what the Lord’s will is (Eph 5:17). God’s will is his basic scheme for life. When we learn what his will is we will demonstrate it to others. An example of this is Christ’s command that we love one another – everyone will know we follow him if we love each other. This is his will and we are to demonstrate it.
Verses 3-8 stand as further examples of the Lord’s will in this respect. Do not think more highly of yourself than you ought (v. 3), remember you are part of a body (v. 4-5), and respect the place of your gift within a fully gifted church (v. 6-8).
The end goal is to so surrender your will to God’s will, his plans, his purposes, that you can approve his will. That sounds like us giving God the thumbs up on his plans. Rather the picture we have of approving God’s will is that we rejoice in his will and rejoice in doing his will – that’s what approving his will means.
There’s a story of a young woman who wanted to go to college, but her heart sank when she read the question on the application blank that asked, "Are you a leader?" Being both honest and conscientious, she wrote, "No," and returned the application, expecting the worst.
To her surprise, she received this letter from the college: "Dear Applicant: A study of the application forms reveals that this year our college will have 1,452 new leaders. We are accepting you because we feel it is imperative that they have at least one follower."
Surrendering our will to God is exemplified in this young woman’s application. If we are honest and forthright about ourselves we will admit that we have no idea where we are going and that we need to follow someone who does. Surrendering our will to God to follow his will is shedding the false pretense that we are in control and confessing that, in all reality, God is the only One who knows what’s going on. That means in success and failure, in pleasure and in pain, in joy and in sorrow. Your will is my will Lord; Let your will be done.
Conclusion
How shall we respond to the mercies of God?
We must respond to the grace of God in Christ Jesus. He has personified the love of God in his sacrifice on the cross. We respond first by believing in Jesus as our Savior. We respond secondly by gratefully worshiping him by a lifestyle of worship expressed in service.
Jesus was eating with a Pharisee who had invited him to dinner. While Jesus was reclining at the table a woman of sinful reputation came in to that house with a jar of perfume. She wept and wept, tears streaming on Jesus’ feet, which she then dried with her hair. She kissed his feet and poured the perfume on them in an extravagant display of love for her Savior.
The Pharisee host was incensed and said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is – that she is a sinner.”
Jesus replied, “Two men owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he cancelled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”
The Pharisee replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt cancelled.”
“Right,” said Jesus. “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured out perfume on my feet. Therefore I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven – for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little.”
We do not have Jesus here to wash his feet or anoint him. But we want to love him and worship him. How do we do that? Jesus said, “Whatever you do to the least of these people you do to me.”
What is worship without sacrifice? What is worship without love? I urge you brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercies, to offer your bodies, minds and wills as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is your reasonable act of worship.
AMEN
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