Please turn again in the Bible to the book of Romans, at chapter 12. The book of Romans, chapter 12. You can find it on page 947. I'm going to read the last verse of chapter 11. In the first two verses of chapter 12, please give your attention to the word of God. For from him, and through him, and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, and what is good, and acceptable, and perfect. Now, we covered this last week. We covered how the word, therefore, calls us to think, and to connect the mercies of God to how we are to live. But I said that the sacrifice theme here is so important that we would put it off until this week. You know, in our part of the world, cities are very different than they used to be. In the ancient world, cities were centered on temples. The most impressive building in the city might well not be the king's palace. It might very well be a temple. Whether a temple to the Lord, or a temple to Aphrodite, or a temple to Zeus, often you'd have a temple. And in that temple, there would be many sacrifices offered. Now this summer, I was at the White Lake Church, and they showed a video during Sunday school. And they showed a video from Bangladesh. Recent video. And they showed men, not in a temple, but right out on the streets, all laying their hands on a cow that they were going to slaughter as a sacrifice, an Islamic sacrifice. Which reminds us that sacrifice is not simply an ancient thing. It depends in what city you find yourself living. But you do not see that here. Now, why is that? You might be tempted to say because America is a modern country. But that would be flawed. Bangladesh is more modern than London was 300 years ago. And you would not have seen the sacrifices in London 300 years ago, or 600, or 900. Now, the difference is not modern, or secular, or scientific. The difference is the impact of Jesus Christ. Because Jesus Christ, once for all, offered himself. the lands where the gospel of Jesus has had a powerful impact, we do not sacrifice. We don't sacrifice if we're Christians, and we don't sacrifice if we're not Christians. In the countries where the gospel has gone powerfully, sacrifice fades away. Does that mean the sacrifice was a mistake? No. Sacrifice embodies a true pagan intuition. And among the Israelites, it was truly a command of God. Rather, it was to foreshadow Jesus Christ. That's familiar to us. What we have in this passage is it's also to foreshadow how we are to live today. It is to foreshadow us. Because as you see here, it says, present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. We have here a return of some language we got back in Chapter 6. I said last week that for 11 chapters he simply states that what God has done to save us in the indicative mood. And I said beginning here at Chapter 12 we get many imperatives for how we are then to live. The exception I didn't note last week was in Chapter 6. In chapter 6, the question is, so if we're saved by God's grace, can we just keep on sinning? And he said, by no means. We've died to sin. So he needs, at that point, to give some indication of where he's going. He says, present your members to God for obedience. Whenever you present your members to somebody to obey them, you're slaves of the one that you obey. So we had a little bit of imperative back in chapter 6. He brings it back, the same kind of language here. He says, present your bodies to God. To God. Our lives are to be God-centered. It's not to be spouse-centered. It's not to be boss-centered. It's not to be school-centered. It's not to be children-centered. Now certainly, through the years of your life, you may be finding the bulk of your time in the one domain or the other. And yet the fundamental reality of our life is to be God-centered, present your members to God. Because the issue here is rule. What has the lordship in your life? As it says in chapter 6, whenever you present your bodies to someone to obey them, you are slaves of the one you obey. It's not a question of whether you're going to be slave or free in this way of talking about it. The question is, who's the master? The obedience is to be taken for granted. The question is, who are you going to obey? So let us go to God to obey. You say, but I have to go to school. Well, yes, because God is calling you at this point in your life to go to school. But if you go to school, the master is not the teacher. The master is God. Well, it's very practical, actually, to pray every morning, to remind yourself, to, in that way, present yourself to God early in the morning, so that in all that you do, you are already reminded for that day who the master is. So he says, present your bodies as a living sacrifice to God. But can you? Will he have you? As soon as you begin to think about God and your need to go to God, the devil tries to throw whatever he can at the problem. For him, it's a problem. So having phrased it, once he fails to get you to not be interested in God, then his next thing is to say, well, God will not have you. So that is where sacrifice comes in. Sacrifice was central in the Old Testament and central to making the worshipper acceptable to God. How far back in the Bible does sacrifice go? Well, if you think about it, the first murder was a result of two sacrifices. Cain and Abel both go to God and they sacrifice different things to God. And God has regard for Abel's sacrifice and not Cain's. And Cain is so upset he kills Abel. Which shows us the sacrifice is ancient and important. You go on. Children, you've been taught that Noah put two of every kind of animal on the ark. That's not correct. Read it again. Two of every kind of animal and seven of every clean animal. Go back and read it if you don't believe me. It's right in there. Now, why do you want seven? That's an odd number. You can't pair up with seven. So you can sacrifice one, because they're the clean animals. And that's what Noah does. As soon as he gets off the ark, he builds an altar and offers a sacrifice to God. Two by two, he better not be sacrificing. Abraham, he goes to the promised land, and what does he do? He moves around, God appears to him, and he builds altars. He leaves altars all over the promised land. So already, before you ever get to Mount Sinai, you see how central sacrifice is to the worship of God. And so we saw in Exodus 19, you will be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. And there in chapter 24, there's a covenant ceremony. And Moses has the young men sacrifice animals and gather up the blood. And he throws the blood on the side of, I think it's the pillars, to represent God's hand. Then he reads the book to the people. They say, we will do it. Then he throws the blood on the people. He says, behold, the blood of the covenant. So then the book goes on to say, here is how you will build the tabernacle, precisely how. Here is how you will build the altar in the tabernacle, precisely how. Here is how you will dress the priest, precisely how. Here is how you will march through the wilderness, and the tabernacle will be carried by the Levites in the middle of the line of march. Here is how you will set up your camp when it's time for camp. And again, the tabernacle is in the center, with three tribes to the north, three to the south, three to the east, three to the west. Notice how sacrifice is central. to making the worshipper acceptable to God. Now, like everything else, priest and sacrifice get tainted by sin. And so right away at the beginning, when they're first ordained, Aaron and his sons, two of his sons get excited and decide to do their own thing, and the Lord strikes them dead. A little later on, we meet Eli. Eli seems to be a holy man, but his sons are doing outrageous things with the sacrifice and with the ladies who work at the at the tabernacle. And later on, when David gets old, we discover that one head priest is siding with Solomon, while another head priest is siding with Adonijah. You see the priests getting caught up in politics, caught up in corruption, caught up in inventing their own worship. And so as you read the Old Testament, God condemns the sin involved in all that, but he also points beyond sacrifices. In Isaiah and Amos, he says, I hate your sacrifices. Now, how could he hate their sacrifices? He commanded them to do it. And he's not saying in that place that they're doing them wrong. Instead, he's saying, I hate that you think you can do a sacrifice and then go on and commit murder or commit oppression or slavery. I hate that you think that you can do this and then go on living as if I don't know or I don't care. So in the Psalms that we sang, he says, Psalm 40, sacrifice you have not desired. Kind of a strange thing to say when he's commanded them. But it says, but a body you have prepared for me. In Psalm 50 that we sang, make your sacrifice thanksgiving and pay your vows to the Lord. And when you're in trouble, call on God. And when he saves you, praise him. These are the sacrifices that God wants. And as we will sing in Psalm 51, the sacrifices of God are a humble and a contrite heart. So are we supposed to ignore all the commands and sacrifices? No. The Psalm 51 will end, then, when you accept me, because I am humble and contrite, then I will give you the sacrifices that you have commanded. So the sacrifices, they're central to making the worshipper acceptable, and yet they're not central. They're central physically in the cities and on the march. They must happen. And yet, the real question is the heart and the obedience and the life of the worshiper. Israel was never the holy nation that God called them to be, but it was promised that they would be achieved. So it says in Isaiah 62, you will be a holy people. So what you read here, present your bodies as a living sacrifice. We're picking up a very important theme in the Old Testament, the theme of sacrifice, the theme of God making a separation between the sinner and his sin, so that he can punish the sin in the person of a substitute, and thereby declare the sinner forgiven. And Jesus came, and he made sacrifice central to his work. He said, enigmatically, he said, destroy this temple, standing in the middle of a huge temple. He said, destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up, which is not a statement about building. He was not claiming to have a superior construction technique. He was instead changing the meaning of temple from the building to himself. And when he was raised on the third day, then they understood. He said, I did not come to be served, but to serve and to give my life as a ransom for many. He speaks here of the sacrifice of his life that others may be set free and delivered. And he waited to have the Last Supper at the Passover so that it would bring to mind all about the Passover, that the people were delivered by the blood of the Lamb spread over the doorposts. And he himself is called our master. And so God Almighty did something crucial at the moment that Jesus was crucified. When Jesus gave up the spirit, it says that the curtain in the temple was torn from top to bottom. Now, this curtain was 60 or 80 feet high. So this was a supernatural act, that at the moment of somebody dying outside the city, some giant heavy curtain is torn inside the city, inside the temple. And that was a crucial statement. God messing up his own temple. God opening the way into the holy place inside his own temple. And so as we've seen in this book of Romans, Jesus is the propitiation for our sins. That is, He is the sacrifice who has absorbed God's anger against our sins so that the way is open for us to come to God. Some of us saw a video on Friday night. We say, Jesus saves us. What does Jesus save us from? He saves us from God, from God's wrath. Look at the book of Romans. In Jesus, the righteousness of God is revealed, 117. Because the wrath of God is revealed, 118. Jesus saves us from God's wrath against our sins. And how could he offer sacrifice? We'll talk about that tonight. Because he becomes our priest. He alone is both the priest and the sacrifice. And he brings to an end the older sister. God signals us when He tears the curtain open in the temple in which the sacrifices were offered. Now, let's come back to you. It says, present your bodies as a living sacrifice acceptable to God. Will God accept you? Well, you can go to God presenting your body to Him as a sacrifice, because Jesus has first gone to God presenting His own. You can go to God as a living sacrifice, because Jesus was a God as a dying sacrifice. And for this reason, you can have confidence that you can go in and present your body to God. That's why the veil was torn, to say the way to the holy place is now open. Priests can go right on in. In fact, believers can go right on in. It says there's a new living way through his flesh. So that's pretty much the whole point of the great book of Hebrews, is let us go boldly to God, because we can. Because we have Jesus opening up our way. Something else is coming to the fore here in the book of Romans, and that is our union with Christ. Earlier, when he began to talk about present your bodies to God, he said, how can we who have died to sin still live in it. Do you not know that we are in Christ? We've been baptized in the Christ's death, so that we may live a new life as Jesus lives a new life. We are in Him. In our union with Christ, since He is both priest and sacrifice, and we are in Him, then on our own level and in our own way, we can be priests and sacrifice. You say, that's too much. I say, that's right there. Present your bodies as a living sacrifice acceptable to God. Who's the sacrifice? You. Who's going to present it? You again. In Christ, we also can be in our own way, not like his way, a derivative priest and sacrifice. So we have here the roots of what some of the Reformers talked a great deal about, the priesthood of all believers. Now, you have to get this doctrine right. In the Roman Catholic Church, they taught and still teach that you have God, yes, and you have Jesus, who is God the Son, yes, and is also our mediator, yes, and then they put the priest in there between Jesus and the rest of us. The priest becomes a link in the chain, a necessary mediator. And not just the priest, but the priest and the sacraments. You must go to the priest for confession, and then you are admitted to the Mass, that the priest gives you the Mass, and now you have Jesus Christ. So you have a link in a chain. The priest has a necessary role in the Roman Catholic way of operating. That has very little to do with what we're reading here in the New Testament. So the radical Protestants said, well, let's destroy everything between you and Jesus. Let's have no priests, no ministers, no elders, no nothing. Let us all be friends. That's one radical Protestant approach. Just Jesus and us. And the main body of the Reformers said, well, hang on a second. It is perfectly true that nobody stands between you and Jesus. Jesus is our priest. You have access to Jesus. At the same time, we do have pastors, elders, and teachers in the New Testament. So let us have pastors, elders, and teachers who are not a link in a chain, but rather a guide, an appointer, and a teacher. This is how it is done. Let me proclaim the Word of God to you, so that you may go into God's presence by the blood of Jesus. This is part of why you don't see me wearing special clothes. I don't want to feed the idea that you need me as a link in a chain. No, you need me as your elder, pointing out to you the way of God. But I'm not a mediator for you. I'll pray for you, but don't think my prayers are more effective than your prayers. I'll pray for you, but that doesn't mean that I'm closer to God than you are. Not at all. All of us are called to draw near to God. And all of us are, well, who knows? Who's to say how near to God we are? In Christ, you and I become priest and sacrifice. It says, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice. And when you present your body to God as a living sacrifice, your dishonor is taken away. And what do I mean, your dishonor? Well, Romans, again, began with dishonor. It's that although people know God, they don't want to honor him as God or give him thanks, but their foolish mind is darkened, they withdraw from God, they give glory to creative things, and God turns them over in the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves. In Romans 1, that has a particular sexual connotation to it. But it doesn't stop there. In Romans 3, he goes on and talks about sinners and what do sinners do. And so he quotes many passages from the Old Testament. And he begins with the mouth. Their throat is an open grave. With their lips, they deceive. He goes on to their feet. Their feet are quick to shed blood. In Romans 6 terms, when you present your bodies to anyone to obey them, your slaves are the one you obey. But in Christ, there's a change. So in Christ, he says, chapter 6, present your bodies rather to God. Here, present your bodies to God. As you present your bodies to God, there is a change so that even your feet can be beautiful. Chapter 10. As you present your bodies to God, your bodily dishonor is changed into honor. And so here we have hope and purpose. Whatever your sins, in Christ they're forgiven. Whatever your habits, in Christ they can be changed. Yes, whatever your confusion, in Christ you have light. Yes, present your bodies to God, and your dishonor is turned to honor. And when you present your bodies to God as living sacrifices, you fulfill God's word. Then we do become the kingdom of priests, as was spoken of in Exodus 19. You remember I said, in Isaiah 62, there's this promise that you will be called the holy people. And so in 1 Peter it says of us who believe in Jesus that you are a royal priesthood, you are a holy nation, you are a people for His own possession. We fulfill Psalm 110 when in the day of Jesus' power we become Him as a willing people. In the book of Revelation, this is surprisingly important. Revelation 1, we start off praising Jesus because He's made us to be a kingdom, priests to our God. And then when John gets to see into the throne room of heaven, he sees the elders throwing their crowns before the Lamb and saying, and He has made them to be priests to our God. And when you come to Revelation 20, about a thousand years again, and He has made them to be priests again. It's a very important theme there in the book of Revelation. And so when you present your bodies to God as a living sacrifice, as you do this priestly service, you fulfill God's Word. So, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. He puts the word living in there. Why? Well, first, to make it abundantly clear, He does not refer to killing yourself. Not that kind of sacrifice. You are to be a living sacrifice. This makes you better than the dead animals. You, yourself being human, are nobler than the animals. And of course, the biggest thing about something living is that it is still living. It continues to live. The animals suffered once, and they were done. But we are to be ongoing, continual sacrifices to God. This, from the word living. And why did you say the word body? To make the parallel with the animal bodies that were sacrificed. He continues to invoke, use adjectives that make us think of that, so that it can shed light on this. A holy sacrifice. That's why we read that passage in Leviticus 22, saying what kind of animal God wanted. Not the blind one. Not the runt. Not the ugly one. What is the symbolism of that? And so we are to present ourselves as holy sacrifices. Now, only Christ is pure. But He's our sacrifice for our sin. And so we go in Him. We're to abide in Him. As we come to God, we are to be dead to sin and alive to God. It's a call to kill the sin in our lives, but it's not a call to stay away. For you will not kill the sin in your lives apart from God. The very apartness from God, that is the sin. So you must go to God with a humble and a contrite heart, Psalm 51. You must call on Him in your trouble, Psalm 50. And you must go to Him and say, a body you have prepared for me, Psalm 40. Here I am before you. We must go to Him as a holy sacrifice, that is, seeking in Christ to put sin to death, and acceptable. We didn't even read this, but often as you read in the Old Testament, there's this talk about the sacrifice needs to be a sweet-smelling savor. pleasing to God. And that whole concept here is captured in the word acceptable. What pleases God? Well, faithfulness is acceptable to God when our loyalty is not divided. In 1 Corinthians 6, it talks about our bodies being temples of the Holy Spirit. And being temples of the Holy Spirit, they are not to be defiled sexually. Sometimes when people come out of the world and they believe something about Jesus, they think that pretty soon now the Christian Church will accept the sexual revolution in America. And if they're coming from the Roman Catholic Church, of course things get muddled. Because perhaps they're thinking of making the priests be celibate, which has nothing to do with scripture and is a terrible idea. But the sexual revolution is itself a terrible idea and is completely incompatible with what we're talking about here. Present your bodies to God as a living sacrifice. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. You are not to defile it in any bed but the marriage bed. The marriage bed, it says very clearly, is holy. The other beds are not. We ought to include other sins here as well. The Holy Spirit has nothing to do with unjust anger. The Holy Spirit has nothing to do with envy. The God of truth has nothing to do with lies. So we're to present our bodies as a living, holy and acceptable sacrifice. It's language that speaks of total dedication. It's the most powerful way to speak of total dedication. People like to speak incorrectly of 110%. Rather than mathematical exaggerations here, it speaks of present your bodies as a holy sacrifice. This here is the 100% beyond which we cannot go. And he calls this your spiritual worship footnote, perhaps reasonable service. Or actually, this footnote says rational service. Now, how can you have such different translations here as spiritual worship or rational service? This is not a textual problem. I know exactly what the words are. It's not that there's different texts. You've got one text, one pair of words there. The question is how to translate it. You have logikin. You can hear the word logical in there. It's related to that root, but it's a rare adjective. And then you have the word for worship or for service. Now that word that's behind, that's the Logici, I'm saying it badly. It has to do with your mind, as you might think from logic. It has to do with your mind, but mind is the inner person, and so in that sense, the spirit. Notice how you do not have here some idea that you have faith over here and reason over here. That's not what you have here. Your reasonable service is your spiritual service, what comes from the inside, the thinking part of the person. When the Bible talks about faith, it does not use the phrase leap of faith. Leap of faith comes from Kierkegaard in the 19th century. It is not a biblical term. Kierkegaard's trying to deal with Kant. Never mind. You don't have to deal with Kant. That doesn't have to concern you. Don't think of faith as a leap of faith. Here, to present your bodies to God, this is your reasonable, rational, spiritual service, because those things are not far apart from each other. They're the same thing. Your reasonable service can be translated as your spiritual service. The reasonable response to God who saves you is to devote yourself to him. It's the spiritual thing to do. Do it with your heart, not just outward forms. It's the reasonable thing to do, because what else? How well should you respond to the God who loved you and gave himself for you? I quote there from Galatians 2.20. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. This is your reasonable service." You know, I began by saying the cities are different now. They're not centered on temples, not in our part of the world. Is this a triumph of secularism over religion? The Apostle John saw the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, radiant from God. And he saw no temple in it. For God himself was in it, and the Lamb gives it light. Yes, you have there God, peace with God, filling the city to come. So we do not look forward to the world swallowing the divine. but the divine inhabiting the new heavens and the new earth. And so even now, as His image bearers, we are to go out, taking His light out to the world. Not our own light, but that we might reflect the Father of lights. We are to present our bodies to Him as living sacrifices, so that His light might shine to the world through us. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, help us to remember that we are not our own. but that we are bought for the price. Help us to remember to glorify You in our bodies. Help us to remember, Lord, that all that we do, we do through our bodies. Help us to speak in a way that is pleasing to You. Help us to speak the truth in love with wise restraint. Help us, Lord, also to serve, that we may love our neighbors and in this way bring glory and praise to You. So help us to love you with all of our heart and all of our soul and all of our strength. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.