A Living Sacrifice for the Perfect Sacrifice

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We are finishing up our series this morning on Christ-centered worship. And not that it’s going to be the last time that we talk about worship, should not be the last time that we think about worship. We ought to think about worship on a daily basis, on an hourly basis.

We ought to think about our worship of and service toward the Lord. But as far as this series goes, this is our last installment of it. And like I said, I intend that we may revisit this from time to time, this subject of Christ-centered worship because it is so important.

There’s a lot of talk, especially when I was in church planting in Oklahoma, there was a lot of talk as we’d go to these trainings and everybody that wanted to start a new church wanted it to be the hip, trendy church and I thought, I can’t pull that off anyway, so we’re just going to start a regular church. But everybody would talk about, in these trainings, would talk about the DNA of the church. That was a really in thing to talk about, what the church is down to its DNA, what we’re what we’re about.

As I said, I’ve never been one to be cool or trendy or any of those things. I prefer to think of it as being part of the fabric of the church, that we probably know what a tapestry is. I’m sure most of you.

They’ll take different threads of different colors and they’ll weave them together to make a picture, a big picture in fabric that hangs on a wall of a castle somewhere. And the picture that we’re trying to make as a church, the picture that we should present, really has to be woven with three different kinds of thread. The Christ-centered worship, the Christ-centered preaching, and the Christ-centered discipleship are the job of the church.

And so it’s not something that we can do as a four-week series, and then, okay, we’ve got that under our belt, let’s leave that alone and never come back to it. We’ve talked about it so that we can understand what it is, and now we need to do it. We can’t just put it in our rearview mirror.

And so we come to this point of talking about what it means to have Christ-centered worship. We’ve talked over the last few weeks about what is worship. That’s where we had to come to some sort of agreement first and come to some sort of definition about what worship is even.

Do you remember? Does anybody remember? And yes, you can look at your notes if you want to.

You’re going to anyway. Does anybody remember the three things I said about worship? And I’ll give you a hint.

It’s a pattern. It’s not a one-time thing. It’s not we come in here each week and we worship from 11 to 12.

Worship goes on through the week, and I said it’s a pattern of three things. Anybody remember? All right.

We may just start next week and redo the series all over again until we get it down. Now, I said after looking at every verse in the Bible that uses the word worship, that was quite a chore too, and the Greek and the Hebrew words behind it. And what it means, the first is that worship is a pattern of submission, that we live our lives in submission to God.

we live ourselves or we live our lives as a pattern of bowing before God. And the picture there used almost 100 times is to get on our faces before God. And it doesn’t mean that in order to worship God, we have to be physically on our face.

But it means we have this humility about us where we recognize where we are in comparison to God. Because a lot of times people come to God and they want to worship Him and talk about how great He is, but at the same time we think we’re His equal. And so first, we’ve got to have a biblical image of where we are. It’s a pattern of submission.

Second of all, it’s a pattern of reverence. That once we’ve humbled ourselves, at that point, that’s where praise comes in, and we lift up God, and we honor Him, we glorify Him, we tell the world how great He is and how good He is. We know what reverence means.

It means to honor. And so we live our lives in such a way that we honor Him on a daily basis, that we tell Him and tell the world how great He is and how good He is. And third of all, that it’s a pattern of service, or obedience may be a better word there.

It’s a lifestyle of actually doing what it is that he’s told us to do. See, it doesn’t matter if we say, you know, God, I’m on my face before you, and you’re so great, you’re so wonderful, and then we get up from being on our face before God, and we completely disregard everything he’s told us to do. At that point, we really can’t say we worship God.

So worship is a pattern of those three things. We’ve talked about, I came into this series thinking that worship, we were going to talk about music or what we do here in the church. I’m so glad that that’s not what worship really is.

What we do here is praise, and it’s a part of worship. But this is not all there is to worship, and I’m so glad for that. At the same time, I’m not glad for it because it’s a lot harder to say it’s a lifestyle.

It’s easier to say it’s something we come in here and do, and if we do it an hour a week the right way, then good, we’ve got worship down. It’s a lot harder to say, now we have to go out there and live at 168 hours a week. If you’ve never done the math, that’s how many hours there are in the week, 7 times 24.

We have to live it, and it’s harder. But we’ve talked about what worship is. We’ve talked about who we’re supposed to worship.

And we could sum that up by saying God. There are any number of things we could worship. Anything we worship besides God is an idol that Satan has set up to draw worship away from God, who deserves it, and redirect it toward himself.

And so there are no free agents in this world. We’re given the option of we worship God, or ultimately, directly or indirectly, we worship Satan. And I don’t know about you, but I’d rather come down on the side of worshiping God.

Seems to me that’ll work out better for us. And then we’ve got the issue of why we worship, and it comes down to the matter of God being deserving. We talked last week out of Acts chapter 17 about all these reasons that we worship God.

And there were some in there that, yes, we do, honestly, we worship God from selfish reasons. And you know what? I’m going to go out on a limb and say that’s okay as long as those aren’t the only reasons we worship God.

It’s okay to worship God because of what he does for us. But we need to understand this, that even if God had never done a single thing for us, he would still be worthy of all the worship and honor that we could ever give him. He would still be deserving simply because of who he is.

And so, yeah, it’s all right to worship God because he saved me. It’s all right to worship God because he gave me a wonderful wife and beautiful kids. It’s okay to worship God because he’s let me be here with you wonderful people.

But ladies and gentlemen, even if God had looked on me as a sinner and said, you know what, I’m not fooling with you. He’d never sent Jesus to the cross. He’d never extended any grace to me whatsoever.

Simply because of who he is, he would still be worthy of worship. It’s that simple. And so we’ve dealt with all these theological aspects of worship, all these ideas and things.

What is worship? Who do we worship? Why do we worship?

Today we talk about what it looks like, what Christ-centered worship looks like. And it all involves the idea of sacrifice. If you’ll turn with me to Romans chapter 12, it centers around the idea of sacrifice.

And we have this wrong idea of what it means to sacrifice. The world looks at us and says, why would I want to be a Christian? I have to give up all the fun things.

I have to give up this. I have to give up that. Even sometimes as Christians, we look at what it means to serve God, to obey him, and say, why would I want to do that?

I’d have to give this up. I’d have to give up that, even if it’s not bad things. We were talking in the car Tuesday, Christian and I were, about our kids and their dreams and whatever dreams they may have in the future.

And I told her, you know, giving up your dream is not the worst thing in the world. I told y’all shortly after I came here, my dream for myself, my goal for myself, what I really wanted to do in life was go into politics. I was going to be the governor of Oklahoma.

And you know what? When God called me into the ministry, I gave that dream up. And I don’t miss it.

I mean, yeah, I still like to get involved in other people’s campaigns and mix it up a little bit and that sort of thing. I still enjoy politics, but as far as me ever running for office, well, for starters, we’ve got me on recording saying so many things that I could never get elected. They could go over my sermons with a fine-tooth comb, and there goes the Catholic vote, there goes the Mormon vote, there goes the drinker vote, there goes the, I think, Oswald acted alone vote.

I mean, you name it, we’ve got me on tape. I’d never get elected anyway. But I gave that dream up when God called me to something else, and you know what?

He had something better for me to begin with. And so we’ve got this wrong idea of what it means to sacrifice things for God’s sake. You’ve probably all heard the story.

I’ve heard it told as a story, and I’ve seen it as a comic strip, of the man being baptized and being told by. . .

Something’s going on in the baptistry. There’s nobody back there, is there? All right, that’s.

. . I’m still not sure where that came from, but I might have to wear a helmet next.

. . Oh, okay.

I thought it was from the ceiling. I thought I might have to wear a helmet next time. About the man being baptized and being told by the preacher that, you know, when you go under the water, and we all know baptism doesn’t save, it’s a picture, but once you go under the water, everything that goes under the water belongs to God, and the next thing you see in this comic strip is of the man underwater, and all you see is his arm sticking out holding his wallet.

Didn’t want the. . .

everything’s going to belong to God. I don’t want to give him this. Why would sacrifice my wallet to God.

No, God, you can’t have that. And we kind of have that idea of sacrifice. It’s all right to give up a few things for God, but Lord, the things I really hold near and dear to my heart, you can’t have.

A better picture of sacrifice, I think, it’s, well, my dogs. I know I talk about my dogs from the, I’ve always talked about my dogs from the pulpit because I had to have stories to tell before I had kids. I cannot stand mice and rats, okay?

Probably most of you can’t either. My wife thinks they’re good pets, but I cannot stand them. And as a matter of fact, my dogs are rat terriers because I thought, ah, there’s a dog that was specifically bred to catch those nasty little things.

And so I have rat terriers, okay? My parents had neighbors for a while that would not mow their yard, would not mow their backyard unless the city went over there and made them do it. And so every time they would mow their yard every couple months or so, what do you think would storm out of their backyard but rats and mice?

And we would be outside. I remember one particular day we were having a 4th of July cookout or something like that, and people were out in the backyard and the dogs started catching rats and mice, which was disturbing enough in and of itself. You know, you’re out there trying to cook, and you hear the dogs going after things, and they’re catching things.

It’s just gross. Nobody wants to think about that when you’re grilling hamburgers. But then it was made even worse by the fact that the dogs started bringing them to us.

And you hear a womanly scream shoot out, and then my mother screamed too. I was the first one. People go running toward the house because they’re bringing these rats to them.

But you know, as disgusting as that was to me, to that dog, that was the biggest thing he had in his life at that time, was that mouse, that rat, whatever it was. He had it, and he wanted to bring it to me. Now, he could have just as easily kept it, as far as I was concerned.

But he didn’t give thought to the fact that, hey, I want to keep this for myself. He thought, I’ve got this prized possession, and I want my owner to have it. And he didn’t give a second thought to trying to give it to me.

And I thought, yeah, I don’t like the rat or the mice, but that’s a pretty good picture of what sacrifice toward God ought to be like. That we’ve got these things that, and you know, the Bible says even our good works are like filthy rags. God’s not impressed all that much with our good works.

We have the things that we think are the most special, that we prize the most, and to God, it’s just not that much at all. And yet we are willing to give everything that we have to God. as an expression of our love, just like that dog did.

That’s the attitude we should have about sacrifice, that sacrifice should not be a sacrifice. It should be a joy. It should be an honor.

And we turn this morning to Romans chapter 12, if you haven’t already. He says, I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

Now before that, he’s talked about how wonderful God is. He’s talked about how incredible God is. If you back up into chapter 11, he says, O the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out.

For who hath known the mind of the Lord, or hath been his counselor, or who hath first given to him, and it shall not be recompensed again unto him. For of him and through him and to him are all things to whom be glory forever. Amen.

And then he goes on to talk about presenting our lives, our bodies as a living sacrifice. There’s this picture of sacrifice, of something being offered on an altar. And God would know something about sacrifice, because God gave his only begotten son to purchase our forgiveness for our sins.

This idea of a living sacrifice, we should not take from it the idea that we’re to give up the things in our lives, that we’re to surrender our entire lives to God in order to be saved, in order to earn our forgiveness. Because Hebrews tells us that without the shedding of blood, there’s no remission of sins. The idea of a living sacrifice would do nothing to purchase anybody’s salvation.

If you go into the Old Testament and the sacrifices that they did there, those were a picture of what Christ was to do in the future. The idea that they would take a bull or a goat and put him on the altar and just leave him there would not have purchased anybody anything, would not have done anything. As a matter of fact, God probably would have had words with Israel at the very least because they were not doing what they’d been told to do.

Without the shedding of blood, the Bible says there’s no remission of sins. This living sacrifice has nothing to do with obtaining our salvation. It has everything to do with working from our salvation.

Jesus Christ had already made the perfect sacrifice. He’d already his blood. He’d already done everything necessary to purchase our forgiveness.

And as a result of that, we then were to turn around and give our lives to him, not in order to obtain salvation, but in a show of gratitude. That’s why he tells us to be a living sacrifice. And in the passage before, he talks about, could we really give God anything?

Could we give him anything and expect that we’re not going to get back even more? So this idea, and I’m not telling you, give the church $100 today and he’ll give you back $700 tomorrow. It doesn’t tell us that.

But the fact is, you can’t out-give God. And if you sacrifice, you surrender your entire life to God, yes, you will give some things up, but what it’s telling us here is that the benefits that God gives us back far outweigh the sacrifice on our end. As I said, my goal, my plan, my dream for my life was to go into politics.

Well, my wife told me Tuesday when we were talking about that, she said, I wouldn’t have married you if you were in politics. I said, I was in politics when we met. She said, yeah, but you weren’t talking about running at that point.

I said, well, maybe not to you. But you know what? She probably wouldn’t have married me.

I think I might have been able to convince her, but still, it would have been. She may not have married me, and if that was the case, we wouldn’t have Benjamin and Madeline. I probably wouldn’t be here because I’d be running around Oklahoma in a pickup truck kissing babies and things.

Quite honestly, yes, I gave up my dream, but there’s nothing I gave up that even compares to what God’s given me here. I mean, a wonderful church, a wonderful family, a wife that I love. I mean, God has been very good.

As a Christian, I gave up the option of doing certain things too. And you know what? I don’t feel like I missed out on anything.

Yes, as a Christian, I have made the choice to serve God. I don’t go out and get drunk all the time. I don’t go out and sleep around.

I don’t go out and rob liquor stores. You know what? I don’t feel like I gave up that much because there’s nothing good that lies at the end of that road.

And yet the blessings that God has given far outweigh anything that I’ve given up. When we sacrifice our lives to God, it is in a show of gratitude to Him. It is a show of worship to Him, to give up our entire lives to Him.

That’s what we talked about with a pattern of service or a pattern of obedience, that He calls the shots. In a pattern of submission, we acknowledge that we are beneath Him. And in a pattern of reverence, we acknowledge that He’s higher than we are.

And basically, we admit that He’s here and we’re here and He calls the shots. And when it tells us to be a living sacrifice, that’s essentially what we’re doing is worshiping Him. These sacrifices that are used in the Bible were used in worship as a way to.

. . Well, they were brought when they would worship in the temple, and they would try to obtain some kind of remission of their sins.

They would try to be in a right standing with God. You don’t sacrifice to somebody that you think you’re better than. It just doesn’t make sense.

God doesn’t sacrifice to us. And so this idea of sacrifice has worship all wrapped up in it. And so for us, in our Christian walk, in our life as individuals and as a church, Christ-centered worship involves sacrifice.

It involves, Christ-centered worship means sacrificing our whole lives to Him. If you’re following along in the bulletin, that’s your first blank. Christ-centered worship means sacrificing our whole lives to Him.

As I told you before, and I’ve told you the last several weeks, We cannot worship God. We cannot truly worship God unless we belong to Him. The non-believer can praise God because anybody can say how great He is.

God’s done wonderful things even for the non-believer. But worship involves so much in the area of submission and involves so much in the area of service and obedience that unless we are His children, we cannot truly, fully worship Him. And so the idea that we’re to worship Him and worship Him halfway, that doesn’t work.

for us to worship him involves sacrificing our entire lives to him. He tells us, I beseech you, I beg you. That’s not just an asking, there’s a begging component to the idea of beseeching somebody.

I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. He said, present your body. I don’t know about you, but wherever my body goes, I go.

My mind, my soul, all of this for now is tied in with this physical body. And so if I present my body as a living sacrifice to Christ, I present my whole life, my whole self, as a living sacrifice to Christ. Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, meaning set apart, consecrated. It doesn’t belong partly to God and partly to the world.

When he says holy, he means it all belongs to God and it’s set apart for his purpose. Acceptable unto God. It’s not by our sacrifice either that we’re acceptable unto God.

It’s by Christ’s sacrifice. If it weren’t for the sacrifice that Christ made on the cross, none of us would be acceptable to God in the first place. So because of his sacrifice and by the mercies of God, we present our lives as a sacrifice to him.

Holy, acceptable unto God. And he says, which is your reasonable service? The world would look at somebody, and you know what?

Even a lot of Christians would look at somebody who is completely sold out to God say, that guy’s nuts. What a radical. One of the people I’ve known who best fits this description is the man I’ve told you about before who was the, I say ex-Marine, but apparently you’re never an ex-Marine. You’re just a Marine who’s not on active duty anymore.

He was a Marine and a truck driver, big old guy, and we used to go out witnessing to people on the street corner, and he’d stand out there, and he would get away with saying some things that I would have gotten punched for, yelling at guys, hey, you’re not too tough to need Jesus, and I’m just trying to blend into the wall behind me. But everything in this man, he was crazy. And I can say this now because he’s gone on to be with the Lord, and there’s nothing he can do to me for saying it.

The man was crazy. He acted crazy, but he acted crazy because every thought he had, and I know he was a sinner. I’m not telling you that he was perfect or anything.

But it’s like when he got up in the morning, he thought about what can I do to honor God today? Every thought he said, we were going out to lunch, he was going to lead the waitress to Christ. We went on a drive somewhere, he drove the church van down the wrong way of a one-way street in Oklahoma City and ended up almost getting us killed. And when people got out, we stood at the bus station.

He tried to lead people to Christ that we’d almost crashed with. I mean, it was incredible. I’ve never met anybody quite like him.

I’ve met other people who were completely sold out to Christ, but I’ve never met anybody quite like him. And I look at that and I think the world looks at and says, that is crazy. And I’m not saying to be sold out to Christ, you have to go and harass people on the street, okay?

Doesn’t matter how sold out I am, I will never be as bold as Richard Parker, I’m sure, because that’s just not the way God’s wired me. But the world looks at anybody who is completely sold out to Jesus Christ and says, they are crazy. Why would you do that?

That does not make sense. And to the world, it doesn’t make sense. And we as believers can look at somebody who is completely sold out to Christ, who’s given their entire life to him and say, that guy’s a little off.

But you know what? The Bible doesn’t see it that way, that there’s something abnormal about the idea of giving our entire lives to Christ, that everything is about him. That’s not abnormal. The Bible says that’s our reasonable service.

After what he’s done for us, if we have a shred of gratitude at all, we ought to give him our entire lives. He didn’t have to go to the cross for us. God the Father didn’t have to send him to the cross for us.

He went willingly, and he died for us. He paid the ultimate price for our sin, not because we were so lovable. If we’d been so lovable and acceptable to God, he wouldn’t have had to die for us in the first place.

But the Bible says while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. While we were wicked and sinful and unlovely, and quite honestly in our sins, disgusting to God, Christ looked on us and chose to love us and went for us willingly. And again, if we have any shred of gratitude in us at all for the sacrifice like that that was made, being a living sacrifice is our reasonable service.

It’s only reasonable. And I say this to you knowing full well I’m not there yet either. But by God’s grace, I pray that we all get there one way or another.

But Christ-centered worship means sacrificing our whole lives to him. In other words, what will this look like? Christ-centered worship means that we’re going to look to the world like we’re a little crazy.

We’re a little radical. I don’t know about you, but I kind of like that from time to time. Now, I don’t like when people say, oh, you know, they reject me. They think I don’t want to be his friend.

But when the world looks at me, when other people look at me and think, it’s just something a little bit off about him, I kind of enjoy that from time to time. But the world ought to look at us like we’re just a little bit different. We’re a little bit off because we’re just doing what’s reasonable for a Christian to do, but it’s not the way the world operates to be in total submission to God.

Second of all, Christ-centered worship means living differently from the world, as I said. The first point talks about being different, and the second point talks about living differently. We are to be different.

We are to be in complete submission to God, and as a result, it just logically flows from one point to the next that if we are different, we should live differently. I mean, doesn’t it? Does that make sense to anybody else?

If we’re in total submission to God, we ought to act like it. He says, be not conformed to this world. Do not be conformed to this world.

It’s more comfortable sometimes to blend into the world. Now, I’m not talking about doing all the things that the world outside does as a believer. As somebody with the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit of God dwelling within you, it should be uncomfortable.

If the people around you are going out and committing adultery and going out and getting drunk every night, it should be, you know, at the very least, if you go out and do that, there should be a little spiritual discomfort there. Ideally, it should be the Holy Spirit within you screaming, no, stop. But in some ways, it’s easier just to try to blend in with the world a little bit.

Not pop your head up too much. Stay low. Keep a low profile and blend in with the world.

It can be more comfortable that way because it’s easier. We don’t run into as much opposition. We don’t run into as much ridicule.

Ladies and gentlemen, we’re told not to be conformed to this world. We’re taught not to imitate them. We are supposed to be imitating somebody.

I know everybody wants to be an original. In today’s world, everybody wants to be a nonconformist. I think it’s funny that all these kids, and I thought it was funny when I was their age, all these kids would go out and express their individuality by dressing in all the same dark black clothes. There’s nothing wrong with wearing black. I’m wearing black or something close to it today.

But I just think it’s funny. We all have to express our individuality in exactly the same way. Everybody wants to be a nonconformist. Everybody wants to be an individual. But mark my words, we are all imitating something.

We’re all imitating something to varying degrees. And we’re taught not to imitate this world. We are taught to imitate Jesus Christ. Don’t be conformed to this world.

Christ-centered worship means we don’t blend in. We should stick out as a sore thumb, like a sore thumb. Ladies and gentlemen, as a church and as individuals in that church, if we are committed to Christ-centered worship, it means we will be different and it means we will live differently in such a way that the world will look at us and say, those people are different.

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but those people are different. And if we do it well, Fayetteville will not be able to just drive up and down and cross over and not even notice there’s a church here. If we do this well, people should know who Eastside Missionary Baptist Church is because we will live our lives in such a way that they’ll recognize these people are not like us.

Now, and ideally, people will ask what the difference is. That’s why the Bible tells us to always be ready to give an answer for the hope that lies within us because people will ask from time to time. That doesn’t let us off the hook from going and telling.

Along the lines, we’ve gotten the idea that if we’ll just be different, people will come to us. That’s not always the case. That’s part of the picture.

Be different and let people come to us, but also go and tell. But as people who are different, if we are Christ-centered worship, we ought to live differently from the world. Third of all, Christ-centered worship means being thoroughly transformed to become more like Him.

Folks, it’s not just a matter of acting differently. It’s not just a matter of cosmetic changes. It’s a matter of becoming more like Jesus Christ. It says here that be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.

We should be thoroughly and utterly changed. Now, I’ve told you before, I don’t completely understand this, but from reading the Bible, I believe that sanctification, when it talks about sanctification, and I’ll explain what that means in a minute if anybody’s unsure, sanctification is the process of being set apart unto God and being different. I know that’s not a seminary definition.

That’s just the best I can come up with, to be set apart and be different, to be God’s people. Sanctification, I believe, is instant, that God, at the moment we trust Christ and are converted, He sets us apart, we’re His. And then sanctification in terms of our behavior, how we live our lives, begins then and is ongoing throughout the rest of our lives.

That God changes something inside of us immediately and then He continues to change us to conform us more like Jesus Christ, to transform us by the renewing of our minds. Christ-centered worship means that everything about us should desire to be more like him. I told you before, one of the worst feelings that I know is the feeling that I’ve disappointed God or let him down.

The reason that is, is that as a Christian, there’s a desire in my heart and there should be a desire in our hearts to want to make God happy, to want to make God proud of us, and really to be more like Jesus Christ. As I