to God.” This is the language of worship from the Old Testament. An oxymoron is a combination of two seemingly contradictory words. Today, we say all that matters is what a man does. John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. “Do not be fashioned according to this age, but be ye transformed” “But be ye transfigured, be ye metamorphosized, be ye changed by the renewing of your mind in order that you might test, prove, and discern what is the will of God” . And upon the basis of the mercies of God, the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, “Therefore” , and then he begins to speak. And that is the Christian religion, and the Christian faith, and the Christian message. Keep that in mind in coming weeks.But also, keep in mind that our time and our talent figure in to this sacrificial giving just as does our treasure.
No! Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.
Or there will be a boy who will marry a girl of another faith. A living body is a person.
How were the body parts of Jesus, the human sacrifice, re-arranged? “living sacrifices” Now that’s an interesting turn of phrase. Then you have those appositions, those “ons” again: Now, “do not be conformed—fashioned—after this age. When we think of a sacrifice we usually think of something that is dead. “Man, how is it as you have found it, as you have lived it? It pours a new genius, a new ableness, a new ability. . Living-Sacrifice. . . Any kind of animal could be used – as long as it was male and free of blemishes – and it was ritually killed, skinned and burned on the altar. “I beseech you therefore by the revelation of God, by the doctrines of God, by the Christian religion”—then all that follows after is but a natural consequence of a faith, of a persuasion, of a doctrine, of a believing to which a man has given his life. When I read that, I was horrified and amazed, an offering laid on the altar of God, mutilated, emasculated, disabled, cut. In the Bible, the body is not significant because of the way it looks, but because of the way it acts. Making people comfortable or helping them feel good on the way to everlasting punishment, without the hope and the design that they see Christ in your good deeds, is not mercy. How you use the time God has given you is, in Paul’s words, a part of your spiritual worship.“I urge you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service. A living Sacrifice Romans 12: 1-3 Living-Sacrifice. “Show mercy with cheerfulness. But, but if you are willing, like Paul says here, by the dedication of your life and your mind to the mind of Christ; if you are willing to test and to prove and to discern by experience what is the will of God , you shall know—for you and your home and your life. For example: “Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirsts, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head” . But if they say I’m ostentatious and falsely learned this morning, well, I thought just one time I’d run the risk because it just looks different to me in this Book than it does in this one. In a society of physical and spiritual couch potatoes, we need grace to serve God with zeal and an ardent spirit. Inevitably we are guilty of wrong-doing even when we are doing our best. Is it the physical “instrument” of a hunger for righteousness? They add God. I know the will of God. What does a living sacrifice look like in the practical sense? God says, “No!” But when that body is to be laid upon the altar, it is to be without blemish. When we get to chapter 12, Paul wants to shift gears and talk about what Jesus’ mission of salvation So, because of who Jesus was and what He means to us, St. Paul “appeals” to all Christians, by the mercy of God.
To Paul, the living part, the ethical part, the moral part is nothing but a logical consequence of the doctrinal part, the believing part, the creed part. As those weeks and those sermons come around, I want you to keep a couple of things in mind. Even knowing God’s will is an immense grace from God. . .
In some vague way, the sacrificial re-arrangement of the parts of the animal not only reflects pre-given distinctions within the religious dimension, it helps to create them. In the Jewish religion of which Jesus was a part, there were four major yearly festivals of sacrifices at the Temple in Jerusalem plus dozens of other occasions each year in which people could make sacrifices, or pay priests to sacrifice for them.Whereas Paul enjoins us to be living sacrifices, in all these religions, the thing sacrificed was a dead animal, not a living human being:.