Living Sacrifices

Romans 12:1

Our churches today are sterile in comparison to the Temple that Jesus knew. A few years ago I wanted to bring a man riding a donkey into RIC for Palm Sunday but was talked out of it. Someone said the donkey might relieve himself in the church and I said I hoped he would.

A few weeks earlier I had gone for the first time to the sheep market in Akari where everyone buys a sheep or goat for the slaughter on Eid El Kabir. It is, in a small way, like going to a lot in the US where you pick out your Christmas tree, except this is a lot less sanitary. Lots of mud and straw and sheep and what sheep leave behind so you have to be careful where you step.

I realized that this was much closer to the reality of the Temple in Jerusalem where Jesus went for the annual festivals than our clean, sterile churches. So I thought a donkey who pooped in church would be a good experience for us.

Imagine the scene in the Temple in Jerusalem where Jesus went for the annual festivals. Animals rarely go willingly to the slaughter so the sheep markets here in Morocco where sheep are being pulled, pushed and dragged help us to visualize what the temple might have been like. Some are held by the rear legs and pushed like a wheelbarrow. Some are pulled by the horns or a rope around the neck and the feet are splayed out in front with locked knees in futile resistance. Bladders and bowels are emptied so along with the dirt, mud and straw on the ground is sheep manure and urine. Sheep are not quiet in this process so all around are bleating sheep.

In Jerusalem there were also bulls and cows and other animals being slaughtered. So you have a barnyard of resisting animals as they are dragged to the altar.

The priests are not wearing clean, bright, white robes. You have probably seen the men who go from house to house on Eid El Kabir to slaughter the sheep. They carry long, sharp knives and aprons splattered with blood from the sheep they have already killed. The priests slaughtered hundreds of animals each day so they looked and smelled more like butchers in an animal slaughtering plant than priests.

As you drag your sheep or goat or cow to the altar, the priest helps you cut its throat and catches its blood in a bowl. The priest walks up the steps to smear some of the blood on the horns of the altar and then the rest is splashed against the side of the altar where there is a growing pool of blood from all the sacrifices of the day.

The animal being sacrificed is skinned and gutted and then cut up into pieces with some thrown on the fire.

In the Temple in Jerusalem your eyes were assaulted by the vision of animals being dragged to the slaughter with blood and guts splashed around. Your ears were filled with the sounds of bleating animals. Your nose was filled with the odors of burning flesh, fresh blood, manure and urine.

Sacrifice is never pretty. Sacrifice is a messy business.

So when you read Romans 12:1, please do not sterilize it.

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.

Romans 12:1-2 is one of the most well-known passages of Scripture. Most of you have read it many times but how many times have you sat there and thought about it? Tried to envision what a living sacrifice is like?

Let me break down this verse into four parts. First, why should we offer ourselves as living sacrifices?

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy

I referred to this at the end of last week’s recap of the book of Romans. Paul has spent eleven chapters laying before us, with all the brilliance of his mind and all the passion of his heart, how marvelously God has worked on our behalf to bring us into his family.

Let me illustrate this from Charles Dickens’ novel, A Tale of Two Cities. A Tale of Two Cities takes place during the French Revolution when the aristocracy is being guillotined. There are two men in this novel, Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton. Charles Darnay is the protagonist who ends up marrying Lucy and they all live happily ever after. Sydney Carton is a shady character who no reader roots for when reading the book. At the end of the book, Charles Darnay is in jail awaiting the guillotine when Sydney Carton arranges to take his place. (They look very much like each other.) So Sydney Carton goes to the guillotine in place of Charles Darnay so Charles can live. This is where the famous line comes from, “Tis a far better thing I do than I have ever done before.”

This is your situation. You were sitting in jail awaiting the guillotine and then Jesus took your place so you might live.

When you receive a present from someone, a beautiful bowl or a painting, it is impolite not to respond with a note expressing your appreciation for the gift. Not to respond to the gift is rude and insulting. The larger the gift, the greater the obligation. If I give you a plastic ring I found on the street, not much of a response is needed. If I give you a diamond ring, a greater response is expected. Maybe even, “Yes, I will marry you.”

If we are walking down the street and I step out into the street and you pull me back so I do not get hit by a car, a thank you is appropriate. If you push me back to safety and in the process get hit by the car and go to the hospital with a broken arm, a mere thank you seems inadequate. If you are killed by the car as you push me to safety, my life now takes on a new meaning, I have to live with the knowledge that you died to save me.

But now, if I am facing death, and you choose ahead of time that you will take my place, that you choose to die so I am free to live, I owe you my life. I must live the rest of my life for you.

In the case of Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay, the sacrifice was mitigated somewhat by the fact that Sydney was not a good person and deserved to die. Charles Darnay lived the rest of his life knowing that Sydney Carton had gone to the guillotine in his place. But think how different the story would have been if Charles Darnay had taken Sydney Carton’s place, if Charles Darnay, who did not deserve to die, had gone to the guillotine for Sydney Carton who did deserve to die?

This is what happened with you and Christ.

And as if that was not enough, God keeps on rescuing you. When you try to do right and fail, when you try to resist temptation and fail, God does not reject you. The Holy Spirit keeps on working in you, giving you second and third and fourth and fifth chances. As Christians, we are continually being rescued by God who does not give up on us, even when we give up on ourselves. God brings us hope over and over again as he encourages us to step up and try once more to live a life pleasing to him.

In view of God’s mercy, we offer ourselves.

What is it we are to offer to God?

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies

Notice what Paul did not say. He did not say we should offer out tithes, a portion of what we have. He did not say we should offer our time after we are finished with school or work responsibilities. He did not say we should offer the abilities we are confident we can use well.

There are no limitations to what Paul said we are to offer. We are to offer our bodies.

When a Jew brought a sheep to the Temple to be offered as a sacrifice, what happened? Did the priest clip off a bit of wool and toss it into the fire as a symbolic offering of the sheep? No. A knife was slit across the throat of the sheep and the lifeblood of the sheep was poured out. The sheep gave everything.

This makes me think of the chicken and the pig who were walking down the road when they passed a church having a fund-raising breakfast advertising “Ham and Eggs!” The chicken said, “Let’s go in and make a donation.” The pig responded, “For you it’s a donation. For me it’s a sacrifice.”

Paul did not urge us to make a donation, he urged us to make a sacrifice.

In Revelation 1 when John had his revelation of the ascended Jesus in all his glory and majesty, remember how he responded?

When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead.

Paul urges us to climb up on the altar and lay down our head for the slit of the knife. John did not care if he lived or died, he was at the feet of Jesus and all of him was offered to Jesus. Paul urges us to offer ourselves, all that we are, all that we desire, all that we hope to be and to be ready to give it all up for Jesus.

When I was a young pastor in Ohio, I spent a lot of time with a high school student named Jim. Jim was an excellent guitar player and musician and his dream and ambition was to be a rock star. We spent hours talking together and what I so much appreciated about him is that he understood so clearly what was at stake in giving his life to Jesus. He knew that if he gave his life to Jesus he had to give up his dream of being a rock star. It was not that being a rock star would be incompatible with being a Christian, but that his dream of being a rock star had to become less important than following Jesus. (Jim did give his life to Christ and went on to study classical guitar.)

We offer to God all we are and allow him to direct us into our future.

You can work on a project that consumes your life. You can spend years working on it. But you have to be willing to give it up and realize that this is not the most important thing in your life.

You can work hard to advance in your profession, but you have to be willing to give it up and realize that however far you advance, you will die and leave it behind. It all goes back in the box, as John Ortberg wrote.

We find security in our money and possessions but we have to be willing to give those up. When someone borrows something and it breaks or gets lost or is stolen, we need to let it go and not beat the person who borrowed it.

We care about what people think about us and sometimes do not speak up in a conversation about our faith in Jesus because people might think we are fanatical.

Recently a TV broadcaster in the US created a huge stir because he suggested that Tiger Woods, the golfer who has had multiple extra-marital affairs, move away from his Buddhism to Christians faith because Buddhism does not offer the forgiveness and redemption offered by Christian faith.

He has been skewered in the press for expressing what he believes to be true. By the reaction of much of the press, you would think he had made a terrorist threat. If he had suggested Tiger Woods devote himself to Hinduism or New Age meditation, there would have been little reaction. But when he raised the name of Jesus, the proverbial tomato hit the fan. The truth is that the claims of Jesus and the life Jesus offers do provoke reaction. We need to be willing to give up our concern of what people will think about us and share what we believe to be true.

Paul urges us to offer to Jesus who we are, what people think about us, what we have, what we would like to have, even our lives.

The missionary martyr Jim Elliot, wrote in his diary, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”

When we place our head on the altar, we are not foolish to do so. We give our bodies, all of who we are, to God and allow him to do with us as he will.

Paul wrote:

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices

Living sacrifices, as I pointed out earlier, are messy and not at all pretty.

I was reading Paul Miller’s book, A Praying Life, where he talked about taking a trip to speak and decided to take his daughter who is disabled. She became upset and broke down at the airport when they boarded the bus to get from the parking lot to the terminal, again at the airport security checkpoint when they had to run Kim’s speech machine through the scanner, and a third time on the airplane when she had to turn off her CD player as the plane took off. All these experiences embarrassed Paul who was carrying a large box with the name of his organization in bold lettering on it: seeJesus.net.

He spoke on Saturday to a large crowd who hung on his every word and respected him, which can go to your head. He wrote:

However, on Friday I was in front of three different crowds (at the bus stop, in the security line, and on the plane), helpless and embarrassed. I looked inadequate, I felt inadequate, and I was inadequate. God was reminding me of what I am really like. He was preparing my heart on Friday, so I’d not be confused by people’s praise on Saturday. I wanted success; he wanted authenticity.

I have vivid memories of a night, about six years into our marriage, when I was in the guest room, lying on the bed. I had thought through all my options: murder, divorce and suicide and all of these lacked a happy ending. So I had to crawl to Annie and ask her to forgive me.

It was a miserable experience.

It would be nice if we could learn our lessons, get them over with and not have to come back to them again. It would be nice if the older we get the lessons would become neater and easier. But this is not the way sacrifice works.

Chuck Swindoll pointed out, “The problem with living sacrifices is that they keep crawling off the altar.”

We learn our lessons and then we crawl off the altar and have to learn them all over again.

In this year I have had three large conflicts and while I can tear each one apart and justify myself in each one of these, I have had to realize that the common denominator in all three of these conflicts is me.

I have learned the lesson that I need to allow God to work in his own time and not push people to get where I believe they need to be. I have learned the lesson that I need to be vulnerable in situations expressing what I am feeling so that the discussion gets below the surface issues to what is really driving the conflict.

But as with Paul Miller, these lessons did not come easily and cleanly. I embarrassed myself, made a mess of relationships and have had to work and am continuing to have to work to rebuild those relationships.

Being a living sacrifice means I need to continue to climb up the altar, lay down my head and bare my throat. It would be much more pleasant to bluster and accuse and build a wall to protect myself by showing how I was right and the others were wrong, but that is not what Paul calls us to do. In light of God’s mercy, he urges us, offer yourselves as living sacrifices.

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.

The word translated spiritual is the Greek word logikos which can be translated as reasonable or rational. So in the J.B. Phillips translation we read Romans 12:1 as this:

With eyes wide open to the mercies of God, I beg you, my brothers, as an act of intelligent worship, to give him your bodies, as a living sacrifice, consecrated to him and acceptable by him.

Other translations say offering ourselves as a living sacrifice is our reasonable act of worship.

There is a lot of discussion about the proper translation for logikos but I think that spiritual decisions are reasonable, rational and intelligent so spiritual or rational really expresses the same thing.

The evidence is there. Paul laid it out for eleven chapters and now he calls us to make the reasonable, rational and intelligent response, to offer our bodies, our whole life to him as an act of worship.

Romans 12:1 tells you what to do in every situation. Has someone wronged you? Offer your body as a living sacrifice. Are you fearful of what people might say to you? Offer your body as a living sacrifice. Are you worried, angry, frustrated, overwhelmed, jealous, insecure? Offer your body as a living sacrifice.

This is not a Sunday morning activity. Paul urges us to offer all we are, in every situation, all day and all week and all year long. So I like the Eugene Peterson translation of this verse in The Message which you can see written on the cover of the bulletin.

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.

As you listen to this message, what situation has the Holy Spirit brought to your mind? In what way do you need to climb up to the altar, lay down your head and bare your throat for the slit of the knife?

In what way have you embarrassed yourself and now need to climb to the altar and learn painful lessons?

Where is your pride and greed and desire for things that will one day be left behind pulling you? Climb up to the altar and allow God to do with you as he will.

To whom do you need to go and say you are sorry? Climb up to the altar and bare your throat. This is your spiritual act of worship, your intelligent worship, the most rational and reasonable thing you can do.

It is appropriate this morning that we observe communion, the meal Jesus instituted with his disciples the night he was arrested.

Take your time to prepare yourself. Listen to the words of the music that will be played as we take communion. And when you are ready, come forward and offer your body, all that you are, to Jesus as a living sacrifice.

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I Peter 2:4-5

As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him— 5 you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.