The Believers Supreme Act of Spiritual Worship
Notes
Transcript
Over the first 11 chapters Paul gives an incredible lesson about what God has given believers.
Now Paul charges those who believe with what we need to give God.
Our supreme calling is to serve God with all our being, first and foremost in worship.
Our worship and service to God is constant it does not stop.
15 Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name.
True worship includes many things other than the obvious such as: prayer, praise, and thanksgiving.
It includes serving God by serving others in His name.
Sacrificial worship
Giving ourselves wholly and continually to the Lord as living sacrifices.
Sadly this is not how most Christians think they think they need “more” of God and “more” from God.
However He has already given us more than what we need.
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,
So many times people leave a chruch in search of another one because they feel they “need more” and often times they just need to give back that which Christ has already given us.
The greatest commandment in the Bible tells us everything that we need to do to have a life full of Christ and His blessings.
37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
The Soul Has Been Given to God (v 1a)
The Soul Has Been Given to God (v 1a)
Here the word “Urge” comes from the greek word parakaleo which means to come alongside in order to help or give aid.
later it came to mean to exhort, or admonish, or to encourage.
During their time in the upper room before His death Jesus referred to the Holy Spirit as the Parakletos or divine helper.
Paul here is speaking as a human helper or counselor to his Christian brethren in Rome.
The command that Paul gives here can only be obeyed by those saved by grace.
The giving of your soul is the first step.
No other offering is acceptable to God unless we have first offered Him our Souls.
The unregenerate person cannot give God his body, mind, or will because He has not given God himself first.
Because he has no saving relationship with God natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God.
Because they are foolishness to him.
He cannot understand them.
Only the redeemed can present a living sacrifice to God, because only the redeemed have spiritual life.
26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?
Why are the things of this world not good enough?
Because they are tainted by sin.
The Body Must Be Given to God (v 1b)
The Body Must Be Given to God (v 1b)
After a person gives God his Soul that is just the beginning.
He already has our souls which is our inner selves, God also wants the outer self.
Even though we give our Souls over to God only once, we must constantly give our bodies over to him as a living sacrifice because it is still where our humanness resides.
We are in a constant fight with our flesh to do what it good and pleasing to God because our flesh only wants to do the things of the world.
Our bodies encompass not only our physical being but also the evil longings of our minds, emotions, and will.
Even Paul had to work on himself from time to time because even he fought against the things of the world.
27 But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.
We must daily offer our bodies to God and break the will of our old self and walk as best we can in the light of His word and not in the darkness of this world.
The Mind Must Be Given to God (v 2a)
The Mind Must Be Given to God (v 2a)
It is in the mind that our new nature and our old humanness are intermixed.
It is in the mind that we make choices as to whether we will express our new nature in holiness or allow our fleshly humanness to act in unholiness.
The word here for conformed means to masquerade, or to put on and act.
It also carries the idea of being transitory, impermanent, and unstable.
We must not try to fit in with the rest of the world but we are to be different.
We are to renew our minds.
We are to daily fix our minds on Christ and the things He wants for us not what the world wants for us.
Man can never have renewal if he never spends time with the father.
Spending time in the word, and in prayer, and then doing the will of the Father.
Action must follow
What good is reading and studying the Word and going to God in prayer if you never Do what He is wanting you to do.
The Will Must Be Given to God (v 2b)
The Will Must Be Given to God (v 2b)
Our will must conform not to the world but to Gods.
When a believer’s mind is transformed, his thinking ability, moral reasoning, and spiritual understanding are able to properly assess everything, and to accept only what conforms to the will of God.
Our lives can prove what the will of God is only by doing those things that are good and acceptable and perfect to Him.
Once again Paul uses the image of and OT sacrifice by using the word, euarestos which describes the kind of offering that God accepts and is pleased by.
Each one of these things build on the others.
Our wills controls our minds, which control or bodies.
Every day that we are allowed to be here on the earth is a day where we give ourseleves to God gladly giving up our will to take up His, not because we feel like we have to but because we want to.
Because when we look at the cross and what Christ has done for us we should be willing to do what ever we can in thanks for that great sacrifice.