Untitled Sermon (13)

Call to Worship

L: Celebrate God’s love, which has been poured into your life!

P: Forgiveness, encouragement, support, and healing are gifts of God to us.

L: Reach out and care for those around you.

P: We will be people of peace and justice.

L: Shout for joy!

P: Sing God’s praises always! AMEN.

Psalm 99 NIV

The Lord reigns, let the nations tremble; he sits enthroned between the cherubim, let the earth shake. Great is the Lord in Zion; he is exalted over all the nations. Let them praise your great and awesome name— he is holy. The King is mighty, he loves justice— you have established equity; in Jacob you have done what is just and right. Exalt the Lord our God and worship at his footstool; he is holy. Moses and Aaron were among his priests, Samuel was among those who called on his name; they called on the Lord and he answered them. He spoke to them from the pillar of cloud; they kept his statutes and the decrees he gave them. Lord our God, you answered them; you were to Israel a forgiving God, though you punished their misdeeds. Exalt the Lord our God and worship at his holy mountain, for the Lord our God is holy.

Romans 12:1–8 (NIV)

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

Sermon

I wonder if anyone here can finish this sentence. “I’m strong to the finich . . .” “Cuz I eats me spinach. I’m Popeye the sailor man.” Some of you have no idea what I’m talking about. But Popeye was an old comic strip turned cartoon. Popeye had a girlfriend named Olive Oil and an arch-enemy named Brutus. The storyline, for the most part, remained the same. Popeye would be doing something, fairly innocently, cheered on by Olive Oil, while harassed by Brutus. Brutus was a bully who picked on Popeye and tried to steal Olive Oil away. Until close to the end when Popeye would say something like, “I tooks all I can and I can’t takes no more.” At which point, he would swallow a can of spinach, and with a newfound strength be able to defeat Brutus and win Olive Oil back.

Popeye is a picture of the way a Christian might live. They go through life, they think innocently enough, and the enemy attacks. They feel hijacked, and sabotaged, and beat up, and defeated. Every day they get up and try again to be a “good” Christian and maybe they feel like they are, or maybe they feel like their ability to be a good Christian is limited.

If only there was something that would give them strength. Maybe they would be strong to the finich if they ate their spinach. But Popeye’s problem was the spinach only helped him temporarily. The cartoon or comic might end with Popeye winning, but in the next episode, Brutus was once again beating up on Popeye until he couldn’t take any more. To live spiritually like Popeye would be to live in victory, followed by defeat, followed by victory, followed by defeat, followed by victory. Up and down, up and down.

But I am convinced this morning that God has given us His Spirit in order to not only save us, but also to sanctify us. That the grace of God is not given to us in temporary doses but that His grace is given to us in an ongoing pattern. And our response to that grace is demonstrated in the words of Paul in this text. His urging to us to “offer ourselves as living sacrifices”. When we as Christians live for ourselves, we experience that up and down. But Paul challenges us to give our entire selves to God. To stop living for ourselves and to live completely for Christ. This is how we become holy and pleasing to God.

Paul then tells us to stop conforming to the pattern of this world. Instead he encourages us to be transformed. Or at least that’s the way we hear it. To give it a more direct translation, it is “be being transformed.” It is an ongoing act. But what it means is that I am no longer the same person I was when I was saved.

Imagine that you are homeless. How helpful would it be for someone to come to you and say, “hey, you are homeless.” All they have done is identified your problem. They haven’t done anything to help you.