Collide Sermon 1
Notes
Transcript
Intro
Intro
It’s truly great to be with you all tonight. I think this is my 3rd time getting to speak at a collide weekend for the brook and it’s always a joy.
I want to say thanks to Justin your awesome, amazing youth pastor for the inviation. He loves Jesus deeply and becasue of that love he loves you all deeply
You are truly blessed to have him as a student pastor.
The theme for this years collide weekend is living sacrifice
and we will be spending our time together looking at what Paul wrote to the roman church in Romans chapter 12
So, If you have your bibles go ahead and open up to Romans 12 and in a moment we will start in verse 1
Before we dive in I’ll tell you a little of my background and why I am so thrilled to be with you
I didn’t grow up in church. I didn’t grow up a Christian. It was actaully around my freshman year in High school that a high school friend started sharing the gospel with me
Most of my life I wanted to know what my purpose was. Why I was on earth and What I would do in my life
I tried everything to answer that question and everything left me completly empty. I was try to LIVE on the outside but I was dead on the inside
I was sacrificing so much of my life to try to fit in, to have the right friends, to be popluar it was killing me
in fact things got so bad that I didn’t want to live
but between 9th and 10th grade a group of high schoolers and adult volunteers started sharing the gospel with me. And between 9th and 10th God saved me.
Changed everything about my life. and from that point on I wanted to know what his will was for my life.
and that might be something you and I have in common.
If you are a Christian you probably want to know what does God want me to do with my life? and How do I know what he wants me to do?
if you aren’t a Christian yet, you might be curious what your life will be about
Not only might we have that in common with each other but we most likely have it in common with Christains thorughout history
that’s why what Paul writes in Romans 12 is so encouraging to me and I beleive you will fin dit encouraging. Because it’s here Paul gives us the way to discern Gods good, acceptable and perfect will is.
Let’s read Romans 12:1-2
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Paul has spent the last 11 chapters of Romans sharing with the church in Rome how merciful God is
it’s been remarakable.
The mercy of God describes his focused disposition of compassionate forgiveness toward his people, especially in light of their distressful and dire circumstances.
It’s God looking at us in our sin, seeing our despair, seeing our brokeness, seeing our pain and suffering and sending Jesus
It’s why Paul would write in
but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
The God of love sends the son of love to die a death of love for US
and I think it’s remarkable he does that while we were “still sinners’
in other words when we were at our worst God was doing his best work on our behalf
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
and it’s that love that is so beyond any other love that leads Paul to write such an amazing passage like Romans 8:31-39
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,
“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Friends, If you bleeive this it will change everything from you if you and I would live in the space between no conemnation and no seperation it would change so much of our lives
so when Paul says “thereore” He is essetial saying becasue of everything I have writing you so far here is how you should respond
He says that we present our bodies as a “living sacrifice”
if you’ve been in church for a while you might just be like sure that makes sense
if you are new to church that should freak you out a little.
what is Paul saying?
in the simplest way he is saying
becasue of God’s mercy, offer yourself to God
As you really understand what God has done for you, you should offer him everything
I heard David Platt say it once like this you should give God a blank check with your life
your yes should always be on the table
It’s so different then every other relgion in the world
every other religion says I obey, I give my god or gods everything and then they love me
Christianity says You are accepted by God becasue of Jesus and because of that you long do obey him
You want to give everything up for him.
In other words our commiment to Christ is completly based on his total commitment to us.
Think about the most committed you’ve ever been to something.
(GIVE EXAMPLES)
I had a group of friends once take this to a really dangerous place. Mcdonalds use to do this thing called Mcdonalds monolopy
It is a wierd thing to think about these days but basically for a month everytime you bought a food item from mcdonalds you would get mcdonadls game pieces
if you ever got a “monoply” all the same game pieces you would win a prize
here were some of them
50 dollar mcdonalds gift card
5,000 dollars
beaches resort vacation
10,000 dollars
any trip for 2 on delta anywerhe
20,000
2013 fiat hatchback
and the grand prize was 1,000,000
so my friends who all lived together decided to go in. They decided if they would eat mcdonalds three times a day for one month they would have a great chance to win
in other words between the 4 of them they ate at minium 630 meals a piece
but they new if they did it the odds would be in their favor
at the end of the month with everything on the line they were 1 piece away from the one million dollars
and when they opened that last meal with a sticker on it they looked and sure enough they won a big mac and large fries
and maybe some stomach problems
that’s what Total commitment looks like
but for a Christian it’s more
it’s a living sacrifice
which is at it’s core a paradox
In Jesus day and age the word sacrfice meant killing
so what Paul is saying is make a living killing
and most in Rome would understand the idea of sacrfice. Animals were being sacrificed all the time. In the old testemant people made sacrfices with there offerings
but all those offerings had something in common they were dead
but when paul says livng he is simply saying the Christian life is both like and unlike those old sacrfices
In the OT sacrfices where made for sin. it’s a way of getting yourself right with God
but that’s not true when Jesus comes
his sacfices is the sacfice that ends all sin and guilt offerings.
what Paul is asking the Christian to do is different
See a living sacrfice is never over. It is something we offer over and over each day. Maybe many moments each day
really all of the Christian life is repentence it’s a consten turning back to God
and the best thing about this sacfrice and the greatest way it is different from the old sacrifice is this sacrifice is living
don’t miss what Paul is saying. Because he’s not just talking breathing here. He’s not just talking about being physically alive
no when Paul says living he is saying becasue Jesus has saved you, for the first time in your life you are really ALIVE
This is found throughout the new testement
Jesus says in
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
Paul says in Phil 1:21
For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
and later later in
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
this is what it means to be living.
Before Christ we were dead. We were gone. but becasue of his great love with which he has loved us he has made us
ALIVE/ LIVING toghther with Christ
It’s why Jesus tells nicadomous in John chapter 3 you must be born again
this is what it means to truly be alive
and I don’t know a person on earth who doesn’t want that
everyone lives for something but not everyone truly lives
and becasue of the Sacrfice of Jesus for us
we GET TO LIVE and as we live we get to give everything up for him
and when we do that it’s worship
How wonderful is that.
worhsip means to give WORTH to something. and when we are a living sacrfice we are saying with OUR new LIVES in christ JESUS YOU ARE WORTH IT.
not only does it mean worth it can mean wieght. TI’s what we think posseing it will lead to a happy life
and we all worship something or someone
and easy way to know is to ask this following question
these come from a pastor in NC jd greeer but they are so helpful
The thing I’d be most worried about losing is __________
what goes in that blank
I could think of a lot of things through the years
but what’s your thing
and the second thought is
the thing i’d be most worried about never ataing is __________
in other words if this doesn’t happen in my life I won’t be ok
Next question
If I could change________about myself right now, I would change
what have you been most willing to sacrifcice for
what are you willing to lie for?
where do you turn for comfort?
Whose approval do you seek?
if you wrote something down more then once it coudl be the very thing you worship
it could be the thing you are holding onto the most
When I was in High school Here is how I would have answered
If I could have changed anything about myself I would have had a girlfriend
I would have been on the basketball team
I would have not had facial hair
I was willing to sacrifice antying for acceptance and approval
but when I laid myself and all those things on the alter and gave worth to Jesus along my life began to change
and there are times today there would be some things that would be in those blanks and it would be important for me to continue daily to offer myself back to God
not to earn his favor but becasue of his love, his grace and mercy I worship him
and the good news is we are made holy by he and the offering is pleasing because of him!
Tim Keller says about this pleasure this idea
The gospel radically reorients our aim in life, so that we are no longer hoping and seeking to please others, or even ourselves, but our Father
It’s why paul would Paul would write to the church of thessalonica these words
but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts.
The gospel helps us and frees us at the same time to live our life in a way that pleases God
but the gospel also reminds us it’s in trusitng in Christ and not our good works that our offering to him is accepted
When God looks at you he sees someone who is fearful and wonderfully made. Someone whose life sin tried to be ruined
but if you have trusted in Christ he sees the PERFECT obeideince of his son
and we can belive something pretty amazing when we realize this.
that the same words God the father spoke over Jesus at his baptism he know speaks over us
with you I am well pleased
if you could leave tonight believing God is pleased with you it would begin to change so much about you
no longer would you give worhsip to things and people that you could never please
you give everything you are to someone who is already pleased with you
one more word in verse one I want to focus in on.
Paul says in the ESV this is your spirtual act of worship
that word is better translated logical
in other words Paul is saying as we view Gods mercy. the only way we could logically think is by responding like this
and because of that we allow our minds not to be conformed to the pattern of this world but to be transformed by the renewing of that mind
we have to learn to think about our lives, and ourselves biblical, or as God does
or simply put we must think like a christian thinks
Paul says there are 2 ways to live
like the world- Like everyone else lives
or by Gods will
when we allow our minds to be renewed by Christ
Paul helps us in phillipains with this renewed mind idea when he writes
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
So what is True?
Jesus he said I am the way the truth and the life.
what in honrable Jesus. He never sinned
Who is just. God he is perfectly just in all his ways
what is lovely the life and death of Christ
there is nothing this side of heaven or in all of heaven that is as lovely as Jesus
and you see all these things displayed most on the cross
it’s why the writer of hebrews says in
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
if you want your mind to be renewed don’t take your eyes off Jesus
and this renewal transforms you
illustraation
VERY HUNGRY catapiller
that’s what God does with us. It’s as we renew our mind that tranformation continues
God will not stop working on you until you look just like Jesus.
and as we are transformed
we will be able to know the good, acceptable and perfect will of God
as I said at the beginning tonight that’s something we all want to know.
what is my purpose what am I here for?
It’s what I wanted to know when I first became christian and paul says when will give everything to God becasue he ave up everything for us
our heart will beat like his heart will beat
our mind will think like his mind thinks because we have the mind of Christ
our lives will look like him
it’s this idea the Psalmist writes about in Psalm 37:4
Delight yourself in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
When I first Got saved I thought so if my heart desires a new car, or all the money in the world or a big social media following
this was wonderful
but what I’m learing is as I delight myself in the Lord my heart beats like his heart. My mind is his mind
and as that is true my desires our his
so as I lay down my life as a living sacrifice. As I joyful do this and allow him to renew my mind
i’m being transfomred and I can know the good perfect and pleasing will of God
the same is true for you
let’s pray
Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 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?
So tonight father I pray we would all do this.
that we would realize there is nothing in this world better then you Jesus
that would would joyfull and gladly offer ourselves again and again and again to you
trusting that you meet us in the place of our weakness and doubt
and as we offer ourselves we are thankful we are alive in you
Lord thank you for giving your life for us. WE know our life belongs to you.
We pray these things in your name
amen