Living Sacrifice

Romans 12:1-8

A young lady approached me last week when I was at a conference speaking, and she was very tearful and very distraught.  And she said to me essentially what I have heard in different words many times in my ministry.  She said, "I just can't seem to live the Christian life the way I should."  She said, "I am frustrated.  I am without victory, without a sense of accomplishment.  I struggle seemingly with the very simplest forms of obedience in my Christian walk.  I'm constantly defeated.  Can you help me?"

I said, "Well, what has been your approach to solving the problem yourself?"

She said, "I have tried everything."  She said, "I...I've been going to a church where they speak in tongues, where they have healings, where they have all kinds of spiritual experiences."  She said, "I've entered into all of them.  I've spoken in tongues.  I've had certain ecstatic experiences, gifts of prophecy, certain supposed miracles.  I've been slain in the Spirit.  And in spite of all of this, I am not pleased with my life."  And she said, in a rather telling remark, "I've tried to get all I could get out of God."

And I said, "That's your problem."  The key to spiritual victory is not getting all you can get, but giving all you have.  There's a big difference.  And there are people literally flocking into churches and spiritual experiences to get more of God when the issue is not what they need to get but what they need to give.  And that's the essence of this tremendous passage of Scripture.

Having concluded eleven chapters of profound and thrilling doctrine that defines what God has done for every believer, Paul does not say, "Now here's what you need to get."  He says, "Now here's what you need to give."  The key to powerful living is not getting something more, but giving all we have.  And I'm somewhat admittedly frustrated by that particular idea that is so prevalent in Christianity that what you need to be successful in living the Christian life is to get something, when the real issue is to give.

You remember, don't you, back in John chapter 4 that Jesus said, "The Father seeks true worshipers."  He redeemed us in order that we might give Him glory; that we might give Him ourselves.

Living Sacrifice........As I mentioned from 1 Peter 2:5 “Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.” , we are spiritual priests offering up spiritual sacrifices.  The primary sacrifice we are called to offer, Paul says here, is ourselves.  Now the language here is definitely Old Testament.  It is the language of ritual offerings.  It is the language of ceremony.  It is the language of the Levitical system.  It is the language of the priesthood.  It is the language of sacrifice.  And in the Old Testament, we know that an offerer would come to God bringing his lamb or his turtledove, whatever it was that he was going to sacrifice, he brought that sacrifice to the holy place.  It was given over to the priest and the priest took it, slew it, put it on the altar and as it were, offered it to God.

The Psalmist had it, Psalm 116 verse 12, "What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits toward me?"  And what he was saying is, "I...I can't think of anything that would be equal to what He has done for me."  Well, fortunately God doesn't expect us to return in equal.  All He asks is that we give ourselves as a living sacrifice.

Now let me just digress to a footnote.  Sometimes I hear people say, "Well, why do you have so much doctrinal teaching?  Let's have more practical stuff."  Once in a while I get a little note that says, "Your sermons need to be more practical."  And that may be true, that may be true.  But let me tell you something, I'm just kind of following my teacher, Paul.  I don't do it always very well but this is my goal anyway. And Paul had a pattern that I really like.  His pattern was this, before you ask anybody to perform a certain duty, you deal with doctrine.  Did you get that?  Duty is always based on doctrine.  There has to be a foundation of truth before there can be any call to a certain kind of behavior, very, very important.

Isaac would have been a dead sacrifice.  Abraham would have made a living one.  It isn't that God is saying to you, are you will to go get burned up?  Are you willing to go out and die?  What He is saying is, are you willing to say to God I will live the rest of my life without anything that I now hold dear if that is Your will?  And that is a perpetual and lasting commitment.  That's the stuff of which a living sacrifice is made.  And Abraham was willing.  He was willing.  That is a great man.  That is a man who walks with God who is so willing.  He was saying, "I will surrender to You, God, if You tell me, no matter what it is You tell me."

This living sacrifice, this surrender of self in a humble submissive act to God, this, as Paul put it, bearing about in my body always the dying of Jesus Christ, this kind of living sacrifice is the basis of true worship.  It is the foundation of all Christian dedication.  It is what Paul meant when he said, "For to me to live is Christ and (What?) to die is gain."  He said, "I have many things but," in Galatians he said, "I count all things manure compared to what I have in Christ."

This living sacrifice, this surrender of self in a humble submissive act to God, this, as Paul put it, bearing about in my body always the dying of Jesus Christ, this kind of living sacrifice is the basis of true worship.  It is the foundation of all Christian dedication.  It is what Paul meant when he said, "For to me to live is Christ and (What?) to die is gain."  He said, "I have many things but," in Galatians he said, "I count all things manure compared to what I have in Christ."

There was a great Christian in China, Lu Fook was his name.  He was moved with compassion for his own countrymen when they were taken to South Africa to work as coolies to work in the minds.  This very prominent man sold himself as a slave to a South African mine company for five years.  He became a coolie slave with slaves in order to reach them with the gospel.  He died as a slave in South Africa but not until he had won over 200 of his fellow men to Christ, a living sacrifice.

Devereux Spratt was a somewhat well-known Englishman who in 1641 was captured by the Algerian pirates and made a slave.  As a slave, this nobleman founded a church.  And when his release was finally settled, accomplished by his brother back in England, he refused to accept the release and said he would remain a slave until the day he died in order to serve the church which Christ had privileged him to found among the slaves.  Today there is a plaque in a church in Algiers that bears his name.

David Livingston, that great missionary to Africa, said, "People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa.  Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of the great debt owing to our God which we could never repay?  Is that a sacrifice which brings its own reward of healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter?  Away with such a word.  It is emphatically no sacrifice, it is privilege.  Anxiety, sickness, suffering or danger now and then with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life may make us pause and cause the spirit to waver and sink, but let this only be for a moment.  All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall hereafter be revealed in and for us.  I never made a sacrifice.  Of this we ought not to talk when we remember the great sacrifice which He made who left His Father’s thrown on high to give Himself for us," end quote.