A Living Sacrifice - Romans 12:1-2

Introduction

The Game of “Telephone”

The challenge of this game is not to let the message get so changed that you lose what was being said.

There is a great truth we can learn from this game. Just as the original sentence is changed and distorted, Satan has been and is trying his best to change and distort the truth of God’s Word! We see this in the early words of Scripture, “Did God really say … ?” (See Genesis 3:1.) This is and has always been his plan of attack. We must be able to recognize the half-truths and outright lies that our enemy wants us to believe.

We as God’s people must NEVER put our convictions about God’s truth, revealed in and through His Word, aside to accommodate the philosophies and ideologies of our current culture. We are equipped to stand for the truth through the power of the Holy Spirit working within us as individuals but also through the corporate body known as the local church.

Our theme Scripture for VBS is Romans 12:2. Paul begins this chapter with the word therefore and allows the readers to think back on all that he has said in the previous 11 chapters. It is within these chapters that Paul meticulously explains what God has done for a lost and hopeless world through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. (See Romans 1:16; 3:10; 3:23; 5:8; 6:23; 8:1; 10:9,13; 11:33-36.)

Paul was writing to God’s people in Rome who had probably heard the gospel of Jesus Christ for the first time when Peter preached at Pentecost. Then around AD 49, they planted a church prior to the construction of the Colosseum in the city of Rome—a city where its citizens proclaimed that “Caesar is Lord!” The church in Rome began to proclaim that “Jesus Christ is Lord!” The “complexities” of the everyday existence for the church in Rome were how they should live their daily lives personally but also corporately within the context of their new faith family. In other words, your personal journey with Jesus Christ not only matters for your own self but also for the local church in which God has placed you!

Read Romans 12:1-2

Romans 12:1–2 ESV

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.

Better Together

We Are A Living Sacrifice

We Must Be Transformed, Not Conformed