Untitled Sermon (8)
Notes
Transcript
Do you Love God?
Do you Love God?
Do you Love God this Morning?
Do you Love God?
Are you thankful for the Mercy, He has shown you?
How should you respond to Him, His Mercy?
(looking for the word WORSHIP)
How can we worship God?
How else? (Loop for a while)
Could you worship God, by making your life a living sacrifice to God?
This is what God says about Living Sacrifices in Roman’s chapter 12
1 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. 2 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.
Living Sacrifices will theme this morning.
The trouble with living sacrifices, is they keep getting up off the alter and walking away!
To pursue their own interests.
Introduction:
Introduction:
-- How long have you been a Christian?
-- Lately, have you
been discouraged,
been disappointed, or
been depressed?
I have known some discouragement at times.
I have known some disappointment at times
I’ve felt depressed now and then,
sometimes with good reason,
sometimes not
.
But lately things are going ok for me.
I’m counting down the days, until I can serve the church full time
Only 6 months four days, until I retire from Village Missions.
-- Personal experience
What are you facing these days
many situations are hard on us
Single Parents?
Been laid off?
Being Depressed?
Arguements at home
Or work, Or school
We all have problems and issues we face in this life.
Sometimes all we need is a Paradigm shift,
new perspective
God’s perspective
can change your whole outlook on life.
Our passage began
1 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.
In View God’s Mercies
In View God’s Mercies
Paul said,
Therefore, after that beautiful doxology ending chapter 11
33 Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
34 “Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?”
35 “Who has ever given to God,
that God should repay them?”
36 For from him and through him and for him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen.
Paul is just blown away by all that God has done and is doing for us.
Because we are sinners in need of The Savior.
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
If we have all done it, sinned.
If you have sinned.
If I have sinned
and the person next to you has sinned,
what’s the big deal?
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The big deal is the penalty for sin
It’s Death!!!!!!
And Hell is not
this wonderful block party
with all our friends that didn’t make it either
Jesus said in Mark chapter 9
47 And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, 48 where
“ ‘the worms that eat them do not die,
and the fire is not quenched.’
That is not a vacation spot in Cozumel
Not a place you or I want to be.
Because of God’s Mercies
in view of God’s Mercies
There is a way we can be Justified by faith
1 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God.
You and I matter to God.
You and I matter to God.
In God’s eyes,
because of His great mercies and love,
you are very important.
In God’s eyes
we are very important
therefore
God gave His Son to pay for your sins so that you
and I can be declared right before God.
Our biggest problem is NOT:
Our biggest problem is NOT:
---- Our employment or financial needs
I don’t like being between Jobs.
I worked hard to make sure I didn’t make a mistake
a mis-calculation on retirement fund
but financial security is not my greatest need
and it’s not your greatest need either.
---- Our physical or emotional needs
they can cripple us,
they can bring us to our knees but
they are not our greatest need.
---- Our relationship with
our in-laws,
our boss,
our plus 1
are important
can really be good or bad
but they are greatest need
---- Our health
Some people have a horible time with there health,
some are going to die, sooner that we would like
Or feel so lousy, they wish they would die
but our health is not our greatest need.
-- Our biggest is salvation from the penalty of sin
because the consequence of dying in your sins
never STOPS
There is no end to
ETERNAL DAMNATION
God help us all to choose you
to choose life while we can.
Well that was kind of heavy.
What was the responce Paul was looking for
in view of Gods Mercies?
Present Your Bodies
Present Your Bodies
Present your Bodies as what?
A living sacrifice.
It has been said,
the problem of a living sacrifice is, too often they get up off the alter and go do there own thing.
Have you ever given something to God,
but found you were still carrying it around,
the next day.
I have done that with worry.
I have done that with forgiveness.
illus. After I found my birth mother, who seemed very nice and charming,
I came to realized that for years, I had resentment and anger against my adopted mom.
I would forgive her one day
and be mad at her the next
that is take that anger off of God’s alter and
carry it around with me again.
I couldn’t get over it,
until, I was willing to tell others,
until I told the church.
For me, that’s when the anger and bitterness stayed put on God’s alter
as a living sacrifice.
Set-apart unto God
Another way of describing a living sacrifice, is to say they are set appart to God.
illus.
In Yorkshire, England, during the early 1800s, two sons were born to a family named Taylor.
The older one set out to make a name for himself by entering Parliament and gaining public prestige.
But the younger son chose to give his life to Christ.
He later recalled, “
I remember, as in unreserved consecration I put myself,
my life,
my friends,
my all,
upon the altar.
I felt I was in the presence of God,
entering into covenant with the Almighty.”
With that commitment, Hudson Taylor turned his face toward China and obscurity.
As a result,
he is known and honored on every continent as a faithful missionary and the founder of the China Inland Mission
(now known as Overseas Missionary Fellowship).
For the other son, however, there is no lasting monument.
When you look in the encyclopedia to see what the other son has done,
you find these words, “the brother of Hudson Taylor.”
Isn’t that Ironic.
The one who chose fame, is forgotten
The one, Hudson Taylor, who chose Obscurity
it remembered all over the world.
Life doesn’t always were that way.
Most famous people have little or nothing to do with God
and Many many of God’s faithful servants
serve in Obscurity
in this life
Oh but brothers and sisters
in the life to come
You will be SOMEBODY,
because you made Jesus your priority
in the here and now!
Be Transformed
Be Transformed
What did verse 2 say again?
2 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.
Living sacrifices don’t act like others.
Sometimes as we
baffle others
with our choices
it looks to the world like
our earbuds, must be tuned to a different channel then their.
Because we choose
not to be weird or different all the time,
but we choose not to conform
to additutes,
to opinions
just because everyone else it
thinking that way and doing that stuff.
We choose when to be different
and when to be the same.
Informed vs. Transformed
You look like a pretty smart bunch,
can you tell me the difference between being
Being informed and
Being Transformed?
I can show someone from scriptures
that all have sinned
that the wages of sin in death
that Jesus provides a way of escape
a way to be justified before God and
how to live without the guilt and shame
of our sin.
But that doesn’t make them saved.
There are informed but not yet saved.
They will only be transformed
by the revewing of their minds
when they make Jesus their Lord and Savior
ask for His forgiveness
ask for Him to come into their hearts
to cleans them, their minds and to start
that transformation process.
illus. DECIDING TO JUMP
A boy told his father,
"Dad, if three frogs were sitting on a limb that hung over a pool, and one frog decided to jump off into the pool, how many frogs would be left on the limb?"
The dad replied, "Two."
"No," the son replied. "There’s three frogs and one decides to jump, how many are left?"
The dad said, "Oh, I get it, if one decides to jump, the others would too. So there are none left."
The boy said, "No dad, the answer is three. The frog only DECIDED to jump."
Does that sound like last year’s resolution?
Great inspiration and great resolutions,
but often times we only decide,
and months later we are still on the same limb of do-nothing.
We will get deeper into Roman’s 12 next week but
Do you see that God has been very Merciful to us,
to you?
Have you tried to make your life and heart
mind, body and soul
a living sacrifice to God?
Has that Gone well for you?
Have there been some bumps along the road?
Catherine Booth, who along with her husband was a part of the founding of the Salvation Army was concerned over people making one commitment to God and calling it good.
They never put anything else on the alter as part of their living sacrifice.
If God put any conviction on their heart,
to give us this or that
or to start doing this or they
They ignore it and stunt their growth
in the Christian faith.
So where are and I this morning.
Are we living sacrifices?
Or is the alter of our life
just a monument, to
a stirring that happened once in our life?
We are going to close in prayer and then have communion.
Father, you know our nature
You know how easy it is for us to
to be moved one day by your spirit and
and lifeless as a corpse another
Or to slip away to other concerns.
Give us a burden to be living sacrifices to you,
We ask this is Jesus name,
Amen.
