Sermon Tone Analysis

It’s hard to believe, but we have come to the final section of our study in Romans.

As we reflected last week, Romans can be divided into two main parts (Chapters 1-11 WHAT TO BELIEVE) and (Chapters 12-16 HOW TO BEHAVE).

Paul lays out for us in the first 11 chapters what we are to believe when it comes to our relationship to God.

In Romans 1-3 Paul gives a proclamation of the Gospel and how we are created by God and have broken His law.

Our nature is inherently sinful and in turn at enmity with Him.

The picture painted in the first 3 chapters of Romans is that all of humanity is hopeless in their own efforts to be made right with a holy God.

Then in Romans 4-5 we learned of How God provided righteousness through the Gospel.

Although we are inherently hopeless in our sinful nature, God provided a way to be made right with Him through the perfect life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Also in Romans 6-8 we saw the Power of God’s righteousness in the Gospel, as the indwelling Spirit now enables a different kind of life.

No longer are we bound to live under the deceitful kingship of our old master of sin, but now have everything provided to us to live under the authority of Christ.

Paul concluded chapter 8 with the beautiful reminder that the love of God toward those who are His is everlasting.

And last week, we finished up our 5 week mini-series in Romans 9-11, where we learned that God has every right to extend mercy and to harden whomever He pleases.

Likewise, we learned that the miracle of God’s Sovereign extension of grace and mercy, is that He would extend it to anyone at all! Through this perplexing section of Romans, Paul clarifies the hard antinomy of God’s Sovereignty and Human Responsibility and the plan God had to incorporate non-jews into His family.

Romans is known as Paul’s deepest theological letter, and for good reason.

In it we find deep truth that both challenges the mind and nourishes the soul.

Friend, God is trustworthy and is at work in the world bringing about His purposes, even when you can’t see Him.

This is not just a truth we find in Romans, but throughout the whole bible - especially in Esther that we are studying on Sunday evenings.

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We finished last week with Paul’s doxological finale of chapter 11.

Look with me there if you would, where he writes:

Paul reminds us that we have no place to claim understanding of God’s mind, counsel for His will, or repayment for a debt He owes.

God works according to His own will and is sovereignly in control.

And the reason this is so, is because (according to v. 36) our existence is received from God, sustained through God, and for the purpose of God’s glory.

This past week, we as a faith family dwelt on this truth:

God created me and sustains me.

I exist for His glory!

And as Paul transitions from what we believe to how that effects our day to day lives in how we live, he begins with the first two verses of Romans 12, that frankly, have the potential to completely transform your marriage, your parenting, your career, your entire life!

In fact, if you were hoping to check church off your list of to-do’s today, and not be confronted to change, you picked the wrong Sunday!

And if you’ve come today, recognizing the greatness of God and wanting Him to speak to you today through His Word and by His Spirit, He is going to do that today!

You see, Paul says:

In these two short verses, Paul gives us two imperative responses to the greatness of God and they deal with heart of presenting ourselves to God and the transformation needed in our deepest parts.

You will notice this:

1. Presentation (v.1)

As Paul begins in verse 1 with an appeal.

He says, “I beseech you, or beg of you, therefore...”

Remember when you read a therefore, you need to find out what it is there for.

And this therefore is referencing what you just read up to this point.

All of what we have learned about our relationship to God to this point of Romans culminates in the fact that we are from God, through God, and for God.

And because of this, Paul begs of the believer to respond in a specific way.

He says, because of everything God is and has done for you, I appeal for you to:

Present your bodies a living sacrifice.

Let’s define a couple of the words so we can get the whole picture well.

That word Present means to:

παρίστημι (paristēmi)- to make available or accessible; provide or furnish

Literally, this is a decision of providing fully furnished access of our whole selves.

And that’s what the word bodies means.

It is:

σῶμα (sōma) - both the physical and immaterial parts of yourself

This includes the things you can see and the things you can’t see

So, your eyes and ears to your feet and hands

but also, your affections, your feelings, your thoughts and your plans.

It involves what you do on the outside, yes, but infinitely more intimately it involves who you are on the inside.

This fully furnished access of our whole selves to God is offered as a living sacrifice - literally meaning:

ζάω (zaō) - to be alive

θυσία (thusia) - sacrificial offering

Those to whom Paul is originally writing would have known the OT sacrificial systems well and were able to relate to what He is referencing.

Much better than we do today.

However, as we understand the OT system of sacrificing sheep, goats and so on is no longer necessary, there is still a NT sacrificial system.

As RC Sproul put it: It is not a sacrifice that we give in order to make an atonement, but a sacrifice that we give because an atonement has been made for us.

R. C. Sproul, The Gospel of God: An Exposition of Romans (Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications, 1994), 195.

Our total, sacrificial, fully accessible presentation to God is because of, not in order to.

John Phillips said:

All other faiths make sacrifice the root, Christianity makes it the flower.

The life of sacrifice we are called to, is not based on the hope that we may earn the favor of God, but because the favor of God has been placed upon us.

So Paul calls believers who have already experienced the manifold grace of God through the Gospel to make available everything about them, seen and unseen, as a living gift back to our gracious God.

And Paul says, this all access approach to giving God a living sacrifice in response to His grace has two applications:

1.

We aren’t to be put to death like the OT animal sacrifices were.

All of the OT sacrificial systems were pointing to Christ as the ultimate and final sacrifice for sin.

Christ has come, and accomplished what He came for, so in this context, physical death is not in view.

Not only are we to present our physical lives, but Paul has in mind that we are to present our spiritual life too.

You see:

2. We aren’t dead sacrifices, because we have been given new life with Christ.

Remember back to Romans 6 where Paul said that believers are dead to sin and alive to God.

And just as Christ who died and took our sin upon Himself, in his resurrection, demonstrated that he has defeated both sin and death.

And with this victory of Christ in mind, Paul writes:

Christ has provided us life.

He brought us from the death of our sinful nature to new life in Him.

And the life that we now live is empowered by the Spirit, not by the flesh.

In other words, the call of Romans 12 is not to figure out how to change yourself.

This presentation is not to be rooted in you.

This living gift you are to present to God is rooted in the life giving, enabling grace of God!

You see, this is not about you being independent of your dead life before Christ, it’s about your dependence on God in your new life in Christ.

Friend, you don’t need to fight your flesh harder, as much as you need to rest in God more.

And as you submit to and delight in God more, He will do the work of change in you and through you, you could never accomplish on your own.

And this presentation of your complete self to God, that delights in His enabling grace and life giving gift, is holy, acceptable to Him, and is a rational response in worship.

First, we note that this type of dependent Christian living is sacred and pleasing to God.

God delights in those who delight in Him.

And as you set your affections on Him, and pursue Him, and depend on Him, He is pleased to set you apart.

And this dependent presentation is only rational in your spiritual worship to Him.

CT Studd put it this way, “If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for him.”

Studd understood that a proper view of God, produces a proper response of worship.

Isaac Watts, a great hymn writer of the 17th-18th century, wrote from His view of God these words:

“Love so amazing, so divine, demands my heart, my life, my all.”

And He was right!

This all access presentation of everything about me is the reasonable and rational worshipful response to Who God Is, and what He has done for me.

That thought, that hobby, those people, that car, the career, those passions, that word, those plans, these kids, that addiction, THEY ALL ARE TO BE BROUGHT BEFORE GOD.

In response to the greatness of God toward the Romans, Paul pleads with them to lay everything they are (physical and immaterial) out on a silver platter and present an all access pass to every bit of it to God.

And to some of you are like YES, God have it all!

I am all in!

While others of us here today, we think yikes!