We started a new member's class again this morning if you are interested in participating and that's not too late. We just had class number one and we had a great time this morning in that class. I was glad to see several people interested in learning more about the congregation. No obligation. If you take the class, it doesn't mean you're going to be de facto a new member or have any pressure put on you to become a member or anything like that. But we would love for you if you're investigating Christianity, if you're exploring Christianity, if you're wondering what we as a church believe, this is a great place to come and find out about that. So please, please avail yourself to that if you so wish. I was just kind of curious, how many members do I have here today? We're the members of Covenant Presbyterian Church. Oh, look at that. Okay. Very nice. Well, you know, you members will know, we talked about question number one in the membership class this morning. Question number one. And of course, if you're a member of the church, you know what question number one is. Question number one is, um, members, question number one of the membership questions, not of the categories. Question number one, where are my members again? Oh, look, look how many fewer there are this time now around. What? What happened here? Yeah. Oh, I see how this works. Well, I had a bunch of members there that first time around. Now I was under, I got three or four. They're, they're dropping like flies. So what is question number one of the membership questions? It begins by saying, do you acknowledge yourself to be sinners in the sight of God, justly deserving his displeasure, save in his sovereign mercy? You remember that now? How many member question number one now? Huh? Do you acknowledge yourself to be sinners in the sight of God? Justly. I see that hand. Justly deserving his displeasure, his wrath, his justice, his judgment, condemnation, damn nation. Do you acknowledge that? That that's the human predicament, that that is the state of man, that that is our sentence. The wages of sin is death except and only except for one thing. And one thing only, and that is the mercies of God. That's it folks, all that stands between you and damnation, all that stands between you and hell, all that stands between you and condemnation is simply and only the mercies of the living and true God. That's it. That's the only thing between you and a final eternal destiny and hell. Let me ask you this question, do you acknowledge yourselves to be sinners in the sight of God? Justly. Deserving God's displeasure, save only in your hope, in his sovereign mercy. Isn't it interesting that that's question number one? And isn't it interesting? The question number one really gets to the bottom of things, doesn't it? It really gets to what's important. If you look in the book of Romans in chapter 12, Paul gets this to chapter 12, verses 1 and 2. But Paul says, therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, therefore I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy. Now last week, when we were looking at a passage in the book of Hebrews, we came across that word, therefore, and we came across a very similar kind of statement, namely, what we would call a summary statement. A statement that summarizes what the author has already said previously. And the word, therefore, points us back to that kind of a statement. It points us to a summary statement that tells us everything that the author has already said. He's going to summarize his whole point throughout the whole letter to the Romans thus far. And what he does is he boils everything down that he's already said to one word. One word, all of Romans, one through chapter 11, Paul boils down to one word, and the one word that he chooses to summarize all that he's already said in what has been recognized by many scholars as the greatest book in the New Testament, the greatest book ever written in the history of Christianity, the book of Romans, and he summarizes it and boils it down to one word. And that word is mercy. Therefore, I urge you, brothers, by the mercy of God, Paul could have chosen a lot of words to summarize what he's already said. If you've read chapter 1, you know that Paul could have used the word wrath. He could have said, I urge you, therefore, I urge you, brothers, because of the wrath of God. If you've read Romans, chapters 2 through 3, you know that Paul could have used the word sin. He could have said, I urge you, brothers, because of the seriousness of sin. Romans 5 through 7, he could have used some of those key buzzwords that we are also familiar with. He could have used the words righteousness, justification, sanctification, glorification, could have used any one of those words to summarize what it is we believe in, what it is he has taught through Romans 1 through 11, and I find it interesting that Paul uses none of those other words in his summary statement here, that the word that Paul uses to summarize everything that he has said thus far is the word mercy. And I want to argue that what Paul is saying to us this morning, and please listen to this, is that the basis for living the Christian life is mercy. Mercy is the basis for living the Christian life. Not wrath, not justice, not judgment, not law, not fall, not sin, not death, not slavery, not even those great words like faith, hope, love, justification, sanctification, glorification, no. None of those things, Paul uses the basis. They are all good words, they are all great words, they are all theologically rich and important words, words that should be in all of our vocabulary, but when Paul wants to boil it down, to summarize all of those things, he chooses the word mercy, and I believe he does so intentionally because what we need more than anything else is mercy. You see, we all live our lives and view something or someone, don't we? Paul is writing to Jews in Rome who are trying to live their lives like Jews, and they wanted everybody else to live their lives like Jews too. There were Jewish Christians in the church in Rome, Paul is writing to Gentiles in the church of Rome who wanted to live their lives like Gentiles do, and they wanted everybody else to live that way too. So we all live our lives in view of something or someone, and what Paul is saying is to live your life, to live the Christian life, you need to do so in view of God's mercies. Everybody lives their lives according to, or in view of someone or something, and what Paul is saying in your beloved, and this is what I want you to get, is that mercy is a controlling and governing attribute of God, is a controlling and governing attribute of God, and you live your Christian lives according to the mercies of God. And notice here that what you don't, you probably notice, you say, why does Jim keep saying mercies when it says mercy? The Greek word here is plural. Some of the older translations used to go like this, I beseech you, therefore, brothers by the mercies of God, mercies, it's plural. In ancient languages they used the plural to create emphasis, in the same way that we would use bold print, or that we would italicize words, that we would underline words, or that we would highlight words, and the ancient languages, they used the plural to bring about the emphasis, the mercies, the manifold mercies of, you know, I don't know how many of you recall in Matthew 18, there is a parable, and the parable tells us that there was a king, and this king decided that it was time to square, or to settle all of his accounts. And so he had a man that was brought before him, who owed a very, very large sum, 10,000 talents. Now, we don't really know what a talent is, at least I don't know what a talent is, but we do know that the point of this parable is that this is a very large sum, and indeed it is a sum that is impossible for someone to pay back. And so the king says this man, pay all that you owe right now, pay off your debt, settle your account, or I'm going to throw you and your wife and your family into prison until you can pay for it, and the man drops to his knees, and he begs the king, he begs the Lord, he begs the master, please be patient with me, and I will pay you all y'all, and it says what? It says that he had mercy on him, and he canceled, he forgave that debt. And then it says, he went out, and he found everybody else that owed him a debt, a small debt. He found one man that owed him a hundred denari, I don't know what that is, but the point is that it was a very little sum of money, and he found him, and he said, pay me everything you got, I'm going to put you in the debtor's prison until you can pay it. The man said, be patient with me, and he took the man, and he put him into the prison. It says actually that he grabbed him by a float. Do you remember what the title of parables, the unmerciful servant, the unmerciful servant? Do you see the contrast is what is important here, beloved? We owe God an unpayable debt, a debt that is impossible for us to pay. We could never pay it, no matter how hard we work, no matter how long we work, no matter how much we were paid, we could never pay the debt we owe God. And so the only thing we can do is ask ourself upon his mercy and plead for his mercy. But what's the point? The point is that your debt was so big, and what anybody else owes you is so small in comparison, that to live your life and view of the mercies of God means that you have received mercy, so much mercy, that you are to live your life now, extending mercy. God has extended to us, to you, and to I, his mercy. And we are to live and view that mercy, which means that we are to extend mercy to others. We are to live and view of God's mercy, the Christian life that we've been talking about, the Christian life, living the Christian life. We looked at the Lord's Prayer, we looked at the Ten Commandments, all of these things had to do with living the Christian life. Then we looked at the means, in other words, how are we enabled and empowered to live the Christian life? And we looked at what we call the means of grace, we looked at the Word of God as a means of grace, we looked at prayer as a means of grace, we looked at the sacraments as a means of grace, we looked at fellowship as a means of grace, always that God uses to empower and to enable his people to live the Christian life.
And Paul now is boiling all that down the one word, living the Christian life means living a life in view of God's mercy, that God has extended to you great mercy. And that is your motivation. You see, for living this life, for living this Christian life,
and everything else, all my experiences in life, pale and comparison to what God has done for me.
Mercy is the basis of the Christian life. Worship is the essence of Christian life. Look at, again, verse one, therefore I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy to do what? To offer your bodies as living sacrifices. Now when Paul talks about offering your bodies as living as sacrifices, he's using what we would call the surgical language, that is he is using the language of worship. He's using the language of worship from the old economy, from the Old Testament, from the Temple in the Tabernacle, where the priests would offer on behalf of the people a atonement presens by sacrificing animals. This is the surgical language, which means that this is the language of worship. And what Paul is saying here, and don't please don't miss this, what Paul is saying, something very shocking here, beloved. So shocking indeed that it ought to really give us pause. What Paul is saying here is that worship is human sacrifice.
Forget about the word living at this point. The point is still the same. Worship is human sacrifice. It is nothing less than that. It may be more than that, but it is not less than that. Worship is a form of human sacrifice. When we worship God, we make our offering to Him. We God wants all of us. When it says, in view of God's mercy to offer your bodies, what He is saying there is He wants all of you. He wants your whole being. He wants your mind, your body, your soul. Christianity isn't just some spiritual or ethereal experience. It's not some kind of gnostic experience. Christianity has to do with living our real lives and real bodies and real time and real space and God wants every bit of you.
Worship, Christian worship is human sacrifice. It's total and it's not only human sacrifice, but it's a living sacrifice. Now that doesn't just mean you're alive. That doesn't just mean you have a pulse. It doesn't mean you're just breathing. It doesn't mean in other words, Paul is saying it's merely living. Paul is saying that that that worship is merely a living sacrifice as opposed to you being dead. That is without breath, without a brain way, without a heartbeat. When Paul says that we are living sacrifice, he's making a distinction between the human predicament and the human condition of being dead in a body of our trespasses of sin. But now you, he has made a live. You're in a live sacrifice. You are bursting in overflowing with the resurrection life. That's what it means to be a living sacrifice. You have resurrection life throwing through your soul and your spirit and your mind and your body. You're a new creation in Christ Jesus. You're not any longer dead in your trespasses of sin. But now you burst and you overflow with life. You're living. Sacrifice holy and pleasing to God as your spiritual literally reasonable at the worship. You see, human sacrifice is our at the worship. That's profound, beloved. That is extremely profound. That is not only profound, but that is provocative. And it's meant to be provocative. The worship is boiled down to human sacrifice. How be it a living human sacrifice? That's the difference. It's not just slaying the animals on the altar. But it's becoming a living offering unto God so that all of your life is worship. This is what John frame means when he talks about the the broad and narrow forms of worship. That the broad form of worship is that all of life is worship. You remember a few weeks ago when we were talking about worship in Matthew 28, we were seeing how the disciples came and they saw Jesus on the mountain and they worshipped him. And you remember we used John Piper's definition of worship and we said that Piper defines worship as gladly reflecting back to God the radiance of his worth. And the Piper was on to say that all of creation reflects back to God the radiance of his worth. But only God's people can do it gladly. Only God's people can do it with joy. Only God's people can do it with delight. And the Piper says that a human being will do one or two things that either you will gladly reflect back to God the radiance of his worth or you will reflect back to God the radiance of his justice. I'm 50 years old. If God is merciful I may have 15 or 20 more years of ministry. And the other day I was writing something to someone and I said this in effect. I have maybe 15 or 20 years left. That's it. And I want to live my life in such a way that all of my time, all of my energy, all of my effort and all of my resources, everything that I am and everything that I have is for the glory of God and the furtherance of God's kingdom. That is to say that I want my whole life to be worship. I want my whole life to gladly reflect back to God the radiance of his glorious worth. I don't want to waste the next 15 years. Indeed, I don't want to waste the next 15 minutes. I want my life to be a glad reflection back to God the radiance of his worth. That is the sable of it that I want my life to be a living sacrifice wholly acceptable to God as my reasonable spiritual worship. And I said something else when I wrote this and I said I want to be part of a church that has the same passion and the same vision. I want to be part of a church that longs to have their whole life and everything they have and everything they are to be an offering to God. And I want to be part of a church that has the human resources and the physical resources to accomplish these things for God. That is to say that I don't want to spend the next 20 years or the next 20 minutes bickering. I want to worship. I want to worship in the narrow sense of the word in terms of us meeting here and gathering here as the people of God on Sunday mornings. I want to worship. And I want to see the people of God worship. I want to see you offer your yourselves, your lives to God, to gladly reflect back to God the radiance of his worth. And I want us every one of us, bar none, to worship God in the broad sense in the sense that all of our life is worship. We worship when we wake. We worship when we work. We worship when we rest. We worship when we play we worship when we break bread of life. And beloved, I'm resolved to that. I am resolved. That is my promise. That is my pledge. I'm resolved to live my life and to encourage and urge you, brothers, by the mercies of God that you present your bodies as a living sacrifice, a human sacrifice, holy and acceptable on the God as your reasonable spiritual worship. And if we don't do that, then there is no meaning to what we do here. Paul goes on to say that this is your spiritual act of worship. And one of the ways that you know, one of the ways that this has lived out is do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world. And that word world there is really the word age. And notice the strong negative here. Notice the strong never do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, to the pattern of this age. You know, when Paul uses language like that, the pattern of this age, he's comparing two ages. See, for Paul and his thinking and in much of the Jewish thinking, there were two ages. And sometimes Paul talks about this age and the age to come. And sometimes when he talks about this age, he says this evil age or this wicked age, this present evil age or this present wicked age. And then he talks in any but that that age is seen over and against another age, namely the age to come, the future age. But in Paul's understanding of the present age and the future age is this. It's that the future age is already come. It's already begun in the person of the work of Jesus Christ. It's already here. Jesus Christ is the beginning of that new age. The future is already present. And what Paul is saying when he says don't be conformed to this age, this present age, this evil age, this wicked age, what he's saying is that what the governing and controlling principle of your life is to learn how to live in the age to come, to learn how to live in the future age, to not allow the effects and the influences of the present and wicked and evil age to be the controlling principle and governing principles of your life. Do not be conformed. You see by all of the influences of this present age, but rather he says be transformed. And that's the one Greek word that everybody knows. You don't have to go to seminary and know that word, right? It'd be transformed. It comes from the word metamorphosis, be transformed by the renewing of your minds. In other words, let the values, let the virtues, let the principles, let the influences of the future age, of the new age, which begun in Christ, let that be the transforming influence of how you live your lives. And when you do that, then your whole life becomes an offering to God, then your whole life becomes worshiped before God. And you begin to understand, and not only understand, but you begin to approve of God's will. Do you struggle with God's will for your life?
You know, researchers tell us that one of the most important things for people is to understand what the world God is for their life. How do we know that? Are you content where God has you now?
Or is there a restlessness about that? Is there an uneasiness about that? You see, the key to love it is that when all of your life is lived as worship, is lived as an offering to God. When everything that you are and everything that you have is dedicated and devoted to Him, then suddenly His will makes sense. You understand it, you're able to approve it. And notice what it says about His will. I love this language. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is. And listen to how He describes the will of God. His good, pleasing and perfect of worship is able to understand and to see that God's will is good and pleasing. You know, none of us really know how much longer we have. I was reflecting that I might have 15 more years or 20 or more. None of us know that. But this much we can know that with all the time we have left, we're going to use all that we are and all that we have so that our lives both individually and collectively are a worshipful offering to God so that we can do is good, pleasing and perfect will. Now I said a few minutes ago that I was resolved to do that as we pray. I want you to resolve to do that as well. Heavenly Father, we do worship you, our king, our majestic, glorious, royal, regal king. We worship you, Lord, not only with our lips, not only with our tongue, not only with our words, but mind, body, heart, soul, spirit with all that we are and all that we have. We ask God that you would be glorified in our midst today that the king of kings and the Lord of lords would know that the people of covenant, Presbyterian church worship him and exalt him and lift him up on high. God that you would indeed and still in us a view of your mercy, a view of your mercy that lets us know really what it is worth, the radiance of its worth and that you would so help us to live all of our lives and our personal lives and our marriages at home with our families at work at church and the community help us to live all of our lives as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable unto you as our reasonable worship and then to understand and approve what is the perfect and pleasing and good will of God. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.