Give Your Whole Self

Transcript

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[0:00] our reading, we're doing all of chapter 12 today, and we're just kind of doing it in reverse. So Pam read the second half of chapter 12, but the sermon is on the first half of chapter 12, Romans 12, 1 through 9. And just to give us a bit of review, we're working our way through Romans. We're almost there. I believe actually we'll preach the last Roman sermon on September 17th. It'll probably be the end of it all. And Wendy is going to, Victoria is going to preach next week on Romans 13. Wendy's going to preach on September 10th. Another announcement, September 3rd, we have a joint service at Grace, and we're going to honor our Sunday school teachers that day. And I'll be preaching, but not on Romans because they haven't been part of this series, so they wouldn't be able to kind of piece it all together. And then I'll finish the Romans 17, Romans series on September 17th. So that's exciting. But so far to get to this point, we've been reading through Romans. We understand the concept. Is that Paul has this deep concern about the church in Rome. He's very interested in the Jews and the Gentiles in the church in Rome, creating a new community, which would be like the new Israel, the new sort of the new, the Israel by faith, as he would put it, that the spiritual descendants

[1:16] of Abraham would form a new community, a new community of shalom, blessed community. And in that place, then there was no room for arrogance or thinking that they were better than the other, because the Gentiles were grafted in, so to speak, but the Jews would look at the Gentiles and be jealous of the grace that they received without having done the works. And so we finally got to the point now in Romans 9, 10 and 11, that was the meat, the core of it all. And so now we're actually shifting gears. And so Romans 12 marks a real gear shift, I guess you could say, in Romans. It starts a new, not a new line of thinking, but a follow-on line of thinking. So it's definitely connected to what came before it. But it's going to introduce some new topics, as we'll see, especially next week when Pastor Victoria preaches. She'll talk about the ruling or the governing authorities. That's a very interesting topic even now today. So what you'll notice when we read, as I start reading, is that the first sentence has the word therefore in it. Of course, you want to know what the therefore is. And so you always wonder, what came before it that you're saying therefore after, you know, to go to the next thing? And the question may be, is it just the last three chapters of the book, this whole

[2:35] sort of treatise about Israel and the Jews and the Gentiles, or is it the whole book? And the answer is, well, the whole thing holds together. So I would say it's everything that's come before, the preceding 11 chapters. He's drawing on that and saying, now that I've told you all of this, now I want to tell you. And so I'm going to start with the first three chapters. And so I'm going to tell you how you should live, how you should live. I've done all the theology. I've done all the things where I've talked about justification. I've talked about the Jews and the Gentiles getting together in the church. But now I'm going to give you slightly more practical advice on how to live. Some of it you just heard Pam read. Don't be haughty. Give your enemies food. You know, all these sort of things. Don't be, you know, don't take vengeance. These are like really concrete things to do. And you might think, oh, that sounds like more law. But it's not because he's talking about people who have a new life that are operating out of the Spirit's power. And so he's saying more in an indicative way than in an imperative way. He's saying, this is what your life now should look like or will look like because you have received this great gift and you've

[3:38] become part of this beloved community. So now we're getting into some practical advice, which I think is kind of exciting and kind of interesting. And so this is what life together should look like. And you'll notice, I want you to notice as I read, listen for some of the things that he says in the reading in terms of self-sacrifice. Maybe that's what our life should look like. And other behaviors that make community work well together. So listen to those things that Paul may be saying in our reading. And our reading is Romans 12, 1 through 9. The apostle Paul writes this, I appeal therefore to you therefore, brother and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is spiritual therefore therefore brother and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is spiritual therefore worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you, not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith

[4:49] that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we who are many are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, prophecy in proportion to faith, ministry in ministering, the teacher in teaching, the exhorter in exhortation, the giver in generosity, the giver in the grace of God, and the giver in the grace of God. And we are all the same, the leader in diligence, the compassionate in cheerfulness.

[5:25] Well, let's pray. Father, thank you for this word, and we ask that you would add your blessing to it. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, I'd like to ask Nathan to bring back the very first text slide, because we want to look at verses one and two again. And it says there, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers and sisters. And Paul, this word appeal, is this a strong word? It's kind of a purge. It's not as strong as like, I implore, but it's like this really, without being coercive, it's this really strong invitation. Now, in light of everything else that has come along, I really want you then to go and to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Now, we're going to take this apart a little bit by bit. And it says, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed, by the renewing of your minds. Right here because John speaks, kind of knows some Greek a little bit. So cosmos is the Greek word for world and that connotation, especially in the New Testament, is that part of the world that's secular or at odds with God. But interestingly enough, that word in Greek is not used in this particular sentence. Instead, the word used is aion, A-I-O-N, if you were to translate or

[7:14] literate it into English letters. And that's the word we have for aeon. And an aeon is what? It's a stretch of time. It's a certain amount of time. But does that make sense, right? Do not be conformed to this aeon? Well, it kind of does make sense. It kind of does make sense. But the way the Greeks and even the Hebrews at that time thought of the world was there were maybe two aeons. There is the current time and there's some future, there's some future time. And current time encompasses the past as well. It's the past, the present, and the future of this sort of encapsulated part of time, this aeon. But there's a future aeon that's coming that's going to be different. And Christians believe this absolutely too, but it's turned out that some of the Greeks and some of the Hebrews believed it as well. And so they would talk about the current aeon. And then they would say this current world's time, the current world's time, that they meant. That's what they meant by aeon. And then especially Christian writers, when they use this word, they wanted to say the word world. Sometimes they just shorten it to the word aeon because they meant it meant this world's time, this world's time. And that's the interesting thing that we're going to

[8:30] kind of develop this a little bit is that there was a more integrated understanding of time and space, especially for Hebrew writers who wrote in Greek. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. And so the world was this time and space that were kind of interconnected in ways that you couldn't pull apart. And in particular for Christians, this world, this time and space, the world and the time and the place that we occupy was in a deep and broken state of enmity with God. Okay. And so the Greeks, the Greeks though, were more interested in pulling things apart and analyzing them. This was part of Greek philosophy was to continue to divide animals, people, principles, you know, microscopic things to get, they didn't have microscopes or as small as they can imagine. And the Greeks postulated, and some of you know this from science class, that there must be something that's so small, it can't be divided anymore. And what did they call that thing? Who said that? Brian. an atom. An atom is the thing so small it can no longer be divided and literally that's what the word atom means because the word tom, t-o-m in Greek, means to cut or divide something. So you may know this word tomography, that's the visualization

[10:20] or the graphing of something that's been sliced into tiny bits, right Craig and Blake? And a CAT scan is a computer assisted tomography, if I got that right. So a tomography is a slice, it's slicing up. So tom means, that's the Greek word for cutting, well what's that a before that the tom mean? That means not, like an atheist or an agnostic, an agnostic or asbestos, something that doesn't catch on fire. So an atom is something that can't be cut anymore, right? Now it turns out that what we call atoms are actually what? They are dividable and they're not cut. They're not divided. They're not divided. They're not divided. And as we found out if you've gone and seen the Oppenheimer movie, it's been very visualized for you, but we know that atoms indeed can be split into other smaller atoms or into particles. And so now, so that really means that what we call atoms shouldn't be called atoms. They should be called toms, right? Because they're cuttable, they're dividable, right? They're not atoms, they're toms. So now we postulate that there's a building block of matter that is finally uncuttable and the true atoms may be quarks. And now I want Stan to get in the chat. Stan, is there anything that can cut a quark in

[11:45] half? I'm gonna wait, we have to wait about 10 seconds for him to respond. So we'll wait, we'll wait for Stan to get on the chat. Although I suspect somebody else here in the room knows if quarks can be cut into smaller things. But here's my thinking. Someday somebody may cut a quark into smaller things. And then we'll see. We may find a way to cut a quark. A quark actually is more of a theoretical particle. I don't think it's actually been observed. Maybe it has. See, Stan will tell us. Come on, we're gonna get a, we're gonna get a thesis from Stan. We're gonna have to take a while just to read what he writes, if he can type fast enough. But say quarks do exist. I just feel like eventually somebody's gonna be like, we're gonna have to split the quark, right? And then when does it stop? Well, maybe never, right? Maybe never, because that's, at least that's the Greek way, that's the modern way. Right? That's the enlightened way, is we continue to pull things apart to analyze them. So Stan says, not as far as I know. Okay. So quarks are the true atoms for now. Atoms are the toms. And we'll see. But someday, you know, somebody's gonna win a Nobel Prize for cutting a quark in half and releasing something else like

[12:52] cuteness. I don't know what, I don't know what will come out of it, but not energy. Maybe energy. So, but here's the thing. This might be the difference between the Hebrew worldview and the Greek worldview, and this might be the worldview that the Bible beckons us to return to sometimes, is that it's better at times, instead of trying to cut things down into smaller pieces that we can understand, to try to look at things as a whole, right? Time and space, let's look at it as a whole, right? And it's more the philosophy or even the theology of Paul, because of his Hebrew and his Jewish background, that he would also understand a person as a whole person. They're not separate things like that we would call the heart, soul, and mind all fused together in some way, and then we're not ready to take them apart and analyze them separately. Now, you may remember Deuteronomy 6 where it says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and you might think from that that the people, that the Jews would be different, would be different, would be different, would be different, thought that those were three separate things that you each had to direct towards God. But really what I think that means is if you ever thought any of those were three things, I'm

[14:10] lumping them together right now saying all three of those, if you think they're three or different, they all have to praise God, right? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, right? Now what we're going to find is this synthesis here that's so important is that we find it in Romans 1 and 2. It's inviting us to think of ourselves actually as atoms, uncuttable, undividable people. The Greeks want to divide us into our soul, our body, our mind, the id, the ego, the superego. Do you see how it just keeps going throughout philosophy? We're always trying to divide ourselves into smaller parts. But Romans 1, 12, 1 and 2 is kind of inviting us to put these things together. To become unsplittable, undivisible, the whole person as heart, soul, and mind. And we bring that whole person to God as our logical or spiritual worship. And even there that word is chosen with care. So go ahead and take a look at the end of verse 2. It says, you know, by the mercies of God to present your bodies, now listen, bodies, right, as living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. Which is your spiritual worship. But now in the next verse, he talks about your mind. So you see in one verse, Paul talks about your body. And in another, he talks about your mind. Again, does he

[15:40] do this because he thinks they're separate things? Well, the people who are reading it thought of them as separate things. But I think by putting them side by side, cheek and jowl, he's encouraging everybody who's reading this to go, oh, these things might belong together, right? Now there's this word here.

[15:58] Spiritual, your act, your spiritual act of worship, which is your spiritual worship. Some of you may have a Bible in your hands, and you might see there's a text note after that word spiritual, right? Does anyone have that? You have a, like a little letter? If you're not, don't go looking in your, I mean, if you have, if you don't, if you don't have it open, it's fine. I mean, we have it up here. So why would we, why would you open it? You know, it's all text, technological. Anyways, if you look at the text note after that word spiritual, therefore you have the word spiritual. Right?

[16:47] Right Well, the other way that some Bibles translate it is reasonable. The way you're, you know, so that does sound like you're using your reason so you're being logical. So it's either your spiritual act of worship or your reasonable act of worship. But that word really can be translated as pertaining to being genuine in the sense of being true to the real and essential nature of something. So that logikos means when you, your worship, it needs to be real, genuine, true to the essential nature of who you are. Again, we're integrating ourselves. Your worship of God is a worship of your whole and genuine self all together with your body and your mind. So now let's go on to verse 2. It says, do not be conformed to the world. And the world, the word here again, like we said, is aeon, but elsewhere. Cosmos is the system and practices, system of practices and standards associated with secular society. That is without reference to any demands or requirements by God. That's what they mean when they mean the world. And that's kind of what we mean sometimes when we say the world. Even non-Christians, when they say the world, they kind of mean something like this. Like the world is out to get me. The world is this place of blessing.

[18:17] Brokenness, chaos, harshness, envy, enmity, evil. The world is this kind of broken place. I think everybody who's thoughtful about it understands this. And so don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And why? Why? Well, the world is full of all the things that the rest of the section warns about, the part that Pam read. The world is proud. It takes revenge. It doesn't live in peace. But God says vengeance is mine. I will repay. That's what God says when he speaks. Don't overcome evil with evil. Overcome evil with good. And so you might say, don't overcome the world with the world. Right? Do not overcome the world with the strategies of the world, with the power patterns of the world, with the ways of the world. Or else you become like the world that you're trying to overcome. Does that make sense? Right? Don't overcome. Don't overcome evil with evil. Don't overcome the world with the world. Don't conform to the world. Don't play by the world's rules. But how are we supposed to play? I think this is a challenge. A lot of Christians have lost sight of this. They're trying to use the world to fight the world. But they're becoming more like the world as they do it. They're becoming the things they're fighting.

[19:39] And that's for another time. We'll get to it someday. But it says, nonetheless, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And that's, again, that's not quite the right translation. Because we don't really want to separate the mind. Really, it should read, be transformed in your manner of thinking or in your manner of thought. Now, that is your mind, yes. But I think if you were to expand it out that way to your manner of thinking, then we get a little bit more of the whole person there. How you respond. How you respond and react to the world. Your patterns of thought. So it would be, be transformed by the renewing of your pattern of thought. Don't just unlearn what you've learned. But rethink how you think.

[20:32] Rethink how you respond to the world. Don't respond in the world's ways. Respond in a new way. A total transformation. So what we have here is, this is the response. Chapter 12, verses 1 and 2, and the rest of chapter 12, is the response to everything that Paul has set up to this point. He wants his listeners, his readers, to live in this new community of Jews and Gentiles together in the city of Rome. But this is really, this is for us, so we can read it too. And he's saying, everything that's gone before, I want to build on that and say, now I want you, now you have to change. If this is going to work, you have to change. You have to operate out of the power of God. You have to operate out of the power of the Spirit. And you have to change what you do with your life. Change how you think. Change, you know, recognize what the world looks like and be sure not to act like it.

[21:28] And you have to give your whole self. That's the thing. When you're talking about give your bodies as living sacrifices, he really means your whole self. What does that look like? And this, I just want you to think for a second. You know, if you were to, make a list of everything that makes you what you are.

[21:51] Make a mental list. You could make a physical list this week. You could write down on a piece of paper. Make a list. Everything that makes you who you are. It could be, start off your family name. It could be your ethnicity. It could be your gender, right? It could be your job. And that's sometimes the first, is that the first question that people ask each other when they are introducing themselves? What do you do?

[22:15] So like you are what you do? Well, maybe you're more than what you do, right? What you do, your hobbies, your relatives, do you have children, you know, etc. Your opinions, is that who you are? Right? Your views on things, is that who you are? Right? Now, I'm not saying that those things aren't what you are, because they are what you are. But there's another sense in which you belong to God and your identity is completely bound up in what God has done for you in Jesus Christ. And you've been claimed, you've been adopted into the family of God. And that identity really supersedes all other identities when you're a follower of Jesus.

[22:54] But you could take all those things and you could say, am I ready to take all of those and make them a living sacrifice to God? And I will give to God all of those things. And he'll take them and he'll give back some of them, but he'll keep some of them. You know what I mean? Like some of them he'll say, these don't fit. These don't quite fit. Maybe you need to lose these to become the true self, the genuine self. Right?

[23:22] And so I think one exercise this week for you is to make a list of all the things you are and say, then take that paper and fold it in half and give it to God. And just say, this is who I am. I'm going to give all of this to you. And if you want me to keep on any of these things, I'll keep on any of these things. And if you want me to change and transform any of these things, because they're too much in the pattern of this world, I'm willing to give those up. And I'm willing for those to be replaced with the promptings of your spirit to do something else with my life. And that's a dangerous and challenging thing to do. Watch out. I mean, if you do it, I'm encouraging you to do it, but watch out what will happen if you do do it. Because God will take you up on it and say, I will take all that. And I will give some of it back and I'll give you other things that are new. New life. New hope. I heard a story. One of my seminary professors, her cousin, was sitting in church and there was a sermon about going into the mission field.

[24:27] And he, it was actually, it was a woman. I think it was a man. The problem with memory is hard, but that's not the point, whether it was a man or a woman. Was when the offering plate came by, they were so, they were so excited. They were so taken by this call to go and serve God that they put their money in their pocket, but instead wrote on a piece of paper, my whole life. And they folded up that piece of paper and they dropped that in the offering plate. Now the guy counting the offering later was like, well, how do I cash this one? You know, but that wasn't the point, right? It's like my whole life I'm putting in the offering plate. This is your spiritual, logical, reasonable act of worship. Your whole self belongs to God. God asks for it today. I think even if you want to, you want to today, you could write that on a card and drop it in the offering plate before it goes by. You throw it in there as it comes up. Now there's not enough time because the offering plate is coming up right after this. Or next week you could drop it in. Or this week sometime you could write all that stuff out on a paper, fold it in half, and hold it up to God and say, this is yours. All of who I am. The integrated self.

[25:42] I'm not going to give you a copy. I'm not going to just give you my mind or my heart or my soul. I mean, I'll be honest with you. This is easy for me to do. To come even to church and only bring a part of myself to God. Or in my daily life. To only really be present to God with a part of who I am. And I can reserve a part for myself because I have my own plans for it. I do this. I'll be honest with you. I do this. If you're honest, you probably do it too. If you've ever read My Heart, Christ, and the Holy Spirit, you've probably read it. But if you've ever read Jesus Home, you know, that book and it's kind of this visualization of all the rooms in the house. And Jesus comes and looks at all the rooms and finally He finds one room that He hasn't seen yet. He says, I want to go in that room. And the guy says, no Jesus, I don't want you in that room because it's a mess in there. You don't want to see it. And Jesus says, unless I'm in your whole house, I'm not in you at all.

[26:36] I have to be in your whole house. Your whole self has to be in Christ. well let's end let's end it with that thought let's pray father thank you again for your word and we give you or we want to give you all that we are in Jesus name