Sacrifice begins small

I've been thinking a lot about living a life of sacrifice and I'd like to encourage us to do so one small sacrifice at a time. So often we focus on the ultimate call of God to lay down our very all but that can be so overwhelming. But God doesn't often ask for the ultimate in our following Him. Instead he ask for little things like getting up early to have our quiet times or to meet with some friends to pray. Or he asks us to send some money to Haiti to help with the relief effort. Or maybe he wants us to forgo eating after dinner that we might lose some weight. Or visiting my neighbor and praying for them or spending time with a new Christian helping them grow in their spiritual life. I'm not saying these sacrifices are easy, they wouldn't be sacrifices if they were, but they are a far cry from asking us to die.

So let me encourage you to make the small, everyday sacrifices that Jesus asks and to do so with joy and eagerness. It is how we offer our lives as a living sacrifice.

One more note, sometimes God does ask for the big sacrifice; the laying down of your life, or maybe harder yet, the laying down of something you love more than your life. When that day comes, the grace of God will help us be a disciple who can deny himself and follow Christ. So for now, build your spiritual life by the little sacrifices He calls for daily.

The Cost of Discipleship

So often we struggle over the relationship between salvation by grace through faith and the high demands of discipleship. After all when Paul was asked what must I do to be saved by the Philippian jailer he simply responded, "Believe on the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your whole family." And yet Jesus said no man can be my disciple unless deny himself, take up his cross and follow him. He said no man can be his disciple unless he give up all his possessions.

How do we harmonize these statements that seem to be in opposition to each other? I'll be the first to admit that I struggle here because Jesus statements are so absolute in nature. But I suggest that what Jesus is doing is using hyperbole to make his point. He did this a lot. For instance he tells us that we must hate our loved ones if we are going to be his disciples but we all know that he literally didn't mean for us to "hate them." Instead he was using hyperbole to say that our love for Him most so dwarf our love for others that those relationships seem like hate. He told us to give up all our possessions but again we know that it's not the disposal of our things he desires but rather the surrender of those things to His will.

I say all that to qualify Jesus' statements that we can not be his disciples unless we have obtained absolute perfection in our surrender. Jesus knows, and we all know, that this side of death we will never be there. We will never love him as perfectly as his persona deserves, we will never surrender the things of this world as completely as his nature demands and we will never follow as perfectly as his grace merits. Jesus is setting before us the seriousness of His Lordship. Being a disciple is not meant to be taken lightly. Count the cost. Though it is true we will fall short, but by his grace we will continue to grow in our surrender. And I might add that even in our surrender, we often take two steps forward only to fall back a step or two from time to time.

But one thing we must make clear. Jesus the Savior is also Jesus the Lord. He is Lord whether we acknowledge that or not (Acts 2:36; Philippians 2:11). He is the Lord of every true believer whether or not we grasp this fully or obey him fully. When a person receives God's free gift of eternal life they must understand that God Himself has come, Jesus the Lord, and He has borne our sins on the cross and paid the debt in full. We might not understand all that means, or feel the import of it, but salvation comes when we confess with our mouths Jesus as Lord and believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead.

The book of James makes it clear that if we say we have faith but reject God's position as Lord in our lives that there is something wrong with that faith. Saving faith leads us in growing surrender and our faith grows as we surrender.

Here's where the parable of the soils can help us. Many people say they trust Christ and even say, yes I believe on the Lord Jesus. They seem outwardly to be real and genuine Christians but then the Lordship of Jesus takes them to a hard place where they don't want to go. The rocky, shallow soil illustrates a reexamination of the Lordship of Jesus and many people turn away from Him and won't follow anymore because the demand is too great. Or in their faith they realize that must surrender something that is precious to them or something they really enjoy and the thorny soil illustrates another reexamination of the Lordship of Jesus and many others turn away from Him and won't follow anymore because the demand is too great.

In Luke 14 and other places in the Bible Jesus gives us the ultimate demands of His Lordship. They are things like the surrender of your most important relationships, the surrender of your possessions or even the surrender of your very life. Jesus knows that we all fall woefully short of such an absolute submission to His will but none the less this is the supreme call of salvation-- that in the grace given to us by Him, we might surrender our all to Him.

All along our Christian life God is going to be asking for our surrender. He's going to ask us to bow the knee to the Lordship of Jesus. At times we will, at times we won't but eventually will, but this is the call of sanctification. As a believer we will make progress.

I end with this promise and this hope. "For whom God foreknew He predestined us to be conformed to the image of His Son, Jesus our Christ!" It's going to happen. As a Christian, a follower of Jesus, he promises by His grace I will one day be just like Jesus. I will one day be completely and perfectly surrendered to the Lordship of Christ! I look forward to that day. In the mean time, I'm pressing on.

Living sacrificially means loving God most

I've come to realize that idolatry is not just disobeying God, it is setting my whole heart on something beside God. It is making good things, ultimate things. I won't be able to change that by merely repenting or using my will to live differently. It is imperative that I not only uproot that which has taken God's place but I must plant the love of God back in my heart. I must set my heart on things above where Christ is and Tim Keller says that means, "appreciation, rejoicing, and resting in what Jesus has done for you. It entails joyful worship, a sense of God's reality in prayer. Jesus must become more beautiful to your imagination, more attractive to your heart, than your idol." If we sacrificially surrender the thing we love most to God, but don't replace it with the love of Christ, that which we surrender today will never stay surrendered.

Lord Jesus, I ask you to help me love you most. Help me remember your love and to keep my affections set on you.

Answering the call is voluntary and is made to Jesus Himself

It's Voluntary

The fact that Paul calls us to be a "living sacrifice" also implies a choice we must make. YOU and I must make it. You must choose to surrender, to give your life.

Dead sacrifices are killed by another and placed on the altar. You are a living sacrifice. You choose.

I really believe this is what God wants. He wants YOU, out of love for Him, motivated by his love for you, to choose to lay down your life for Him even as he laid down his life for you.

Isn’t that what we all want in love? We want to know that someone out there loves us enough to give of themselves for us?

God gave himself for us—and is still giving to us promising that a life lived in his love will begin in glory—and now he longs for us to respond to His love with the same kind of sacrifice. He began it. He started. He went first. Now he urges us out of love to respond in kind.

But here’s the deal—he’s not going to make you. Loving God is a choice that comes from your heart. God works there but you must respond. This call to give your life in sacrifice to Him is a voluntary call.

It's to the person of Jesus, not a cause.

Paul urges us to present ourselves as a holy sacrifice. The word holy means set apart but we are not sacrificing our lives for a cause but rather for a person. We are called to give our lives, to set apart our lives, as a sacrifice to Jesus, to God.

When we sacrifice, give our lives, we are doing so to Jesus in response to His giving of HIMSELF to us.

You might think this is just semantics, a play on words, but it’s not. This isn’t a worldview to which to give ourselves, a code of ethic, an altruistic goal—though Jesus gave us all of those. We are giving ourselves to Him as a person. He’s for real. He’s alive. We lay our lives down for Him- it’s a sacrifice acceptable to God.

This is personal—this is relationship. The Muslims give themselves to this idea of God—not to a person who loves them and first gave his life for them.

Answering the call is important and it will cost you

It is Important

Paul says to us, "I urge you..." The word translated "urge" in our English Bibles is not a command but neither is it just a mere 'take-it-or-leave it' request. It is a passionate appeal. Paul is serious-- this is important. 'I want you to seriously consider this and do this' is the essence of his appeal.

Jesus himself challenged us with the importance of this call. He told His disciples in Matthew 16:24-26, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. 25"For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. 26"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?

Salvation is free but Jesus repeatedly spoke of the sacrifice that would be needed to follow him.

I believe Paul urged his readers to answer the call because it is important that we remember that sacrifice is expected in true love.

It is costly

Paul urges us to give our life to Jesus as living sacrifice. The living part implies cost, even pain. Dead things don’t feel sacrifice but living things surely do.

When Paul calls you to give your life as a living sacrifice he’s letting you know that doing so will be costly. Jesus himself said we would have sorrow and tribulation in following him.

In spite of what the prosperity preachers tell you on TV, God never promised you that following him would result in a life of happiness. Happiness is an emotional state. He did promise you JOY, which is a spiritual state. In stead he often said that you would have to give up the things that you want the most. He said it would cost you, that people would persecute you and kill you and many would be tortured.

I don't believe that we need to view life bleakly, or be afraid, but we do need to understand that following Jesus often is accompanied by a great cost and when we lay down our lives in a living sacrifice we will most likely feel the pain.

So laying down your life as a living sacrifice is very important and most likely will be accompanied by some cost, even pain, but I promise you that in the end it will be worth it. In the end we will see why and how God's will for us is perfect and good. We have not seen or understood all that God has prepared for those who love Him, so us responding to His love with sacrifice of our own will surely seem insignificant in the day we see Him face to face!

Answering the Call!

2010 is upon us and we have set a challenge before us as a church. That challenge is to "Answer the Call!" Ok, but what's the call? We are taking the call from Romans 12.1-2-- it is a call to live a life of sacrifice. Our theme for the new year is Answering the Call: Living a Life of Sacrifice.

Romans 12:1-2 says, Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. 2And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

In our American culture of ease, the thought of sacrifice seems almost foreign. After all, if Christ has become our sacrifice, and the grace of God brought salvation to us freely, why should we be expected to sacrifice anything for him? After all, so much of the preaching today says that God wants us to have the very best of everything.

The truth is that this call to sacrifice is a call to respond to the grace of God and not an expectation to earn the favor of God.

Let me show you some things about this call to live a life of sacrifice.

It's Mercy Driven!

In the Romans 12 text the writer urges us to be a living sacrifice because of the mercies of God. This Greek word is different than your every day word for mercy—it meant great mercy! The great mercy of God demands the we present our lives to him as a sacrifice.

The song “When I survey the Wondrous Cross” has this as it’s last verse,
Were the whole realm of nature mine, That were a present far too small; Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all.

The mercy of God, the grace of God, the love of God demands that I live my life for Him and that will require that I live sacrificially.

There is such confusion at this point. Tim Keller in his book, Counterfeit Gods argues at length, “The default mode of the human heart is to seek to control God and others through our moral performance. Because we have lived virtuous lives we feel that God and the people we meet owe us respect and support. Though we may give lip service to Jesus as our example and inspiration, we are still looking to ourselves and our own moral striving for salvation.”

The default mode of the human heart is to try and earn our way with God—we commend ourselves to God by our moral rectitude. Or in our particular discussion-- by sacrifice. But the author is not calling us to sacrifice to gain the grace of God or His acceptance but rather because we love him we ought to be willing to lay down our lives.

Let me ask you, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” You don’t know? What came first, “grace or works?” The default mode of the heart says, "Works come first and grace follows. Do well and God’s acceptance will follow." Paul in his writings to the church at Ephesus makes it clear, grace came first, apart from our works, and such love demands that will give our lives in sacrifice. (By the way, the chicken came first! Just look in the creation story in Genesis 1-2)

It's Mercy Empowered!

But the phrase 'by the mercies of God' implies something else as well. It implies that living my life as a sacrifice can't even be done except by the mercies of God! Not only does God's mercy and love motivate us and call us to love Him back sacrificially, what little we can offer back to God will be empowered by his love and mercy! We can offer to God the sacrifice of our lives because He will enable that by his mercy.

Let's answer the call because of His mercy!