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August 24, 2008
“The ‘I’ and the ‘We’”
Romans 12: 1-8
Delivered on August 24th, 2008
Last Sunday during the Sunday School class we had a brief discussion of the King James Bible. I mentioned that the King James Bible is and probably will remain the greatest English translation of the Holy Scriptures. It has influenced literature, and was used over a longer period of time than any other translation. Having said that, I then said that I don’t use it. Neither I nor the people I preach to speak or have a complete understanding of Elizabethan English. So I and most of you use one of the many more recent English translations.
That does not mean that we don’t have problems with some of the words that are still in our modern translations. Some of the words no longer mean what they meant when the Bible was written. Take the word “sacrifice” for instance. The most common use of that word today is to identify something that we do without or get rid of for some higher purpose, usually some purpose that will eventually benefit ourselves or someone we love.
Parents sacrifice some luxuries or a higher standard of living to give their children a University education. People speak of doing without desserts so they can loose weight or not put on weight as a sacrifice.
Yes we do occasionally speak of someone being sacrificed for the sake of others but we usually mean that their jobs or careers are being sacrificed.
When we speak of the losses of lives during a war or a natural disaster as sacrifices we are getting closer to the biblical use of the word.
In the days and places of St. Paul, Sacrifices were a common thing. Every religion of the day required its worshippers to make sacrifices. Paul wrote this letter to the Christians who were living in Rome. That city was at the time full of temples that required sacrifices to be offered to worship the false gods. Every worshipper was sooner of later required to provide an animal that would be slaughtered in front of them by a priest or priestess and offered to the idol of the God. Sometimes the blood of the animal was sprinkled on the worshippers. It makes you wonder if most people wore red clothes to go to worship back then.
And it was not just the pagan or false religions that had bloody animal sacrifices offered during worship. The Old Testament religion of the Jews, God’s chosen people, had many requirements for the killing of animals for Worship. Many of those sacrifices were to be offered to atone with God for the sins of the people. If you became aware that you had violated some provision of God’s law, you were to present an animal at the temple in Jerusalem that was to be killed to atone for your sin.
Now, for the Christians living in Rome during St. Pauls day, both the previous sacrificing practices of the Jews and the Gentiles had to be dealt with because there were both converted Jews and converted Gentiles in the Church at Rome.
Paul instructed the Gentiles who had been sacrificing to false idols to stop it. They no longer believed in those Gods, they should not feed them or their priests.
But he also instructed the Jewish Christians that they no longer needed to offer sacrifices of atonement to the true God and father of Jesus. Because God had sacrificed his son Jesus on the cross as the final and complete atoning sacrifice. In fact, within 30 years of the writing of Paul’s letters, the Temple in Jerusalem would be destroyed and the sacrificing of animals to God there would cease forever, or at least up to the current day.
Paul did allow the Jewish Christians to participate in the sacrificial services at Jerusalem while they lasted, but they were to remember that they were a remnant from a bygone age that really had no effect.
So Paul encouraged Christians not to offer animal sacrifices or to depend on animal sacrifices as payment for their transgressions.
But in the Jewish religion and in the gentile pagan religions there were sacrifices offered for other reasons. If you felt especially blessed by God in some way you would offer a thank offering.
Animals were offered to celebrate the birth of a child. Luke tells us in his Gospel that Mary and Joseph offered two birds as a sacrifice when the infant Jesus was dedicated at the temple in Jerusalem 8 days after his birth.
So Jews and Gentiles who had become Christians still wanted to offer sacrifices to God for various reasons. Paul coined a new expression to redirect this old customary need to please the God who had offered Jesus as the final sin offering.
To do so he coined what I think was a new expression: Living Sacrifices. In this passage Paul exhorts the Christians at Rome to offer their bodies as living sacrifices, Holy and pleasing to God, this is to be their spiritual act of Worship.
In other words they were to respond to the love of God displayed to them in the salvation of Christ, not by killing an animal that cost them money, but by making their lives a sacrifice to God. They were to live to serve him and they were to live lives that displayed the purity and holiness of God to God and the entire world.
And how were they to begin to accomplish that? Look at verse 2. “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
It starts with the mind. The body follows the mind. Every one who just competed in the Olympics has had to alter their lifestyles quite a bit to perform at that level. Their training schedules took over their lives for years. But before that could happen, before they could make the changes in their lives that were necessary to train for the Olympics, their minds had to be convinced that it was worth it. Most physical training begins with the mind being convinced that something marvelous is possible if one trains hard enough and smart enough.
So as we begin to prepare ourselves to be living sacrifices how do we renew our minds? By being careful what we put into them. By reading and studying the scriptures, by reading and singing some of the great hymns of the church. By reading the writings of and the biographies of the lives of some of God’s great saints, Augustine, Calvin, Luther, Edwards, Wilberforce, Grahm, and others.
And of course we need to be careful what kinds of things from our worldly culture we allow our minds to dwell on. We need to allow the Holy Spirit to guide us to the things that are helpful for renewing our mind and we need to deliberately neglect those things that are not helpful in our quest to become living sacrifices, useful to God and his kingdom.
Part of the renewing of ones mind involves not placing oneself at the center of ones universe. As Paul wrote in vs 3 “Do not think of yourselves more highly than you ought.” We are to regard ourselves as servants of God, no better than his other servants.
And we are to joyfully work together with God’s other servants, using the gifts that God has given us to build up the other members. Each of us has been given at least one gift. That gift or talent or skill is not to be used just to earn a living or to make our lives more enjoyable. It is to be used to build up the body of Christ, which includes the congregation you worship and fellowship with.
You are to use your gift in the church with zeal and with joy.
Some of the gifts that God gives are listed in the 6th – the 8th verses: Prophecy, Ministry, exhortation, giving, Leadership, Compassion. This list is not comprehensive. We could add Music abilities, carpentry skills, cooking, companionship, and others.
We are to use our gifts with and for the others in the church.
You see, the Christian religion is a personal and a corporate religion. It is personal: stressing our relationship with God and the renewing of our minds to become individual living sacrifices.
And it is a corporate religion, one that urges us to worship God with others and to have Christian fellowship and friendships with others, helping each other to grow in Christ and using our gifts to help each other and to build up the entire body of Christ. Christianity is a religion of the I and the We. We need to be alone with God and we need to be with others who love and Worship God.
Pastor David Horner
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at August 24, 2008 04:38 PM