New Year’s 2005 by Rev. Donald Van Dyken

Present Your Bodies!
Scripture: Romans 12
Text: Romans 12:1

Points:

1. As alive in Christ.
2. As acceptable to God.
3. In thoughtful service.
4. An awesome request.

In my sermon on the last day of 2004 I quoted 1 Corinthians 5:10, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.”

“The things done in the body.” With that in mind, and having had our hearts stirred up to a godly fear, having pled, not in vain, for the mercies of God, I want to preach this text from Romans 12:1, “I beseech you therefore brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.”

Our culture today is vastly concerned with our bodies. Aisle after aisle in Wal-Mart is stocked with ointments and perfumes, with body lotions and lipstick, with mascara and hair shampoos. Aisle after aisle we find vitamins and minerals, diet supplements and pills. Every day we are offered new weight reduction programs and new formulas to lose eight pounds a week. Health clubs abound for building the body beautiful. We are preoccupied with our bodies, our muscles, our fat, our teeth and hair, our fingernails and eyebrows, our stomachs and our kidneys. Why? To what purpose? For what end?

What do you have in mind with all this? For your mind must not be conformed to this world, but be transformed and renewed. You are those who say, “I am not my own, but with body and soul, belong to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ… He assures me that not a hair falls from my body without the will of his heavenly Father. He, by his Spirit makes me, makes my body, heartily willing and ready to live unto him.”

PRESENT YOUR BODY! This New Year the Lord calls you to present your bodies a living sacrifice to him, conscious that you are not your own, but, as the apostle says, you were bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body, which is the Lord’s.

I’ll consider our text then under that theme.

First, God’s call in Christ is to present your bodies a living sacrifice. Present your bodies as alive in Christ.

Second, God’s call in Christ is to present your bodies holy, acceptable to God.

Third, God’s call in Christ is for you to present your bodies in reasonable, thoughtful service.

And finally, returning to the beginning of this command, to see that it is an awesome privilege, worded for us in the most gracious terms imaginable. “I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God…”

First then, God’s call in Christ is to present your bodies a living sacrifice.

One of the commentaries on this passage written by a man I deeply respect, John Murray, said that although we may take this reference to the body to include the whole person, he was convinced that Paul referred to our physical body and its functions. He thought this way, and I agree with him, because Paul’s reference to the mercies of God, was a mercy God brought about through the physical suffering and death of the body of Jesus Christ.

Further, Paul speaks extensively about our bodies in chapter 6. Verse 12, for example, “Do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts.” Verse 13, “And do not present your members of instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness.”

But we must ask, How can Paul say these things? Again, Paul brings us back to the body. He asks in Romans 6:2, “How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?”

Let’s stop a minute and look at baptism. First a question. How many of you were baptized? All of you? What happened to you in baptism? God sprinkled you with water. God sprinkled your body with water. God did something to your body. What did he do to your body? He poured water on it. What was he doing with this? He was taking your body, and baptizing it into the death of Jesus Christ. He was raising it with the body of Christ into newness of life.

In baptism, quoting from Romans 6:6, “our old man was crucified with him that the body of sin might be done away with that we should no longer be slaves of sin.” What then are we to think of this? How are we to view ourselves? How are we to see our bodies? Christ calls us to believe what he has done to us in our baptism. Christ calls us to believe that in the death and resurrection of his body, our body has died and been raised from the dead. What else could Paul mean when he says in Romans 6:11, “Like you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” “Reckon yourselves,” account yourselves, believe yourselves, your body, to be dead to sin and alive to God. Believe that, not because of what you have done, for in baptism you do nothing. Believe that because of what God has done, in the death and resurrection of the body of Christ, and as God applied that death and resurrection to you in baptism.

“Present your bodies a living sacrifice.” A living sacrifice. The word “sacrifice” brings the Old Testament sacrifices to mind. But when we think of them, we remember that they all had one thing in common, and that was that they were dead sacrifices. In order to present the sacrifice it had to be killed. But we are called to present ourselves as a living sacrifice. We do not present our body to be slain, but as alive from the dead in Christ.

Present your bodies, bodies baptized into Christ. That exempts no one. “As many of us as were baptized into Christ were baptized into his death and raised with him in newness of life.” God commands us all, by his mercies, pleads with us, beseeches us, to present our bodies, not as instruments of unrighteousness, but as instruments of righteousness, not as slaves of sin, but as bondservants of Jesus Christ.

Present your bodies, every member bought with a price. Your hair and your eyes, your feet and your hands, your lips and your mind, your muscles and your bones, your fingers and your tongue, every member purchased by Christ, baptized by the Triune God, commissioned to be servants of righteousness.

Second, “present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God.” Present your bodies holy. Present your bodies acceptable.

What is a holy body? It would be good for us to review all the laws God gave our fathers as they came out of Egypt. They had come from the slavery of Pharaoh into the glorious freedom of sons of God. Under Pharaoh their bodies had been employed in Pharaoh’s service. Under God their bodies were to be employed in God’s service. If you would read all those laws God gave at Mount Sinai, you would be astonished how many of them had to do with the bodies of his people. There were many laws of cleanliness, countless washings, countless rites of purification. There were detailed laws concerning leprosy, a disease that struck the body with deformation and sores. There were detailed laws about contact with bodies of the dead.

What was God teaching his people? What is God teaching us? He is teaching us that our bodies are to be kept holy as temples of the Holy Spirit. He was teaching us that holiness means that we are a separated people, that our bodies are to be separated from the defilement of sin. He was teaching us that he purchased, redeemed our bodies to be in holy service to him.

What is pure religion, asks James? Pure religion is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unspotted from the world. Flee worldly lusts which war against the soul, says Peter? Flee youthful lusts, says Paul. Hate even the garment spotted by the flesh, says the apostle.

Think about your body. When you walk down those aisles in Wal-Mart, when you hear those ads on radio and TV, when you read all those appeals to subscribe to programs to build your body, what do you think about? Do these help me to keep my body holy? Are these the methods Christ uses to present me, a member of his bride, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing?

When you visit Erika in the hospital you used to be required to wear mask, gown, and gloves. Why? To protect from contamination. There are germs and viruses out there that are harmful, and sometimes fatal. There are sins and there is wickedness out there in the world that are harmful, and sometimes fatal. What do you do to protect your body from those infections?

Erika is now on a program of rehabilitation, to restore her body to normal, healthy functioning. What program are you on to restore you to the image of God, to bring you to the fulness of the stature of Jesus Christ, to exercise you in godliness? Bodily exercise profits little, says Paul, but exercise in godliness is great gain, both in this life and in the life to come. But it is not as though your body is not employed in the exercise of godliness. Bring your body in subjection, says Paul. Make your body a servant of righteousness, have your fruit, he says in Romans 6:22, have your fruit to holiness, and the end, everlasting life.” I believe in the resurrection of the body.

Third, present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to god, which is your reasonable service. Your reasonable service.

The term “reasonable” can also be translated “thoughtful,” or with careful thought.

You will probably remember how many of our actions, the actions of our body are thoughtless. We do so many things without thinking. “O, I’m sorry,” we say, “I just did that without thinking.” We are creatures of habit, and habit is just the way we do things with our bodies as the result of many repetitions.

The Lord asks us to present our bodies in a thoughtful way, in well thought out patterns. We come to worship each Lord’s day, and it easily becomes a habit. Now this is not to say that habits are bad in themselves, but since a habit is a pattern of physical behavior, physical motion, since it is our bodies we bring here, God reminds us that we must do so with thoughtfulness. We must think about what we are doing. We must consider carefully that we are bringing our bodies into the presence of the living God, the one who created our bodies. We must carefully consider that he created us good, and in his own image. We should thoughtfully consider that with her hand Eve picked the fruit, with her mouth she ate it, with her body she sinned.

We should carefully, thoughtfully consider that Christ redeemed us with his precious body given upon the cross, that he might redeem our body from the torments of hell. We should think about the body we bring to him in worship, having, as the apostle says in Hebrews, our bodies washed with pure water.

Thoughtful service with our bodies. Thinking before we use our tongues. The apostle James says that of all the members of our body, this is the hardest one to bring under control. But if we listened more carefully, thoughtfully, to this plea of Christ, to give thoughtful service, we would think a little more carefully before we opened the mouth of our body and force the air in our lungs through our larynx forming words with our tongues.

Think. Make all the actions of your body well thought out actions. Think where your feet are taking you. Think what your hands are doing. Think about what service the Lord would have you perform with your body. Think about the way he places your brothers and sisters in times of need, and when you see their need, think a minute. Didn’t he say, “Inasmuch as you serve one of the least of these my brethren, you are serving me.”

Your body belongs to the Lord. Think about the way your adorn your body. Think about the clothes you put on. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, of your thinking, that may prove, may demonstrate, what is that good and perfect and acceptable will of God.

Make it your aim in all things, to employ your body, your hands and your feet, your arms and eyes, in a manner well pleasing to him. You are his. You belong to Jesus Christ. He cares for your body, for even the very hairs on your head are numbered. Your care for your body should not consist in worrying about what you shall eat, or what you shall put on. But rather that your body is seeking the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

Finally, our covenant God in Jesus Christ presents this to us, in some sense, not as a command, but as an appeal.

We return to the opening words. “I beseech you therefore brethren, by the mercies of God…”

Although these are the words of Paul, they are really the Words of the Holy Spirit who inspired Paul, they are really the words of our great God. The great and awesome God who commanded saying, “Let there be light,” and there was light. The great and holy God at whose word nations tremble, who commands myriads of angels, whose every word is filled with power, does not order us, but pleads with us. “I beseech you therefore brethren…”

What shall we say in the face of such condescension? How can we fathom a God who stoops so low, who actually, as it were, gets on his knees before us, helpless, sinful creatures and pleads with us? Does that sound strange, that God gets on his knees? But what else did he do, when he sent his Son into this world, lowering himself, stooping to our weakness, clothing himself with our flesh and blood, getting down on his knees to wash the feet of his disciples, bowing under the burden of our sins.

How is it possible that we can resist such humility, that this great and glorious God, unspeakably holy, pure light, righteous and perfect in all his ways, should come to us with such a posture? Should we not fear him for ever and ever? These are the mercies of God. Patience. Longsuffering. Forebearance. Kindness. Faithfulness.

Then consider, that he should ask for our service. Does it need it? Is our great God somehow lacking that we can supply something he doesn’t not have? The very thought is horrible. Can we add to his glory? Can we lend him an arm to perform his wonders? Do our praises lift him higher than he is? You know the answer to all those questions, for it is a resounding No.

What then? Almighty God, the eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ extends to us an awesome, unique privilege, asking that we present our bodies a living sacrifice to him. It is a privilege rooted neither in our rank nor our intelligence, not in our worthiness nor our accomplishments. It is a privilege rooted entirely in his glorious grace. He holds out to us a wonderful gift, the gift of service to the holy God of the universe.

At the brink of this New Year, as it begins, the living God stands before you in Jesus Christ. No, he kneels before you, in all his holy array, and pleads with you.

“I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.”

How can you possibly do this? How can we present holy, acceptable, reasonable service to this great God? Ah, that brings us back to Christmas, doesn’t it? For in Christmas, in Christ’s incarnation, in his suffering, death and resurrection, Jesus Christ presented to the Father the supremely holy, acceptable, reasonable sacrifice. For whom was that sacrifice given? To whom is that sacrifice also given? It is given to us. Christ offers himself to us. He says take of me, take of my body given for you. Through the power of Christ, through the power of the Spirit of the living Christ, we too may present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, giving him our reasonable service in 2005.

Amen.