Viva La Vida Christus: Living the Life of Christ (Part 1)

This is the first week of our fall sermon series, “Viva La Vida Christus: Living the Life of Christ” dealing with Romans 12-16. Part 1, this week, is titled “All of Life is Worship” and works with Romans 12:1-2 and issues of Christian praxis, life through death, conformation and transformation, and God’s will for our lives. This sermon was originally preached September 7th, 2008 at The Resolved Church in San Diego, CA.

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September 7th, 2008
Pastor Duane M. Smets

Series: Viva La Vida | Romans 12-16
“All of Life is Worship”
Romans 12:1-2

Introduction

Good morning everyone. My name is Duane Smets. I pastor here under our head pastor Jesus and I get the privilege being the one who usually preaches God’s Word each Sunday. Well, today we start a brand new sermon series here at The Resolved Church, called “Viva La Vida Christus: Living the Life of Christ.”

Both the title and the artwork for this series is an unashamed reference to the latest hit single and album from band “Coldplay.” Which you probably knew unless you’ve been living in a cave this last year, or you’re just more mature than the rest of us all and don’t listen to the radio.

“Viva La Vida” just happened to fit really well with where we are in our study of the book of Romans as church. Viva La Vida is Spanish meaning “Alive is the Life” or “Long Live the Life.” Christus is actually Latin for Christ, which I added on there because Christus just sounds so much cooler than the Spanish “Christos.” Anyway, you put it together and it means, “Living the Life of Christ” which is exactly what the rest of the book of Romans is all about.

Chapters 1-11 talk about this thick, deep, meaningful, gnarly, awesome, rigorous, soul wrenching, mind bending truths…and then there is a transition in chapter 12 from the high altitudes of theology to the ground level, down to earth, practical outworkings of the gospel in each of our lives.

We have taken the first four years or so during this starting of our church to study the book of Romans in the Bible, which more than any other book so clearly articulates the gospel of Jesus Christ. We want to be a church whose foundation is the gospel, so that’s why we started with this book. What we kind of do is split sections up into series and then we go back and forth from studying Romans and studying other things from different places in the Bible in-between series. This will be our last Romans series which both kind of exciting because we’ll have finished the book and kind of sad because we’ve spent so much time in the book.

We’ve been away from our study in Romans for a month and a half and it could not come at a more timely time both for us and where we are in the life of our church in our focus on living in community together and also for our city and where we are in the time and season of the year entering into fall… Students are back in school, which means parents of the young ones are back to the regular routine and college students are back in town. Summer flings are now over and will either disintegrate or develop into real relationships. Weddings may be on the way for some and broken hearts for others. Tans will fade, hoodies will come out, grass will start growing again, the ocean water will get colder, the beaches sparser, the coffee hotter and the beer better. You gotta love life in San Diego in the fall.

Well let’s read our text for this morning and pray over it and then get into our study. There’s Bibles on the back table if you need one. I’ve given this week’s sermon the subtitle, “All of Life Is Worship.” Let’s hear the Word of God.

Romans 12:1-2 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Lord God, would you be so kind to make yourself known today in a way this Word or yours does not return void but hits us and works in us and impels us to a deeper, fuller, farther reaching worship of you then we have yet to experience in our lives. Would it give us a clearer understanding of what it means for us in our day to day lives to be believers in Jesus. Would this passage be a key tool that teaches us to look to your and your will for us first and foremost rather than ourselves as we are so prone to do. God you are good, pleasing and perfect. Do you work today in us…Amen.

Christian Praxis

I want to start today with a question. If someone came up to you and asked you what the gospel is could you share the story of the gospel in 60 seconds, one minute? What would you tell them. Business entrepreneurs call this an “elevator pitch.” The idea is you happen to be in an elevator alone with you and someone like Donald Trump, you got about sixty seconds to saw who and what you are about in hopes to win him over at least to have some sort of interest in your company.

Could you do that with the gospel? Can you take someone from creation to the cross to the culmination of all things? Maybe, that’s a big task. Paul just spent 11 chapters giving us the gospel. Then there is not only that story but there is your personal story, how your initial life is a microcosm of the big grand story, how you have individual participated in and exemplified that great grand story. That always takes longer. To tell who you are and how Jesus has changed your life.

Some of you it takes really long because it takes so long for you to say anything. I was talking to this dude the other day on the phone and the guy just went on and on and on without a breath…I would hold the phone away for a minute, thinking is this guy serious, and then come back and he is still talking…I finally told him I had to go.

So I want to try and give you an elevator pitch of the gospel because the first word of our text here is the word, “therefore” and I am pretty persuaded because of the change in tone, the change in subject, and the change indicated from the phrase, “by the mercies of…” that Paul, the human author of Romans, is intending to refer to everything he has said so far in the book. So far, for eleven chapters it’s been doctrine, theology.

Good and solid doctrine and theology ought always to come first. John Calvin said the difference between the gospel and philosophical speculation is the that philosophical speculation is superstructure without a foundation, like a body without a head. If the gospel is true, it’s got to have a foundation, a worldview that makes sense and can support it…that’s why when people poo poo theology and say things like, “Who needs theology” or “That’s the problem with theology” I always get bummed…Because good theology is essential. You all need to have some good theology otherwise whatever you believe is foundationless, like a body without a head. Everyone has a theology, even no theology is a theology…we just need to have good theology.

So let me give you the elevator pitch of the gospel, the good theology. The Gospel is the good news message that begins with the story that God created everything in the very beginning and in his creation he made a special garden named Eden where the first man and woman sinned, and did not listen to and love God and that ever since them all of us all human being have been repeating that sin and trapped in the same cycle of loving ourselves and other things more than God and it reaps destruction in us.

We so easily to love the creature rather than the eternal Creator which has an eternal consequence called hell. But God did something about hell in a unique point in human history. He became a man, the God-man Jesus and he lived a perfect life, the one we’ve failed at and continue to fail at and then he died the eternal death we deserve for our failure, our sin on, by dying on a cross.

Jesus rose again to live forevermore and promises that new life both in quality and quantity to all who believe his person and his work on the cross actually can and does deal with who we are deep down as sinners. That new life begins here and now in us and carries on to eternity where we will go to be with him and live life the way it is supposed to be in pure worship with not just singing but fancy meals, exquisite journeys throughout God’s lands, amazing conversations with friends and family, all with no more tears and no more pain.

That is good good news. That is the gospel in 60 seconds. Our past, our present, and our future. Broken down, super short, nuts and bolts gospel. Chapter 11 ended by saying that such a gospel is mercy. We have all been disobedient in order that God may have mercy on many. God didn’t have to come into the world in Jesus and do anything at all. He would have been a fully good and upright and just God, just to end the story at hell, and all the angels would praise him for keeping true to his word and punishing evil as he ought. But God has mercy in Jesus.

Now Chapter 12 begins, in view of such mercy…this is how we ought to be, this is what ought to drive our lives in how we live them. This is what separates the gospel from religion. Religion says “do these things and you will live” but the Bible here says “live and you will do these things.” John Stott says it this way, “There is no greater incentive to holy living than a contemplation of the mercies of God…(it) is the spring and foundation of righteous conduct.” We must see ourselves as recipients of mercy.

So today, Viva La Vida begins with an appeal to the practical of life. How we live outside these doors. Even the third word here that gets translated “appeal” is saying something significant. Other translations use phrases like, “call you to, I summon you, I exhort you, I beseech, I encourage you, I implore you, I admonish you, or “I urge you.” I was talking to someone the other day who is not a Christian and hasn’t really had much exposure to the gospel and they didn’t know what a sermon was. And so I was trying to explain what a sermon was and I found myself saying things like, “Well, it’s kind of a speech but it’s more than a speech…there is an imperative where I am calling people to something, saying ‘YOU NEED THIS!”

Life by Death

So let’s deal with the next few words, what it is we need so bad. “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God…(you need this) to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

This is the great reversal, life by death. We are to present our bodies living, having life, by sacrificing…sacrifice is death. We live by dying. I want to flush that out a bit. First, know that this cluster of words, “present” “sacrifice” “holy” and “acceptable” are all somewhat technical words which are probably totally inferior to us here in the 21 century living in San Diego, California. They are words which belong to sacrificial systems of worship.

In ancient Judaism, you would sacrifice on an alter either food or certain types of animals based on how much money you made and what particular sin needed to be punished. So the idea in the sacrificial system is that the animal or the grain suffers for you and then appeases God turning away his judgment.

Other world religions both in ancient Mesopotamia and in Rome were not dissimilar. There were temple payments and sacrifices, the main difference was that instead of sacrificing to one God you sacrificed to different gods for different things and you would not only sacrifice for sins but also for hopeful favor…like for good weather, or good crops.

The closest we probably get in our culture to the sacrifices of ancient times or to what still happens in some parts of the world, is when people burn incense or candles to a particular god for one reason or another, usually in the privacy of their own home. In Bible times is it was much more public and out in the open for everyone to see.

Now, here when he says to present or offer our bodies, the Bible is not telling to make physical human sacrifice but is picturing our bodies as our whole person. Not only our all our bodily faculties and things we use to function, but our very selves.

This is an analogy. It is taking the idea of sacrifice and saying…look, instead of going to a public place and making a sacrifice whenever you do something wrong, or always looking to appease some God, remember the mercy you have received in Jesus. Jesus paid the sacrifice once and for all and now our lives become like an ever ongoing sacrifice to God through him. That is the analogy of the Christian life…that you no longer live for yourself. Once you encounter the God who lived and died for you it so changes us that we begin to live for others more than for ourselves. We begin a death of sorts where we die more and more to self and live more and more to God.

1 Peter 2:24 says, [Jesus] himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

It is life through death. And such a life is holy and acceptable to God. For something to be holy means to be set apart. It is for something to be especially dedicated for something. For example, say you have some special clothes that you only wear on special occasions. Like me, I have a couple suits. I hardly ever wear them except when I’m doing weddings. Or I have to “dress up” for something really important. My suits are set apart, they are holy for special occasions.

Here God says, our lives, through Jesus, now is a continual living sacrifice, special and holy. Our life because holy, special, set apart for him. It is like each day, we are to wake up and put on our suit and live for him and not for ourselves any longer. And now it is possible because we have Jesus, where before him it was maybe a hopeful religious quest doomed to failure.

On top of it all it is pleasing. ESV here says “acceptable.” I wish it would have translated this as well-pleasing because acceptable seems like second best. Being made alive in Christ is not second best, it is so pleasing to God and when God is pleased we are most happy and satisfied as humans. We are made for God, not for ourselves, and once we humble ourselves and recognized that and receive Jesus’ sacrifice for us trying to live for ourselves…then we are freed to be a creature and to be a happy creature who lives under and for a wise and sufficient God.

This is what life is for the Christian. It is worship. In Romans 1 we fall in downward spiral of foolish worship and here in Romans 12 we are lifted up to reasonable and renewed worship. You see those two words there “spiritual worship”? Well the word spiritual is logikos where we get the word “logic” but it’s coupled with another word which means “worship” or “service.” The idea is somewhere between spiritual on one hand and rational on the other.

The Greek Philosopher Epictetus used logikos this way, he said “If I were a nightengale, I would do what is proper to a nightengale, and if I were a swan, what is proper to a swan. In fact I am logikos, so I must praise God.” The Christian idea goes even farther and says, in light of the gospel, who Jesus is and what he has done, dying to ourselves and ever living for him in everything is the only true and proper response left…it becomes our spiritual and rational worship. Worship is no longer focused on a particular place, like in a temple, or in Israel but is now solely in Jesus…we worship him in Spirit and in Truth (John 4:24).

Conformation and Transformation

Sounds simple enough right? Ya right? If any of you have been a Christian for any amount of time you know it is really really hard. Yes, it is great and true and pleasing to God and is satisfying and Jesus is really really good. But being a Christian is not easy. Why? Because we’re still in the world and because of that there is still remaining sin and depravity both in us and all around us.

That’s why before Jesus went to die for us he prayed a long prayer for us in John 17 and he asks that the Father would sanctify us in his truth because we are still in the world and we need to be purified from the evil in us and protected from the evil one around us. Here, Paul says it a different way…he says, “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”

So let’s talk about the conformation and transformation in us in light of the gospel. We’re given this injunction, this call, to not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

Conformity and non-conformity, transformation and stagnation…these are some of the biggest barriers and challenges to the work of the gospel in us while we are in the world. Interestingly, the word here for world is not the normal word that is used. Instead, it’s actually the word aeon, which is this age or this time or this period in the course of all of history.

The Bible divides all of history and by all I mean ALL of history into three periods. The past, which is the first and original age, the one perfection in paradise in the garden of Eden. The present, which is age of evil and sin ever since Adam sinned in the garden. And then the future age, of full redemption and glorification, paradise returned with no more sickness, sin, sorrow and evil. Right now we are still in this present evil age, though we’ve had a taste of the age to come through Jesus.

But this present evil age in the world in many ways is like a force in us and around us which pressures us and influences us to follow its ideas and its agendas. J.B. Philips translated this verse in Romans this way, he said, “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its mold.”

It begins when we are very young and then just continues and gets more complex and more sophisticated as we get older…the pressure to conform and be squeezed into the mold of other people’s expectations. That pressure is so strong, whether it be from friends, family, the media, co-workers…we don’t want to be on the out.

Many of you know that I work at a group home for teenagers on Thursday and Friday. All the boys just went back to school and it is ridiculous how much time these boys spend changing outfits, fixing their hair, they’ll dump a whole bottle of gel in their hair in one day and spend 45 minutes shaping it.

We get older and it just gets more sophisticated. Then it is trying to make sure you got a good job, you own a nice home, drive a nice car, and go on exotic vacations. Some people are smart…they sense and they feel the pressure to conform and so they decide they’ll be non-conformists and not be beat. They make it the goal of their life to be different and stand out.

So they get all tattooed and pierced up and make sure they listen to all the right music and go to all the right shows. I realized this a few years back when I went to a Belle and Sebastian concert. If you don’t know who Belle and Sebastian are they’re and indie rock band from the UK. And if you don’t know what indie rock is, nobody else does either so don’t feel bad.

But I showed up at this concert in LA and there were about 500 or so people walking around and I swear everyone of them was wearing converse sneakers, with tight jeans, and jet black dyed hair. It was ridiculous, all these non-conformists together in one place and they were all exactly the same.

My wife Amy took me to the Bob Dylan concert last night for my birthday, which was great. Mr. Zimmerman, Bob Dylan, has a song he didn’t sing last night called “Maggie’s Farm.” In it there’s a line that describes exactly what I’m talking about. He says, “Well, I try my best, to be just like I am. But everybody wants you, to be just like them. They sing while you slave and I just get bored. I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more.”

What is the deal with the dangers of conformity and non-conformity? It is this, the want and desire for approval…it’s the same for both. When we try so hard to conform it’s because we want to impress others so that they will like us or love us, because we all want to be loved.

When we refuse to conform, non-conformity, it’s because we’re afraid people will not love us and so we react and try to be different and stand out…the thing is both of them have this in common, the want for approval. Which isn’t necessarily bad, the thing is that only God can give us the approval and the love we are so desiring and the amazing thing about the gospel is that we realize we are far worse off then we ever realized and at the same time more loved than we ever thought possible…nobody’s approval can exceed God’s in Christ.

The gospel is truly transforming. We are a people who need change. We need to be changed. There are things about all of us that are not good. What happens too often is we start trying to compete with each other to see who is a better Christian or who is more spiritual. That’s just our stupid pride rearing it’s ugly head again. We all need change, we need to be transformed, we are all sinners.

The word for transformation here is metamorphosis. A change from one thing into another. How does that happen as a Christian, how does change take place, how do people change as they embrace Jesus in their lives. It happens this way, look at the text, the continual, “renewal of your mind.” To have our minds renewed is to have them redeemed and set back to thinking about God, the world and ourselves properly…they way we should, like back in Eden before sin.

We just don’t think about things properly. We come to any issue or topic or situation with a whole set of baggage from our past experiences and thoughts and then we try to make some sort of judgment about things. Even now, what is happening right now as I talk is you are listening to what I am saying and trying to hold it against what you have previously thought and experienced and trying to make some judgment about it. Right?

The thing is we don’t know how to think, we are ignorant and when we usually do try and think we think very foolishly, we’ve been completely brain-washed because of sin. We need total re-programming. The renewing of our minds has to do with us adjusting our ways of thinking about everything as a Christian, everything is now up for grabs and has to be re-considered. Which is why God gave us a book to help us in that, to tell us what he thinks so we can think his thoughts. That’s why we study it so hard and work hard to apply it to our lives.

Not What I Want

Well, let’s work with this last phrase of our verse and how the Christian mindset transforms us so the cry of our hearts is, “Not what I want, but what you want Lord.” The last part of our verse for today says once the ongoing process of transformation in the gospel is happening then, “by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

As a pastor, besides preaching, my other big responsibility is counseling. People come to me all the time with questions either about the Bible or about their lives, they come seeking prayer and advice. Many of you have done and do that, which is good, that’s my job, it’s my joy to serve you that way. You want to know the most popular question I get asked? It’s this, it comes out in several different ways…but it can always be boiled down to this simple question, “What is God’s will for my life?” That’s it, that’s the #1 question I get asked for advice and prayer.

Almost every time, maybe not every, but almost every time I refer to this verse because it speaks directly to that question. What does it say? What is God’s will for my life? Well, first we know that his will is good, acceptable and perfect, so that is definitely what we want. But how do I come to know that good, acceptable and perfect will? Work backwards…I seek to be transformed by the renewal of my mind, I do not allow myself to be conformed to the patterns of this world, I present myself and my life as a living sacrifice, and I live as a recipient of mercy through the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I guarantee if you follow those steps you will have assurance of God’s will for your life. You see, I think what many of us have wanted (me included) when we ask the question of what God’s will for our life is God to just tell us straight out, like in a voice out of heaven or something so that we wouldn’t have to do any work or seeking him to find out. Right? We just want to know and we want to know now and we want it to be easy.

That’s not the way God works. First of all, not that God couldn’t or hasn’t ever but the primary way that God speaks to us is not in some sort of experiential impression. In fact, I would venture so far to say you ought to be very careful if you think God is telling you something, because we in our own human sinfulness have a great propensity to sort of justify what we really want to do and so we pray about it and if we feel sort of good, because of our excitement or whatever, then we say that is God and so we put our God stamp on it and say, “I think God is telling me to do this. I prayed about it.”

So first, the primary way God speaks to us is NOT through experiential senses of his voice. The primary way God speaks to us is through his word. Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice…they follow me (Jn 10:27).” It is interesting. Do you know what shepherds do or used to do? From the time a little baby sheep is born a shepherd gives them a name. A shepherd names everyone of their sheep and from the time they are small calls them by name. As the little sheep is growing up it learns it’s name and the sound of the voice of the shepherd so that when it is old whenever it hears its shepherd voice it knows automatically that it is him and it responds.

Here’s the deal, it takes a lot of time before the sheep learns its name and the sound of its shepherd’s voice. If you want to know the voice of Jesus and his will for your life your going to have to spend some time listening to him, getting to know what he calls you, what he says about you. How do you do that? Right here. The Bible. We have all his words for us recorded. That’s one of the most important reasons why you gotta read your Bible, it’s how you get to know Jesus’ voice.

What this verse here in Romans is talking about is spiritual maturity. Because if you are walking with Jesus and disciplined in his word and his ways, there really isn’t going to be a whole lot of big questions or decisions that you’re going to have to face because when you do face them, you’re going to know exactly what he wants because you’ve been walking with him.

What is really going on most of the time, maybe not all, but most of the time when we are “seeking God for his will” is that we want something that deep down we really know is not for us and we’re trying to convince God or ourselves that it is okay. But what God wants is not really our first and primary concern, he is sort of an added on check off.

The gospel changes that. What have we learned today? We’ve learned the only way to live is by dying to ourselves. We’ve learned that we’ve been seeking approval from others rather than God either by conformity or non-conformity. And we’ve learned we need a total transformation of our way of thinking.

This is an extremely practical teaching. This verse teaches us that no matter what the question, if it is where you should live, what job you should work, what major in school you should have, who you should marry, if you should have kids, how you should raise your kids, what hobbies you should have, the first and primary issue to deal with is us…so that our wills our turn to say, I do truly not care about what the answer is, the only thing I care about is that it is what YOU WANT FOR ME GOD, not my will but yours. Because if it is God’s will, you can’t go wrong, you cannot fail.

Conclusion

Let’s conclude today. Jesus is ultimate. I can’t help but end this sermon with him. Jesus is the most merciful person I have ever encountered. It does not matter to him who you are or what you have done…thieves, the sexually immoral, the addict, the sick and dying, the outcast…he is full of mercy. I don’t know all you’re stories, and of the one’s I do know, I’m sure I only know half the story…Jesus knows it all and he still loves you and accepts you.

When you read about Jesus’ life here on earth, there is probably not a better way to describe it then, he offered up himself a living sacrifice…his life was totally lived in service to others. He did not give into to the immense pressures around him. His followers wanted to make him a king. His enemies wanted him to lash out against them. He did not conform to the patterns of this world…he resisted. He always put the Father’s will first in his life. He went to the cross to pay the ultimate price so that you and I might live and have his life.

On the night before he died, in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed a prayer recorded in the Bible for all of us to hear. He was considering all that he was about to do. Jesus was God, he knew exactly what was about to happen. The whipping. Being spit on and disgraced. The thorny crown. The nails. The cross. The spear in his side.

And even more than all of that, he knew he was about to suffer not just physical human pain but God pain, the pain and punishment for sin. He had never sinned, never knew what that was like, and in a single moment would take on all the sin in the world into his being as if it were his very own and then bear the full brunt of God’s eternal wrath and hellish anger against him. It must have been the most horrendous cry mankind has ever hear when Jesus screamed on the cross.

He knew all of that ahead of time and he prayed this prayer. Father, if there be any other way I don’t want to do this, but not what I will but what you will.

That is what we need. We need Jesus. You see Jesus is not just a good example. We’re kidding ourselves if we think we could ever reach that height of sacrifice and surrender of our will. We need something more. We need Jesus himself, we need the good news of the gospel for God to give us Jesus, his life and his death in exchange for all that we are. We have to be transformed and made into a people of mercy.

Maybe you’ve never put faith in Jesus, turn to him day. Maybe you’ve just been stagnate for a long time and there’s no transformation happening. Trust Jesus today. Let’s go to him and allow him to minister to us.

Let’s pray.