Let's pray.
O Most High, Eternal and Ever-Blessed God,
who art holy, holy, holy, Lord God of
hosts, who dwellest in light that is unapproachable
and full of glory, who art light and
in whom is no darkness at all, praise,
honor and glory belong unto Thy great and
holy name.
And it is a good thing to extol
Thy praise, for this is an exercise to
which there can be no restraint.
Thy glory is above all the earth.
Thy righteousness is like the great mountains.
Thy judgments are a great deal.
Thou, O Lord, preservest man and beast.
How precious is Thy grace.
All Thy works shall praise Thee, O Lord,
and Thy saints shall bless Thee.
They shall abundantly utter the memory of Thy
great goodness, and they shall sing of Thy
righteousness.
We would, O Lord, draw nigh unto Thee
in confession, in humble supplication, for we have
sinned.
We have all turned aside from the right
way.
We have together become unprofitable.
There is none that doeth good, no, not
even one.
Our throat is an open supplicant.
Without tongues we have used it.
The poison of asps is under our lips.
Our feet are swift to shed blood.
Destruction and misery are in our ways, and
the way of peace we have not known.
There is no fear of God before our
eyes, and it is this confession that becomes
us.
Blessed forever be Thy great and holy name,
that we may come to Thy throne of
grace to confess our sin.
Because Thou hast said, if we confess our
sins, Thou art faithful and just to forgive
us our sins and to cleanse us from
all unrighteousness.
O how precious that we may come with
confidence to obtain mercy and find grace to
help.
Do Thou, O Lord, impress upon us the
claims of Thy holiness so that we may
take the place that belongs to us, that
we may smite upon our own breasts, and
that we may utter the suppliant cry of
the penitent.
God be merciful.
O Lord, our God, do Thou grant that
we know the claims of Thy holiness upon
us for our life and conduct, that we
may not think that the claims of Thy
holiness upon us have respect simply to those
exercises of worship in which we are engaged.
But do Thou grant that Thy fear, and
therefore that we may have an all-pervasive
sense of Thy presence, a continuous sense of
our dependence upon Thee, and a continuous sense
of our responsibility to Thee, so that in
every detail of life we may realize how
indispensable it is that the forces of redemptive
and regenerating and sanctifying grace may be operative
enough, so that we may bring by the
operation of Thy Holy Spirit in our hearts
every thought into captivity to the obedience of
Christ.
Do Thou, O Lord, make us a sanctified
people.
Do Thou make us a consecrated people so
that we shall live in our daily life
and walk and conversation in a way that
becomes the gospel of Christ and does honor
to Thee the God of truth and does
honor to Christ as the Savior.
May He be the Lord of our life,
for none of us lives to Himself, and
none of us dies to Him.
Whether we live, we live unto the Lord.
Whether we die, we die unto the Lord.
Whether we live, therefore, or die, we are
the Lord's.
And may we understand the meaning of Christ's
death and resurrection, for it was for this
purpose that He died and rose again, that
He might be Lord both of the dead.
And do Thou grant unto us, O Lord,
that we may be instructed aright in Thy
word, that we may not be led astray
with the error of the wicked, that we
may not have our minds corrupted from the
simplicity that is unto Christ, that we may
not have our minds imbued with the vain
philosophy of this world.
May we not be conformed to this world,
but transformed by the renewing of our mind,
so that we may prove what is that
good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Grant, O Lord, that in heaven we may
have respect and justice and honor, that whatsoever
things are true, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever
things, if there be any virtue, if there
be any praise, may we think on these
things.
For, O Lord, we confess that it is
as we think in the deepest, in the
very essence, to Christ Jesus, our Savior, and
us.
Do Thou, O Lord, remember us as a
branch of the interest?
May we always have jealousy for the purity
and the honor throughout the whole world, that
we may recognize, indeed, that the church is
the bride of Christ, the church is His
body, the fullness of Him that filleth all
in all.
And O grant that we have in mind
the advancement of Thy church and of Thy
kingdom.
Have mercy, O Lord, upon the nations.
Do Thou cause righteous things to come forth
before all the nations.
And do Thou grant that their purpose be
fulfilled, that which Thou hast promised, that Thy
people, Thy ancient people, might turn again to
the Lord and might see the glory of
the Redeemer.
Do Thou hasten the day, O Lord, when
the fullness of the Gentiles will come in,
and when all Israel will be saved.
O grant that we may have constant conversion
of the Holy Spirit.
And have mercy, O Lord,
of Thy Holy Spirit in understanding.
The Epistle of Paul to the Romans, the
twelfth chapter, the beginning.
The Epistle of Paul to the Romans, chapter
twelve, verses one and two.
I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies
of God, that ye present your bodies a
living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is
you reasonable servants.
And be not conformed to this world, but
be ye transformed by the renewing of your
mind, that ye may prove what is that
good will of God.
A great deal of thinking in the professing
Church of Christ has tended to regard the
physical body as evil and as a hindrance
to the attainments and exercises of
the human spirit.
That the human body is, as it were,
a weight that drags down the human spirit.
And that, after all, it is the body,
that is the physical body which we possess,
that is the source of evil.
In the Roman Catholic Church, for example, it
is taught that sin began at the beginning
of human history because bodily appetites crossed the
line of reason or transgressed the dictates of
reason.
And that is how sin began and, of
course, the meaning of that is that sin
really has its source and origin in the
human body.
That there is something in bodily appetite that
tends to sin and that is degrading.
Now that view of the human body is
not biblical at all.
The teaching of Scripture is very different and
we need to be warned against that very
dangerous tendency that has appeared again and again
in the history of the Church, which regards
this human body, this human frame, as essentially
evil and as essentially degrading.
The teaching of the Scripture points in the
very opposite direction.
Have you ever noticed that in Genesis 2
-7, which is an account of the origin
of man, it is the human body that
is mentioned first.
It is that material that entered into man's
being that is mentioned first.
The Lord God formed man from the dust
of the ground and breathed into his nostrils
the breath of life and man became a
living soul or a living creature.
And you find the teaching of Scripture to
the same effect when it deals with the
question of death.
Now death consists in the separation of the
human body and the human spirit so that
the human body returns to dust.
It disintegrates and it returns to dust according
to the word dust thou art and to
dust thou shalt return.
Now if the body is essentially evil, death
would be a good thing, wouldn't it?
Because it would separate the human spirit from
this material, this material entity that we call
the body.
But the Scripture doesn't represent death.
The Scripture represents death as an evil, as
the wages of sin, and as utterly abnormal.
And remember that the final step in the
redemption of God's people will be the destruction
of death, the resurrection again from the dead
so that man will be both spirit and
body in glory.
Christ, we are told, must reign until he
places all enemies under his feet and the
last enemy that will be destroyed is death.
And so when this corruptible will put on
incorruption, when this mortal will put on, then
will be brought to pass the saying that
is written, death is swallowed up in victory.
Yes, the great goal of the whole redemptive
work is the destruction of the last enemy
itself.
And the dead will be raised incorruptible, and
the living will be changed.
The body belongs to the human person, and
the man is constituted as no other being
in God's creation.
He is given a body, a physical body,
and he is given a human spirit.
Physical body and a spirit.
There was no disharmony when God created man
at the beginning.
There was perfect harmony between body and spirit,
and that is the unique kind of being
that man is.
God created angels, but they have no body.
They don't have this physical entity that we
call the body.
They're simply spirits.
But man is both body and spirit, and
these in perfect union, the one with the
other, as he was created.
Now Paul in this epistle has come to
the point where he is dealing particularly with
practical exhortation, with the exhortations which bear upon
practical life and upon the practical science.
And it is very important to notice that
when he begins these two believers, he begins
with this, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by
the mercies of God, that ye present your
bodies a living sacrifice.
You see, the apostle Paul was not carried
away by that error of the wicked.
He was not carried away by that vain
philosophy that regarded the body as something evil,
as something to be, as it were, debilitated,
as something to talk.
The apostle Paul was imbued with the knowledge
of the word of God, and therefore he
regarded the body as of the greatest importance
in the Christian life, and in that process
of sanctification.
And consequently he says, I beseech you, that
your very bodies, any means of...
The apostle Paul was very concrete, he was
very practical, and because he was very concrete
and practical, he put in the forefront of
practical exhortation that which is most concrete and
practical, namely, the use of the human body.
Let ye present your bodies, now what are
they to be presented as?
A living sacrifice.
And we may very well be surprised to
find in the New Testament such language as
a living sacrifice, because it was in the
Old Testament that sacrifices were offered, and that
was part, that was necessary.
There could not be any effective approach to
God under the Old Testament, and we might
be surprised.
There is the place, and
he is making allusion to most of the
meal offerings, and
they were there for a living being.
But I think that what Paul is particular
about, for these animals, their blood was shed,
and they were offered upon the altar, and
part of their body was burned upon the
altar.
No sacrifice, however living it might be, when
it was brought to the altar, was placed
upon the altar as a living being.
And so you hear a contrast.
We are not to come to God with
our bodies, that they may be slaughtered.
We are not to come to God with
our bodies so that they are like horses.
And there is to be no slaughter.
There is to be no shedding of the
blood of our physical bodies.
It's a living sacrifice.
And that is what we are to present
to the Lord, and I shall show you
just in a moment what that means.
And Paul characterizes this sacrifice as something else.
As holy and acceptable.
Holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable
service.
Now when he says holy, he means that
the body is to be holy.
It's a characterization of the body.
And that means, you see, that of the
human body there is such a thing that
morality belongs to the human body.
The human body is indeed material.
But the body that is to be presented,
it's a body that is animal, and therefore
it is to be holy.
Now, of course, implies that sin is
attributed to the human body.
Apart from the process of redemption and regeneration
and sanctification, our bodies are sinful.
And Paul characterizes the body of the unregenerate
as a body of sin.
And it means, you see, now that the
body is to be the very opposite.
Instead of being sinful, you remember what Paul
says in another epistle.
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal
body, that ye should obey it in the
lusts thereof.
But, that ye should obey it in the
lusts thereof.
But present your members instruments of righteousness unto
God, and yield not your unrighteousness to sin,
but yield yourselves to God, as those that
are alive from the dead, and your members
instruments of righteousness to God.
That's what the body is to be, and
that's what its members are.
Now, let us ask the very practical, how
do we use the members of our body?
Do we use them in the practice of
sin?
How do we use our tongues?
How do we use our hands?
How do we use our feet?
Are our feet swift to evil?
Are our hands ready to be involved in
the practice of iniquity?
Are our tongues the tongues of deceit?
It's very practical, don't you see?
Let not sin reign in your mortal body,
but present your members instruments of righteousness to
God.
In another epistle, Paul brings that to the
sharpest focus when he says, What?
Know ye not that your body is the
temple of the Holy Ghost which is in
you, which ye have of God?
And ye are not your own, for ye
are bought with a price.
Glorify God therefore.
Holiness is to characterize the human body, and
if holiness is to characterize it, it isn't
to be characterized by the indulgence, by the
dissipation, by the debauchery, by the uncleanness that
are so prevalent and that are so characteristic
of us.
How do we use our physical members?
Do we use them for uncleanness?
Do we use them for the practice of
that which is after all of our status,
of our standing before God?
Then you notice that the apostle not only
characterized that is to be offered to God
as holy, but as acceptable unto God.
Now there the apostle is pointing to something
which is after all the regulating principle of
the believer's life.
What after all is the governing, regulating principle
of a believer's life?
What is it?
Try for yourself to answer that question.
What is the first thing that looks when
you are confronted with a certain decision?
When you are confronted with a certain situation
that demands action, what is the first thought
that blows up in your mind?
Is it the material advantage you're going to
get out of this, this course of action?
Is it some purely material, worldly consideration?
No, if we are presenting our bodies a
living sacrifice, and holy, we are to present
our very bodies as acceptable to God.
And the first thing that blows up in
the mind and thought of a believer when
he is confronted with a certain...
What is well-pleasing to God?
What is the will of God in this
situation?
If I'm going to choose one course of
action, if I'm going to enter into one
business, if I'm going to choose one vocation,
what should be the first consideration?
It is this.
What is well-pleasing or acceptable to God?
And you see, that governing principle of the
believer's life is brought to bear upon what
am I going to do with my hands?
What am I going to do with my
tongue?
What am I going to do with my
feet?
What am I going to do with all
the other various organs?
What are they going to be the instance?
This is the question that will determine what
is well-pleasing to God.
What is the will of God?
You young people who may be choosing a
vocation, who are going out into life with
all its problems, and sometimes with its very
crucial decisions, I plead with you, my dear
young friends, to lay that principle in the
very forefront of your thoughts.
Put that always at the forefront.
What is well-pleasing to God?
Now, I know I'm not answering yet the
question.
What is well-pleasing to God?
But we'll come to that in just a
moment.
But nevertheless, let that always be paramount.
And let it be paramount even in connection
with the use, that it is to be
acceptable to God.
And then he characterizes that to be that
presentation of our body holy and acceptable as
a reasonable service.
So reasonable.
And you could translate that by saying, no,
don't think, that the use of the human
body or the purpose to which the human
body is devoted is only a rational thing.
It's perfectly true that this human body is
material.
It's composed of elements that on the chance
of death return to dust and will return
to dust.
These components of our bodies are material.
But don't think that reason, that mind, that
spirit doesn't come into our...
And perhaps what Paul means when he says,
your reasonable service is this.
It is a service to God that derives
its character, its meaning, and its acceptableness with
God because it enlists our mind.
You can't deal you can't deal with your...
The human body is the servant of the
spirit.
It's the servant of the mind.
And therefore the mind, the reason, the intelligence
comes into the fullest operation in connecting the
rendering, the presentation of our bodies as living
sacrifices holy and acceptable unto God.
But there is something more than that in
this expression.
But what Paul is speaking about here is
not but the service of worship.
And perhaps I could render the thought this
way.
It is your reasonable service of worship.
The word that Paul uses here is a
word that means of worship.
And therefore it is a spiritual service.
It speaks of spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God
by Jesus Christ.
The people of God, you see, are built
up, a priesthood, are made a priesthood to
offer us spiritual sacrifices.
That is, sacrifices that are indicted and impaled
by the Holy Spirit.
And that is certainly implied when Paul says
that this is your reasonable service.
The devotion to God in the fullest sense
of the term, that is spiritual devotion, enters
into this particular exercise.
Presenting our bodies a living sacrifice holy, acceptable
unto God.
You will notice, of course, that the Apostle
Paul goes further.
In connection with his practical exhortation, he goes
on in the second verse to bring in
something that is, as it were, a more
inclusive.
And he says, Be not conformed to this
world, but be ye transformed by the renewing
of your mind that ye may prove what
is that good and acceptable.
Now, you see, Paul turns to other aspects
of sanctification.
But it isn't as if he now leaves
entirely behind the thought that present your body
in a way that is now
in this exhortation you will not say something
that they are not to do.
Now, that's very simple.
In every situation we
do something else, we don't do the other.
And so it is very practical and very
simple indeed for the Apostle Paul to present
his exhortation in that form.
Be not conformed to this world, but be
ye transformed.
One is negative, the other is positive.
Be ye transformed by the renewing Be
not conformed to this world.
And when Paul says be not conformed to
this world, and in the Scripture there's an
age to come.
It's not because time is easy.
It so happens that sin entered into this
age.
And sin very is
somewhat synonymous with what we would call this
present age.
When he says be not conformed he just
means something like Do not have your character
and conduct patterned after the pattern.
It's not the pattern.
You young people know pattern.
If you have had any and if you
have had any any if you have any
sensitivity or any conscience with reference to Christian
obligation you know perfectly well how difficult it
is to practice what you may have been
taught at your father's or your mother's knee
in reference to the Christian the Christian faith
how difficult it is to practice that.
Because you know the pressure of the world
of this present evil world you know it
just as well as I do.
What a pressure it is from the ungodly
world around you.
You're constantly required by this present evil world
to suppress and indeed to eliminate your Christian
convictions or your the Christian instruction is always
the pressure from this present evil world to
adopt its patterns its fashions its customs and
that's exactly what the apostle Paul cultivating
the pattern will bring you down to you
need you know the commandments these are the
patterns of the kingdom of God these are
the standards of the world what the contrast
is between the commandments of God on the
one hand and the commandments of this sinner
be not conformed in the language that Paul
uses here for Paul is not only and
the completing
character of this present evil remember this
this age is going and if the patterns
that we follow in this life of ours
are the patterns with full age then they
come down with tumble upon us and they
will tumble us all
that is in the world the lust of
the is not and the world
has he that doeth it will and
I think there is something to
want you don't
completely destroy
it's a passing all
that is in the world and now
in contrast with that but be transformed
by the renewing of your mind prove what
is