I think it is possible to come each
Sunday and still feel in your heart, but
what does God want of me?
What does God want of me?
What really is the heart of this gospel
that we're talking about?
And what is the response God wants from
me to it?
So that's what today's verse explains.
Before talking about the gospel, it might be
good to establish clearly what the basic problem
is in God's eyes.
And it's important to do that because it's
very different from the basic problem that is
so often discussed or highlighted by sociologists, by
magazine and newspaper writers, even by the authors
of inspirational books.
Most of them seem to zero in on
mankind's greatest problem is guilt, a sense of
guilt.
Or the 20th century's greatest difficulty is loneliness.
Or man's great problem today is a loss
of self-esteem.
Well, really, God alone can see what mankind's
greatest problem is because He alone is not
part of that problem.
And His diagnosis is very different from all
those, loved ones.
And so, would you look at it with
me?
It's in Genesis chapter 6 and verse 7,
verse 5.
Genesis 6 and verse 5.
It's page 5 in that Revised Standard Version.
Genesis 6 and verse 5.
The Lord saw that the wickedness of man
was great in the earth and that every
imagination of the thoughts of his heart was
only evil continually.
That's what our Maker says is our greatest
problem.
The wickedness of man is great on the
earth and every imagination of the thoughts of
his heart is only evil continually.
And then, if you want to find the
solution that God had for that, just look
about two verses down to verse 7.
So the Lord said, I will blot out
man whom I have created from the face
of the ground, man and beast and creeping
things and birds of the air, for I
am sorry that I have made them.
And you know us with our soft hearts,
we like to think they are, and our
woolly mindedness, we say there has to be
some other solution besides that.
And of course, our error today is that
we think there are all kinds of other
solutions, you know, besides the one that God
found.
God saw that the evil in our hearts
was continual and He determined He would blot
us out, He would destroy us.
And our error today is we think we
can find some other answer, just hold it,
give me time, give me time and I'll
find another answer.
Now, if we have some encouragement from our
peers, that will kind of do it.
Or if we can tame this evil, or
we can train it, or we can treat
it in some way.
And loved ones, that's why we end up
with such a mixture of greys in our
society today.
And you know that.
We don't have any blacks or whites, we
don't have any rights or wrongs, and it's
interesting, as a result we don't actually have
any reliable hearts that are trustworthy, isn't that
so?
That's the funny thing.
We're so easy on the evil that is
here, and we attempt to ameliorate it in
so many unsatisfactory ways, that we end up
with a world where it's very hard to
find a trustworthy heart, or a reliable heart.
And of course, God kept on saying the
same thing for 2,000 years.
He kept on saying, look, there's only one
answer to this.
There is only one answer.
Jeremiah said it, you know.
He said, the sinful soul, it must die.
And old Paul said it years later when
he said, the wages of sin is death.
The only way to get rid of this
stuff is to destroy.
You cannot separate the sinner from his sin.
You have to destroy both to get rid
of it.
And really, years later, it was one of
his prophets that said the same thing.
The real evil in the world is the
heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately
wicked.
Who can know it?
That's it, loved ones.
And for 2,000 years, God kept on
saying that through his prophets.
The basic problem of mankind is that the
heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately
wicked.
Who can know it?
And the only answer to it is to
destroy, to destroy.
And you remember, that's exactly what God did.
If you look at Genesis 7, and verse
19.
And the waters prevailed so mightily upon the
earth, that all the high mountains under the
whole heaven were covered.
The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them
15 cubits deep.
And all flesh died that moved upon the
earth, birds, cattle, beasts, all swarming creatures that
swarm upon the earth.
And every man, everything on the dry land
in whose nostrils was the breath of life,
died.
He blotted out every living thing that was
upon the face of the ground.
Man and animals and creeping things and birds
of the air, they were blotted out from
the earth.
And the reason was that immediately we began
to try to live without trusting our Creator
to show us why he put us here.
The moment we did that, the moment we
decided we're not going to trust him to
tell us that, we're not going to depend
upon him, we're going to depend upon ourselves,
that moment we became overwhelmingly fearful.
We did, loved ones.
There was no other way.
There was no way in which God avoided
it.
Suddenly we realized I'm one of billions of
people spinning through space on a sphere that
has no visible means of support.
This is madness.
And no wonder we were filled with a
neurosis of insecurity and fearfulness.
And you know immediately that happened.
We began to try to deal with our
insecurity and we started to grab everything we
could as fast as we could.
At the same time, trying to prevent anybody
from knowing that that's what we were doing.
And so of course we were all doing
that.
We were all like fearful neurotic little kids
grabbing everything we could, grabbing all the money
we could, all the possessions we could, and
at the same time trying to let nobody
else know that we were doing it.
So the whole relationships of the whole world
were filled with dishonesty and deception and greed
and avarice.
And actually there wasn't a part of our
personalities that was left untainted by that.
Really.
The theologians call it total depravity.
And it means that while there was still
a little light from God in the center
of our beings, there was not one part
of our personalities, not one part of our
bodies, not one part of our minds, our
emotions, or our wills that were not tainted
with selfishness.
This great disease that we develop within us
once we stop depending upon God.
And that's what total depravity means, you know.
It means that there isn't one part of
you or one part of me that is
not touched in some way with selfishness.
And so our hearts were filled with envy
and hatred and anger and violence and resentment
and criticism.
And God looked at that mess and he
determined there is only one way to deal
with it.
I will destroy it.
And that's what he did.
Now is that the gospel?
No, it's part of the gospel.
The gospel actually begins in that verse that
we were reading, if you look at it.
It's Genesis 7 and verse 23.
See it.
The Bible runs, he blotted out every living
thing that was upon the face of the
ground.
Chapter 7 and verse 23.
Man and animals and creeping things and birds
of the air, they were blotted out from
the earth.
And then the second half of the verse
is the beginning of the gospel.
Only Noah was left and those that were
with him in the ark.
That's the beginning of the gospel.
It continues in chapter 9, if you like
to look at verse 8 there.
Genesis 9 and verse 8.
Then God said to Noah and to his
sons with him, Behold, I establish my covenant
with you and your descendants after you.
And with every living creature that is with
you, the birds, the cattle and every beast
of the earth with you, as many as
came out of the ark, I establish my
covenant with you that never again shall all
flesh be cut off by the waters of
a flood and never again shall there be
a flood to destroy the earth.
And God said, This is the sign of
the covenant which I make between me and
you and every living creature that is with
you for all future generations.
I set my bow in the cloud and
it shall be a sign of the covenant
between me and the earth.
When I bring clouds over the earth and
the bow is seen in the clouds, I
will remember my covenant which is between me
and you and every living creature of all
flesh and the water shall never again become
a flood to destroy all flesh.
When the bow is in the clouds, I
will look upon it and remember the everlasting
covenant between God and every living creature of
all flesh that is upon the earth.
God said to Noah, This is the sign
of the covenant which I have established between
me and all flesh that is upon the
earth.
That's the gospel.
But God determined he would never again destroy
us all like that.
Why?
Because he thought that there was some other
way to destroy sin.
There's only one way to destroy guilt, and
that's destroy sin.
And there's only one way to destroy the
sin, and that's to destroy the sinner.
But God found another way to destroy the
sinner.
He found a way to free us from
our evil hearts that are so desperately wicked
and deceitful without destroying us physically.
How did he do it?
Christ died for us.
Christ was the flood.
God put our hearts into the flood and
destroyed them there.
That's it.
When he cried out, it was because he
had your heart in himself and he was
feeling the pain of its destruction.
That's it.
Remember the way Paul put it.
He said in Galatians 2 and 20, remember,
I have been crucified with Christ and it
is no longer I that live but Christ
that lives within me.
That's it.
God took your heart and my heart and
put it into his Son.
And instead of flooding us out physically as
he had done originally, he put us into
the flood of Christ and he destroyed our
evil, deceitful, wicked hearts in his Son Jesus.
That's what baptism, you know, meant in the
first century.
When a person was immersed, that's what the
Greek word means.
It means to be immersed in Christ.
And when you were immersed in the water,
as you went down, you realized that you
were being cut off from the world that
you knew.
As far as you were concerned when you
were under that water, there was no world
and you were cut off from it.
You were dead.
And when you came up out of the
water, you then were given a Christian name,
a new name, because you were being raised
in Jesus as a new creation.
And that's what God did instead of sending
a flood.
He destroyed our evil hearts in Jesus and
recreated us with new hearts in his resurrection.
There's an interesting verse, I don't know if
you've ever noticed it, in Peter, that makes
that truth clear.
It's 1 Peter 3 and
verse 20.
It's page 1060.
1 Peter 3 and verse 20.
And it's talking about what Jesus did when
he was raised or between his death and
resurrection.
And then in verse 20, to the spirits
in prison who formerly did not obey when
God's patience waited in the days of Noah
during the building of the ark in which
a few, that is eight persons, were saved
through water.
Baptism, which corresponds to this, you see, to
the ark and the flood, now saves you
not as a removal of dirt from the
body but as an appeal to God for
a clear conscience through the resurrection of Jesus
Christ.
Jesus is the flood.
What does God want us to do?
Well, loved ones, it's Romans 12 and verse
1.
It's really simple.
Romans 12 and verse 1.
It's page 986.
I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the
mercies of God, to do what?
To present your bodies as a living sacrifice.
As if you had gone to a specialist
with some pains in your abdomen and he
had diagnosed cancer.
Cancer throughout the whole of your body.
There isn't an organ in your body that
is not touched with cancer.
And so you have at the most six
weeks to live.
That's what God says about our sin and
our selfishness and the evil within us.
And you know what you say to the
doctor.
You say, can you do anything?
And he says, the only hope is radiation.
Massive doses of radiation.
You know what you say.
You say, what do you want me to
do?
He says, you come here, you lie on
that table and you allow us to give
you massive doses of radiation.
You don't cavil, you don't hesitate, you don't
debate, you don't say, would exercise do it
instead?
If I eat a little more or take
a little more care of myself, or if
I obey certain rules and laws, will that
do it?
Or would it be enough if I just
put my arm under the radiation?
I mean, you know what you do.
You present your body.
You just say, whatever you say, whatever you
want, you do.
I'm going to be dead in six weeks
anyway.
If you can do anything for me, you
do what you want.
That's what God says.
Except that is a bit more poignant, His
appeal to us than that.
Because Jesus has already borne the radiation.
He has already borne the death-destroying rays
of God's wrath that were leveled upon you
and me in Him.
And when He cried out, My God, My
God, why hast thou forsaken Me?
It was because He felt all the destruction
of that burning wrath of God destroying your
selfish heart in Him.
And so actually, Christ has already borne that
for you.
That's what that verse you remember at Corinthians
means.
God made Him to be sin who knew
no sin.
God made Christ what you are or what
you were.
And then He destroyed that in His own
Son.
And so, when you plead, well, is there
some other way?
There is a dear person who has already
borne the pain for you.
And here you are saying, well, maybe I
don't need to put that arm into the
flood.
Maybe I don't need to put this mind
or this part of my brain or this
part of my life into the flood.
Maybe I can get away without that part
being destroyed.
It's pitiful, isn't it?
Hamlet, you remember, once said, oh, what a
rogue and peasant slave am I.
When he saw the agony of an actor
over the imagined death of his father and
he thought, my father is really dead and
I feel none of that.
Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave are
we.
If we stand back now and say, is
there some way in which I can get
away from presenting my body, my whole body,
my whole personality, my whole life for God
to make this rail in me?
Well, it's after the fact, isn't it?
The dear guy has already died.
He's already borne the pain.
Here we are wanting to know, can we
hold on to something of what he died
to destroy, present as a sacrifice?
That is, to regard yourself, your life, in
reality, as slaughtered, already slaughtered in Jesus.
That was the only thing God could do
with you or me.
That was the only thing we were worth,
slaughtering us.
Regard our lives as slaughtered and destroyed so
that only the smoke now is rising up
to God.
That's what it means to present your bodies
as a living sacrifice.
You put it on there.
You say, Lord, you did this for me.
Here I am.
You make it rail.
See the fruits of your work and suffering
and be satisfied wherever you want.
Do whatever you want with me.
Here I am.
I regard myself as already a dead man,
already somebody who has been destroyed.
I present myself to you and you raise
up what you want because radioactivity destroys good
cells as well as bad, as you probably
know.
But in order to be healed, you have
to be willing.
Lord, you make the judgment.
You decide what has to be taken from
my life.
You decide it.
I'm not going to argue.
And you raise up what you want.
That's why it means present your bodies as
a living sacrifice, a sacrifice that has already
been destroyed and that God will make alive
again according to his own best judgment.
That's what God wants of his loved ones.
That's it.
Parastasi is the verb present.
It's in what is called in Greek the
aorist.
And the aorist is the part of the
verb that expresses an instantaneous, complete act.
That's it.
You do it.
It's done.
That's what it means.
To present your bodies means not bit by
bit, not struggle by struggle, but now you
present it.
I see what you've done, Lord.
You've destroyed me in Christ.
He is the flood.
Here I am.
There.
That's only reality.
Here I am.
Make this real in whatever way you please.
It's a definite act.
That's why for many of us, decision for
Christ has been a momentary, instantaneous action, you
see, that we've done at a service like
this.
We've just done it because it can be
to present.
To present your bodies that way is the
final admission that there is no other way.
And that's what it means to actually become
a child of God.
It's an admission that everything has to be
changed in my life, not just the things
that I see wrong, everything.
It's an admission that you're willing to let
everything be changed.
That's what real repentance is.
Real repentance is stating everything has to be
destroyed and the whole thing has to be
created anew.
That's what presenting your body as a living
sacrifice is.
And that's what God requires of us.
That's what He wants of us.
Not our efforts, you know.
Not our endless attempts at cooperation.
Not all our trying.
But just our recognition that He destroyed us
and remade us in His Son and that
we've to mirror that and reflect that by
presenting ourselves as people who have been destroyed,
who only deserve to be destroyed and Lord,
You raise up in me whatever You want.
That's what God requires of us.
A bit like the man who owned an
old shack on the edge of town that
a developer wanted to buy.
And the developer came to this man and
the man, of course, thought the shack was
worth maybe $2,000 at the most.
And the developer said, I'll offer you $25
,000 for that.
And the man was overwhelmed.
And it was arranged that in a month's
time he would move out and the developer
would take over.
And the man began to think to himself,
Oh, this is ridiculous giving me $25,000
for this place.
It's not worth it.
Well, I'd better take some of that money
and at least make it look reasonable.
And so he began to go down to
the hardware stores and he began to buy
new windows and new nails and he began
to work on the shack and began to
get paint and painted up and all that
kind of thing so that in a month's
time the shack was really a transformation as
far as he was concerned.
And the developer came that day and the
guy, of course, couldn't make out what he
was doing with that massive bulldozer on the
road and he said, Look, isn't the house
beautiful?
And the developer said, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It is, it is, thank you.
Here's your $25,000.
And the guy said, What are you going
to do with it?
And he said, Oh, that bulldozer, I'm going
to bulldoze it right off the site.
I just want the site, you see.
I don't need the house.
That's it.
God doesn't need your house.
He doesn't need your life.
He doesn't.
You may think, I mean, I think you're
lovely.
I think we're all great.
But really, it's nothing to God.
God doesn't want that.
God has already determined there's nothing I can
do with you as you are.
I have to destroy you, bulldoze you right
off the site and start again.
And that's what conversion is.
And that's what faith in Christ's death is.
And that's what being baptized into Jesus is.
That's it.
It's a total and absolute admission Lord, I
agree with your diagnosis of the problem.
My heart is deceitful above all things and
desperately wicked.
And there is only one way to fix
me up.
And that is do what you did in
Noah's day.
Just destroy me absolutely and start again and
make me what you want me to be.
That's what God wants from us.
Now, you can do it this morning.
I did it one day in Sunday school
in Ireland one afternoon.
It doesn't require a special evangelistic service.
You can do it at this moment.
You can.
And I would suggest that if you've never
done that, if you've never given your life
to God like that, for Him to do
whatever He wants with and to make real
in you the mighty destruction and salvation that
He worked in you in Jesus, the miracle
is it's already done, you see.
That's the miracle.
It's already done.
All you're doing this morning is saying, Lord,
that's what I want.
What you've already done in me, that's what
I want.
Will you begin by your Holy Spirit to
make it real from this day forward?
And if you say that honestly, loved ones,
and are willing for Him to touch whatever
needs to be touched in your life and
to burn out whatever of cancer there is
there, then this will be the beginning of
eternal life for you.
And it's the beginning of your life.
Dear God, I would ask you to listen
to my brothers and sisters as they pray
to you.
And Lord, I know you will take us
at our word.
Lord, we would give you everything you see
needs to be liberated, everything that you see
you had to destroy in Christ, we would
give you it all.
Now as you point the things out to
us, Lord, we would not hold back.
We would see that everything we give to
you will be cleansed and will be made
worthwhile and will be able to be used
in this life.
So Lord, we lay ourselves before you and
tell you, will you do with us what
you want?
We present our bodies to you as a
living sacrifice, as something that, as far as
we are concerned, is no longer ours to
use, but is now done with.
We no longer hope for anything from it.
It is now burned on the altar.
It is something that is finished with.
Now Lord, you do what you want with
it.
And if you do care to raise any
of it up, that is up to you.
And if you care to make any use
of any of it, that is up to
you.
And if meanwhile any happiness or peace should
come to us, we'll be grateful, but we
will not at all demand it.
But we'll present our bodies as a living
sacrifice to you this day and yield them
to you forever.
And now the grace of our Lord Jesus
and the love of God and the fellowship
of the Holy Spirit be with each one
of us, now and evermore.
Amen.