A Year of Living Sacrifices

2018 did not go as planned. Do I win for understatement of the year? You added to your family through marriage and births that you didn’t anticipated. You’ve lost people that you thought would be around forever. You’ve lost jobs, started new careers, struggled with addiction and kicked bad habits. You’ve moved, you’ve had to go back on food stamps, you’ve declared bankruptcy, come out from under abuse, started a new relationship. Whatever it is, it almost goes without saying, 2018 has not gone as planned.

And so you are correcting for it in 2019, right? You are making resolutions, plans for the coming year. Something to try and keep the year on track. We probably all have some resolutions in common. Who of us couldn’t lose a little weight? Maybe eat a little healthier. Travel a little bit more. Treasure the ones you love better. But some of your resolutions might be really specific to you. You want to see every major league baseball stadium, be an NPR member, read 12 books over the next year. Maybe your resolutions are deeply personal and private: reconcile with your estranged son, confront your husband about his drinking problem, tell somebody about the abuse you went through as a kid, open up about your faith to your coworkers.

Share with the group whether you like to make resolutions. If you do, share one or two of your resolutions for 2019.

List and share some of the things you’d like to do, change and accomplish in 2019.

Maybe you aren’t the New Year’s resolution kind of person. You don’t quite understand why your gym is suddenly so full on January 3rd. I know there are a few of you here today. I’ve talked with some of you. And that’s ok. You might not make New Year’s resolution, but I bet you make plans. You look to how you can improve, how life can improve, how things can be better.

Maybe you aren’t the New Year’s resolution kind of person. You don’t quite understand why your gym is so full on January 3rd. I know there are a few of you here today. I’ve talked with some of you. And that’s ok. You might not make New Year’s resolution, but I bet you make plans. You look to how you can improve, how life can improve, how things can be better.

Whatever the case: resolutions maker or not, planner or not, tinkerer or not, God has some words of power for us to shift how you think about the whole process. He equips us to not only make resolutions, but to change how we live. He gives us the tools so that next year, at this time, no matter what might have surprised us through the next 12 months, we won’t be saying about our resolutions: “that didn’t go according to plan.” His encouragement for us is in Paul’s letter to the congregation in Rome. A letter written to teach and equip new believers. This letter taught them to know their God, to know who they were in relation to God and to know all that God had done for them. It then equipped them to put that into practice. To answer the question, “so what?” Here’s what Paul says,

Romans 12:1–2 NIV

1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

It’s easy, when we jump into a passage like this one, to miss everything around it. But this first word, “Therefore,” forces you to stop and read what just happened. If you have your Bible app open, take a look at the very end of chapter 11 (). Would you read that section with me outloud? Feel free to use the screen if you don’t have the passage opened in front of you.

Romans 11:33–36 NIV

33 Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! 34 “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” 35 “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them?” 36 For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.

Look at how amazing our God is! Paul breaks out into this poetry, this song. We feel very much the same way, don’t we? Coming down off the high of Christmas, we are a little breathless spiritually. Not because of the decorations, the food, the presents or the traditions. Our eyes have gone wide at the truth that the eternal God, the one through whom all things were made, was born to very average parents in a very average place. The limitless confined himself to the limits of a newborn baby. The eyes that saw the stars wink into existence winked open for the first time. The mouth that spoke the universe into being first opened to let out the muted wail after birth. And it all happened so that the destination would be a brutal, violent, painful death that would shed blood to reconcile the world to God. How can we help but sing with Paul, “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!”

In view of those truths, of the mercy of God, that we enter into this new year. That changes things. See, when I come into a new year or a new season trying to escape the past, trying to find relief from the last year, trying to find vindication, I start the year off on the wrong foot. Inevitably, you will overcorrect. Like a car that goes careening one way, the you overcorrect and ends up careening into the ditch on the other side, that’s the risk of making plans for the future based on a 2018 that didn’t go as planned.

But entering in light of that song we read together, entering with God’s mercy in full view, we take on this new year a little differently. In fact, this year, Paul encourages us, he throws his arm around us and says, “Come on with me” “Offer your bodies as a sacrifice: living, holy, and pleasing.”

When Paul says, “I urge you...” he talks as though he were a father pulling his daughter aside to encourage her to make a change for her benefit. For what reasons is it encouraging to think of Paul doing that for us?

I wouldn’t blame you if you wondered if the offering plates were coming out next, all this talk of sacrifice. But no, it’s not all of that. It’s more. It’s everything. Look closely, Paul says to offer your bodies… What does that mean? It means that everything your wrote down on that yellow piece of paper, everything in your inventory, everything you possess, everything you are, everything you are proud of, every accomplishment and skill, every passion and interest, all of it is on the table. See, when you offer your body as a living sacrifice, nothing that you’ve written down is used for your own needs anymore. Not your paycheck, not your vacation, not the movies you watch or the music you listen to. Not your latest accomplishment or your kids trophy.

None of it is for you! Instead, you offer them in service to others, in service to God. Not because God needs it. Listen, all the money in your bank account, all the time you have left on this earth, all the people you know and live with, they all belong to God, anyway. He can take them at any time as he sees fit. And maybe your yellow sheet bears witness to that.

As you think about your inventory, about what is it hardest for you to say, “God, my ________ is on the table for you. Use it in a way that gives you glory”?

No, he doesn’t want you to offer it as a sacrifice because he needs it. He wants you to offer it as a sacrifice because you need it. That’s what those three adjectives show us. This sacrifice is not a one time thing, it’s not like the burnt offerings of the Old Testament, this is a living sacrifice. Moment by moment, breath by breath. A giving over of everything in service to God. What might that look like? Here’s one suggestion: every Monday AM, on your drive into work, take a mental inventory. Everything you have, everything that has been entrusted to you. List it in prayer and end that prayer with this petition, “Use any and all of this, Lord, for your glory in the way you see is best. It’s all on the table for you.”

The sacrifice Paul urges us toward is not only living, it’s also holy. It lives up to God’s expectations he has for me even as he declares that I have already met those expectations in the sacrifice of his Son on the cross. It is pleasing to God. Isn’t that funny? To think that God looks at me and is pleased. Your daily worship, your living sacrifice makes him happy! My dog sometimes tries to please me. He once caught a bird by the tail - I think it surprised him as much as it did me - but it didn’t make me happy. It made me mad! Why would God smile at my sacrifice? But he does! As he looks at me through his Son, what I sacrifice to him is pleasing to God.

But none of that makes any sense to us! It didn’t to the Roman readers, either. They would have really taken issue with the “living” part of “living sacrifices.” See, they were steeped in a sacrificial culture. Spread throughout the city of Rome were temples (map of the city of Rome). Temples to Jupiter, Minerva, Saturn and Juno. Temples to Caesar himself! They were used to walking to those temples, giving over a sacrifice and walking away having forgotten the whole thing by that afternoon. But LIVING sacrifices? Totally foreign to them. You made your sacrifices to the gods and then you were done with them. To live everyday as a sacrifice? That doesn’t make sense!

Agree/Disagree: Our culture hates the “sacrifice” part of “living sacrifices”.

Follow Up: As you think about Jesus’ birth, how is he the perfect fulfillment of both “living” and “sacrifice?”

Would you agree with me that our age, our culture probably has the bigger issue with the “sacrifice” part of “living sacrifices”? This pervading attitude that this world is made for me. That the highest goal for this world is to make my life comfortable. From the boomer who gets riled up by the fact that Social Security may not be there when they retire, to the Millenials’ prolonged adolescence. So many are so easily offended by an online comment or opinion. Too many of us are addicted to a device that caters to our every whim, wholesome or otherwise and we hand this device over to poison those who are too young to discern it’s darker implications. We refuse to share time and space with others, preferring, instead to envelope ourselves in a screen, in a life that transports us far away. No, our culture hates sacrifice.

Summarize our culture’s attitude about sex. How has its view of sex been affected by its aversion to sacrifice?

Stand above all of that. Do not be drawn into that world. As you plan for 2019, may the mood of our age leave you unaffected. You aren’t a stick in the mud as if you push against this age just for the sake of pushing, nor are you swept away by every wave. Instead, you stand above it like a lighthouse above the cliffs and the storm. Unconformed, rather transformed. Able to weather even the worst storms that might blow in over the next 12 months. All the while, pointing the way, not to yourself, but to the safe harbor that so many long for. You point the way to a confidence that comes from a guaranteed identity of one who matters, who is loved to the King of kings. You become a beacon for those looking for more meaning than anything this world has to offer.

What are some ways that you can use your plans for 2019 as a clear beacon of hope for those who don’t yet know Jesus? In other words, how might your resolutions lead to a witnessing opportunity?

As you offer all of you as a living sacrifice, as you are transformed, you will be able to discern God’s perfect will. His will which leads you on a path toward heaven, a will with a plan, a destination. For you confirmation students, this is what we talk about when we say that God’s law, or his will, works as a guide. It moves us toward his destination for us.

Which leads us to look at 2019 in a completely different way. Your plans for the future are not about you, they are not about getting more of what this age has to offer, its not about making up for last year or trying to make a perfect plan for 2019. Instead, let this next year be one of living sacrifice. Where everything, planned or not, according to your resolutions or not, is offered to God as you are transformed into the beacon that he has made you to be.

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