Sermon Tone Analysis

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,

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.

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!