Sermon: The Divine Liturgy Pt. 2 - Living Sacrifice (Romans 11:34-12:3)

The Divine Liturgy Pt. 2 – Living Sacrifice
Sunday, April 6^th, 2025
Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Romans 11:34–12:3

Prayer

Father, we thank you for the measure and diversity of your gifts, through which the church is built up and perfected. Teach us now by Your Holy Spirit, to offer ourselves as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable in your sight. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Introduction

Imagine for a moment that you are an ancient Israelite, and you live in a tent in the middle of the desert. However, unlike those naughty Israelites, who complain all the time and grumble about the food and their living conditions, you are a good Israelite. You are like Moses and Joshua, an Israelite with faith. And so as a believer, you know that God is a spirit, He does not actually live in a temple made with hands, He does not have a body that gets hungry or tired and needs to eat. You know that God is the Most High, the Creator, and that the worship He desires is a spiritual soul that clings to Him in love.

• God says in Psalm 50:12-14, “If I were hungry, I would not tell you; For the world is Mine, and all its fullness. Will I eat the flesh of bulls, Or drink the blood of goats? Offer to God thanksgiving, And pay your vows to the Most High.”
• So as a true and believing Israelite, as a spiritual Israelite, you want to worship God in spirit and in truth. And that means first and foremost thanking God, paying your vows, offering to Him your whole heart, soul, mind, and strength. That is your spiritual worship. But it also means manifesting those interior/spiritual affections of the soul with external/bodily actions. And at this time in history (1,500 years before Christ), what external act of worship does the law of Moses require? You have to kill one of your animals.
• Now depending on what kind of sacrifice you intend to offer, there are four basic features that you need to observe if God will be pleased with your worship.
• First, your animal had to be brought to the priest alive.
  • And that meant, transporting your living animal from your house to God’s house. And depending on what tribe you are from, and how far your tent is from the central Tabernacle, you might have to walk a good distance with your animal. We call that a commute to church.
• Second, the animal had to be holy and without blemish.
  • That meant knowing the state of your flock (Pr. 27:23) and then finding the best and healthiest animal among them (the animal you prize the most). Usually this would mean finding a male from the herd, a year old, without any blemish. It might be an ox, or a sheep, or a goat, or if you are poor, you could offer a turtledove or a young pigeon. But whatever the animal was, it could not have any defects, it had to be holy.
• Third, the animal had to be killed, usually by you (here’s the knife, cut the throat, drain the blood). And then the priest has his duty, he takes the blood and sprinkles it on the altar, he divides the animal into pieces like a butcher, he washes the inward parts and then places it on the altar to burn.
  • Notice that you are not a passive spectator in this act of worship, you are involved. The priest has his role, and you have you yours. You have to get your hands dirty and even a little bloody. You are slaughtering something of value, something living, something that belongs to you, and you are offering that to God’s consuming fire. Worship of this sort is work; it costs you something. And when that work of sacrifice is done in faith, that is what pleases God.
• The fourth and final feature of worship is that the sacrifice had to be seasoned with salt.
  • It says in Leviticus 2:13, “You shall not allow the salt of the covenant of your God to be lacking from your grain offering. With all your offerings you shall offer salt.”
  • So not only does God demand the first fruits of your labor, the best and firstborn from the herd, he also wants it to taste good. God likes salt with his meat. He wants flavor and savor in every bite.
  • And in this sense, the ritual act of worship is a kind of cooking for God. Worship is meal prep for the King in the king’s kitchen. God has recipes. He specifies the kinds of ingredients he wants, fine flour, oil, frankincense, salt. These animals and not those animals. This part of the animal and not that part. You burn this up completely, you cook that part and you eat it, or the priest eats it.
  • So God’s house of worship has rules, manner, and customs. His house has a throne room, a living room, a dining room, and a kitchen.
  • And of course, because you are a good and faithful Israelite, you know that all of this house and furniture and ritual and ingredients and cooking, is really about the Messiah, his people, and the matters of the heart. You know that all these external physical actions are but signs and means to spiritual ends.
  • And so to worship God in spirit and in truth as an ancient Israelite, meant meditating upon the law of God day and night. It meant reflecting upon these four main features of worship and all the details in between. It meant asking that most important question when reading the Scriptures: What is the spiritual reality that these words and things signify?
• Jesus says to the Pharisees in John 5:39, “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me.” And he says to Nicodemus, “If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?” (John 3:12).
  • And so if you cannot see Jesus in Leviticus, in the descriptions of the tabernacle, the priestly garments, the sacrifices, the calendar, the cooking of God’s food, then the Apostle Paul would say, you have yet to become spiritual. You are still reading Moses with the veil like a Pharisee.
  • He says in 1 Corinthians 3:1-3, “And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able; for you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men?”
• What is the American Church but a carnal church. We are divided. We are envious, contentious, and proud. We are as ignorant babes in Christ. We believe in Jesus, or at least say we do, but our ambitions in worship Him are hardly spiritual, transcendent, or for growth in maturity.
  • Instead of worshipping God in fear and reverence as Hebrews 12:28 commands, we have turned Sunday into a show, into entertainment and in many places into sacrilege and a mockery of what is holy.
  • Some churches have made it their whole purpose and mission statement to make the unbelieving world feel at home in Christian worship (“to belong before they believe”). Whereas in the New Testament, what does the Apostle Paul say should happen when the unbeliever wanders in and observes our worship?
    • He says in 1 Corinthians 14:25, “the secrets of his heart are revealed; and so, falling down on his face, he will worship God and report that God is truly among you.”
  • Is that the goal of Christian worship in America today? To so sing the psalms and say our prayers and proclaim the word so that unbelievers who visit us fall down prostrate and acknowledge that God is among us? If not, then our priorities are different than God’s, and when our priorities are different than God’s the Bible calls that sin, idolatry.
    • Jesus warns in Matthew 15:9, “In vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.”
  • So have we forgotten that worship is sacrifice, and that a sacrifice by definition costs us something? Where is the spirit of David who would not receive Araunah’s threshing floor for free but said, “No, but I will surely buy it from you for a price; nor will I offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God with that which costs me nothing” (2 Samuel 24:24).
  • Where is that mindset in the American Church? Where are the living sacrifices?
    • Where are the saints who say with Psalm 95:6, “O come, let us worship and bow down: Let us kneel before the Lord our maker.”
    • Where are the Christians who say with Psalm 122:1, “I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord.”
    • Where are those who say with Psalm 27:4, “One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, To behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.”
• Jesus says in John 4:23, that the Father is looking for the true worshippers, those who worship God in spirit and in truth. So are you numbered amongst them? If you are not, or if you are unsure, the Apostle Paul is here to help you get there.
• For here in Romans 11 and 12, Paul gives us the spiritual substance, the true realities, of which the ancient Israelite types and shadows pointed to. For here we have the same four features of Old Covenant worship, but in their New Covenant garb. So let us consider more closely this text before us.

Division of the Text

Our text divides into two sections:

• In Romans 11:34-36 we have The Basis/Reason for Sacrificial Worship.
• And then in Romans 12:1-3, we have The Four Essential Features of Christian Worship.

Verses 34-36 – What is the rationale for why we offer sacrifice to God?

³⁴For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counseller?
³⁵Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again?
³⁶For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen.

• Recall from our first sermon on worship, that Worship is giving to God the glory due unto His name. And the thesis or principle I gave you was that Worship is a matter of justice.
• We see this same principle again here. The Apostle asks three rhetorical questions about whether a man can ever put God in his debt. And the answer is, No, on the contrary, man owes God everything, because everything we have comes from him. “For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen.”
• So all things exist to give glory to God, and therefore it is a matter of cosmic justice that man gives glory to God with all that God has given him. And it is this lavish generosity of God’s mercy to create us and sustain us and convert us, that becomes the basis for his appeal in the next section. How does Romans 12:1 begin?

Verse 1

¹I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

• What mercies is the Apostle referring to? The ones he just mentioned, “For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things.” Creation is a work of mercy. Providence is work of mercy. Restoration to the image of Christ is a work of mercy.
  • It says in Psalm 145:9, “The Lord is good to all: And his tender mercies are over all his works.” And then in the next verse it says, “All thy works shall praise thee, O Lord; And thy saints shall bless thee.” Notice again that the just response to mercy is praise and blessing of God.
    • Justice is founded upon and answers to mercy. Which is another way of saying that grace always precedes and animates our righteousness.
• So there is nothing unreasonable about offering your body as a living sacrifice to God. Because who gave you that body? Who died and rose to resurrect that body? To whom does that body belong?
  • Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.”
• And so it is the most reasonable service (λογικὴν λατρείαν), logical latria, rational worship, reasonable reverence, to offer your body as a living sacrifice to God, because that body is God’s temple.
• And that is, as we saw earlier, the first essential feature of worship. The sacrifice needs to be alive.
  • So are you alive to God with a faith that works by love? (Gal. 5:6).
  • Paul says in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh [in the body] I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
  • And so this first essential feature of a living sacrifice, is that you have faith formed by love. Or as James says in James 2:26, “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.
    • So just as the physical body is alive by the spirit, just so your faith is alive when it works by love.
• So if you would become a living sacrifice and not a dead sacrifice, then good works and genuine love must proceed from your faith. Put another way, Jesus has to live within you, because remember Jesus is the beauty of holiness in which we give glory to God (Psalm 29:2).
  • So if you feel dead, the prayer you ought to pray for yourself, is what the Apostle prays for the Ephesians.
  • He says in Ephesians 3:17-19, I pray “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.”
• God is life by His very essence, and so when God is within you by faith rooted in love, you become alive. And it is only a living sacrifice that pleases Him.
  • As Paul says in Hebrews 11:6, “But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”
  • So that is the first essential feature of Christian worship. You need to be alive with the life of Christ.

The second essential feature of worship is that the sacrifice needs to be holy and without blemish.

• So just as God desired the lamb without blemish, the animal without defect, the first and the best, so God desires the same from us.
• And of course this second feature follows upon the first in that if Christ is alive within you, and all worship is offered in Jesus’ name, then God reckons you as holy in His Son.
  • Paul says in Romans 11:16, “if the root is holy, so are the branches.”
  • Jesus says in John 15:3-5, “You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.”
  • Without Jesus, we are nothing. Without Jesus, none of us are holy. But with Jesus, his holiness becomes ours. We are his body; he is our head.
• And so if you are unsure about your ceremonial status (am I clean or unclean?), heed the words of Jesus. Make sure that His word has cleansed you. You have been baptized. Make sure that he is the vine in which you abide, to which are you connected. Make sure that you are bearing fruit and are not dry wood or a dead branch.
  • The Apostle Peter says in 2 Peter 1:10, “Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble.”
• So to be holy is to be completely devoted to God. Just as Jesus came not to do his own will but the will of the Father who sent him, so also we must surrender our will to God and devote ourselves exclusively to doing His will. That is where holiness come from.
  • This is why Jesus says in the very next verses of John 15, “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.”
  • When your will is conformed to God’s will, your prayers get answered. So are you holy and devoted to God? That is the second feature of Christian worship. God wants living sacrifices who are holy and dedicated to Him.

Now the third essential feature of worship is that the sacrifice has to die. It has to be killed, cut up, and placed on the altar. Of this we read in verse 2.

Verse 2

²And 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, and perfect, will of God.

• So for the Christian, death is not the end. For the Christian, death is transformation. And for Christian alive with faith, in whom Christ dwells and lives and has made holy, death means being transformed from one degree of glory to another.
• Paul speaks of this death to the self in many places.
  • He says in 1 Corinthians 15:31, “I die daily.”
  • He says in 1 Corinthians 9:27, “But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.”
  • He ends his letter to the Galatians saying, “From henceforth let no man trouble me: for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.”
• So there are many ways in which each of us must die daily. But for now it suffices to know that if following Jesus feels like death, like a sword is cutting you into pieces, then you are probably making progress.
  • He did after all tell us, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Matt. 16:24).
  • And so what exactly your particular cross is, I leave to you and the Holy Spirit to work out (if you are unsure you can ask me), but all of us have a cross to bear, and all of us have death to die daily, all of us have an altar upon which God is asking us to lay down and die and trust him.
• And while death is painful, and some of us feel too weak to even climb up upon the altar, remember what happens to the worthy sacrifice: God’s consuming fire transforms it into smoke. And as smoke, the sacrifice can now ascend to heaven.
  • That is the old covenant image of what Paul is describing here. He says, “And be not conformed to this world [below]: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
  • And so when you die to the world and to the flesh, when you refuse to be conformed into the world’s image and likeness, God transforms you by the renewing of your mind.
  • Unlike your body which cannot fly to heaven, your mind elevated by grace can ascend to God. Grace makes you fly. Grace transforms and renews your very nature (Col. 3:10, Eph. 4:23-24).
    • That is how Paul can say in Colossians 3, “Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God…Therefore put to death [slay/sacrifice/kill] your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.”
    • He says the same in Ephesians 4:23-24, “And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”
• So if you are struggling to deny yourself, if you are hesitant to climb upon the altar and count everything as loss, remember where living sacrifices go. The earthly part is burned up, and the spiritual part, the soul, the mind is transformed and ascends to God in love.
  • Is that your great ambition in life? To be united to God. To be able to say with Apostle, “I have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16).

Now do you remember what the fourth and final feature of all sacrificial offerings is? Salt. You need the salt to go with it.

• Jesus says in Mark 9:49-50, “For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt. Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith will ye season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another.”
  • So according to Jesus, salt signifies that which makes for peace. Peace with God, peace with one another, peace within oneself.
• Paul says likewise in Colossians 4:5-6, “Walk in wisdom toward those who are outside, redeeming the time. Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one.”
  • And again, in Ephesians 5:2, “Walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour.”
• So salt signifies the grace that makes our life savory to God. The grace of peace. The grace of wisdom. The grace of discretion in our words. The grace of walking in love.
• And so we find this fourth feature of worship when Paul says in Romans 12:3…

Verse 3

³For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.

• So the particular salt that will make the Romans a pleasing sacrifice to God, is the grace of humility. Of not thinking too highly of themselves, which would be a special temptation for those living in the urban capital of the empire in the 1^st century: Rome.
• But every church, every person, every living sacrifice, needs the salt of divine grace. Without grace, there is no savor. Without grace, there is no peace. Without grace, there is no wisdom, discretion, or walking in love.
• And so do you have salt within yourselves as Jesus demands? Are you cultivating the grace of God at work within your soul? When God tastes the offering of your life, will it make him happy, or will he spit you out of his mouth for being lukewarm and unclean? Jesus says, “Have salt in yourselves.”

Conclusion

If the aim of your life is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, the joy will come when you stop thinking of yourself more highly than you ought, and when you start to think of God more frequently and more highly than you presently do.

• And so heed the words of the theologian Ben Sirach who said, “When ye glorify the Lord, exalt him as much as ye can; for even yet will he far exceed: and when ye exalt him, put forth all your strength, and be not weary; for ye can never go far enough.” (Sirach 43:30).
• May God grant you to extol His infinite greatness now and forever, in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.