A Sacrifice Doesn’t Have To Be A Bad Thing
For God has shut up all in disobedience so that He may show mercy to all.
Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!
For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor? Or who has first given to Him that it might be paid back to him again? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.
Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.
Paul has been talking about a lot of things, and now at the end of Romans 11, he takes an aside to marvel at the greatness of God. Despite all of our wickedness and rebellion against God, He still delights in showing us mercy.
I’ll never forget the day a guy walked into my office when I was the pastor at the rescue mission and said, “I reckon God sort of turned us over to being stupid and rebelling against Him just so He could have mercy on us and show us His love.”
I was so glad! I said, “Yes! You’ve been reading Romans!” And I was so excited that this guy was getting it.
“Nope,” he said, kind of confused. “I haven’t made it that far. I’ve only made it to Deuteronomy.”
All of scripture points toward Jesus. Jesus said it Himself. As we read the scriptures and meditate on the ways of God, we will naturally yield to a Spirit of Worship like Paul did. Oh how great God is! What great mercy He has shown us.
Ignore the chapter break there. Look what happens next. When we see that all things came from God and belong to God, we are easily moved to give everything to God. When I check out a guitar at the pawn shop, I think it is cool. When my son walks up I hand it to him because it’s going to sound a lot better in his hands.
Everything. All things. It’s all better in the hands of He Who Made It All For Himself. The best thing we can do is give it all to Him!
So we live our lives presented to God. We offer ourselves to Him for His service and His will. This is the best thing we can do with our lives and everything else surrounding us. In this case, worship can be viewed as a sacrifice, but it’s more like returning the keys to the driver or giving Mr. Van Halen his guitar back. It is our spiritual service.
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