©Thomas B. Cundiff
Isaiah 11: 1-9
Romans 12: 1-8
Isaiah 11: 1-9
A shoot shall come
out from the stock of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
He
shall not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide by what his ears hear;
but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist,
and faithfulness the belt around his loins.
or decide by what his ears hear;
but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist,
and faithfulness the belt around his loins.
The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
Romans 12: 1-8
The New Life in Christ
12I appeal to you therefore, brothers
and sisters,
by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and
acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
2Do
not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so
that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and
perfect.
3 For by
the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more
highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgement, each
according to the measure of faith
that God has assigned.
4For
as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same
function,
5so
we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one
of another.
6We
have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in
proportion to faith;
7ministry,
in ministering; the teacher, in teaching;
8the
exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence;
the compassionate, in cheerfulness.
I. INTRODUCTION
There is
this little cartoon of a picture of a couple worshipping in an empty sanctuary
that says it all:
“These new statistics”, says the woman to her husband looking at all the
empty pews, “some say our church is really popular with people who believe but
don’t belong!”
Have we
lost our way? The church as we have
known it? While I believe most of us continue to have faith
and hope in the future of this church and the church universal, I am bombarded
with argumentative prophesies from modern day theologians and preachers—skeptics
who talk of the death of the church. And
then I go to the “Lunch Bunch” last Thursday and see Christ alive in
the women and men who have found a sacred bond in being the church—Christ’s
Church—The Warren Avenue Presbyterian Church.
We have not lost our way!
At the core of this debate, from my perspective, is the reality that good and religious and faithful people have lost touch with the
Many in our
world are beginning to say it doesn’t take a church building or a community of
faith to know Christ! In all due
respect, I have always believed that we get to know Christ in the context of
what we do together, as a community of faith, worshipping and working together
in serving our Lord. We may not need our
buildings….we do, however, need each other!
Today and next Sunday I will be preaching on
these key principles – orthodox principles or doctrines – that become the
“hooks” in which we can hang our faith in keeping Christ’s church alive and
vibrant well into the future. Today my
focus will be an overview of the book of Romans 12 and what it means to CENTER
OUR LIVES IN CHRIST.
II. THE BOOK OF ROMANS
Paul’s
letter to the Romans was written about 58 years after Jesus lived. Did you get that? This letter to the Romans was written before
the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John!
The gospel of Mark, for example, was written roughly seven to eight years
after Paul wrote to the Romans.
Modern
scholars have gone so far as to suggest the book if Romans should be in our
bibles, logistically, before the four gospels.
It is a well written, concise and organized presentation of Paul’s
theology and the impact Christ had on the first century world following Jesus’
resurrection. It is with Paul we
transition from faith in the man Jesus to believing in Jesus in the context of
the church. It is with Paul we become
the church in believing, as the church, we are the living Body of Christ.
This question,
for me, is the most important one to ask today:
What difference does it make
that Jesus walked among us as one of us? Jesus taught and preached and healed the sick. He shared his faith with others. He broke bread and fed the hungry and served
the poor. His call to ministry is
mirrored in our doing some of the same things in our church.
The
challenge we face in the modern church is the reality that the pressures of the
secular world around us kick us off center. We don’t always have time to
do the things Christ calls us to be doing.
Like hitting a hard curb with the car knocking the front end out of
alignment, we live in a world where events of each day knock us out of
alignment.
So today,
we are here for a “faith alignment” – in what it mans to truly center our lives
in Jesus Christ our Lord. Turning
briefly to some of the specifics found on your bulletin insert, Romans 12
verses 1-8….
Verse one
gets directly to the important & personal point: “Present
your bodies—your lives as a living sacrifice.”
This is
powerful scripture pointing directly at our personal calling to say to God – MY
LIFE BELONGS TO YOU! EVERYTHING I HAVE IS YOURS. EVERYTHING I DO IS FOR YOU. HEART AND SOUL AND MIND , I AM CALLED TO GIVE MY LIFE TO YOU!
I heard this past week from a friend who lives in
Seattle who said during his devotional time he was reminded of the importance
in life to ‘Major on the majors and not
the minors’….too many of us today are majoring on things that do not have
substance or value. This is a valuable
exercise….to ask am I doing what I really should be doing, in the name of
God? Or am I wasting God’s time! And oh, I think we are all guilty in doing things
that waste God’s time!!![1]
A key word in
this verse -- “Sacrifice”. What does it
mean to sacrifice for what we value? The
best example I can give: I would sacrifice anything for my family. Nancy and Emily and Ken! That’s what parents do! We sacrifice for our children.
This is what God does in giving us
Jesus! God sacrificed his son, after
living a short and productive life of teaching and preaching and healing and
nurturing discipleship, Jesus died a gruesome death on the cross. He was alone
and this death was horrific. God sacrificed his son. Get it?
For you and for me God gave us his Son so we could be here today.
Which leads
to this question: What are we willing to
sacrifice for our Lord? In response to
what God has given us, what do we return to God?
IV. VERSE TWO
By now
perhaps you see the value in taking time to study and reflect on the meaning of
some of this scripture, word by word, verse by verse…..moving on to the second
verse & three key words: CONFORMED,
TRANSFORMED, RENEWED.
These three
words frame what Paul teaches throughout all of his letters. The
greatest of all challenges we face as modern-day Christians is this idea of conforming
not to the standards of the world but the principles Jesus teaches—the values
we learn from God. In compliance in conforming
to the traditional values taught by Jesus we can be transformed …. renewed
in re-aligning our lives with God.
One of the greatest challenges as faithful Christians is in
our finding ways to break from the dominant economic & consumer orientation
embedded in our culture that defines life in terms of wealth—the things we own
or have—instead of who we are as children of God! This is not to say there is anything wrong
with having wealth and good things….and God bless those who are blessed with
wealth. This church has been richly blessed
with all sorts ‘affluence’ that has allowed us to keep our doors open for over
147 years.
Scripture challenges us to move toward a world-view that is
centered in relationships and experiences in answering, if you will, the first question
and answer found in the Westminster Shorter Catechism:
‘What is our chief end but to give our lives totally, wholly to the
glory of God and the enjoyment of God’.
Imagine, if you will, a world transformed by what is
good for the well-being of the masses of all people. I couldn’t help but look this past week at
the Fortune 500 / the 400 wealthiest people in the world. The numbers are staggering!
Launched in 1982 , “there were just 13 billionaires … and the total worth of
the 400 club was a mere $93 billion.
Today the
combined net worth of the 400 richest Americans is $1.7 trillion …. The average
net worth of a Forbes 400 member is a staggering $4.2 billion ….
And I need
to note, one of the former billionaires, Helen Walton, was an active church
elder in the Presbyterian Church who donated over six million dollars in the
develoopment of new churches.[2]
…. So wealth isn’t a bad thing…..as long as wealtjh doesn’t become everything
in life!
….. all this affluence….and yet Church World Service tells us one in
four children in this, the wealthiest country in the world, is lives in
poverty.
Imagine,
if you will, a world transformed by a different way of distributing property
and wealth -- a different value system based on Old Testament Levitical
law. I have tried to be careful not to
get political, so theologically speaking, much of what is found in the bible is
about the “redistribution” of wealth,
the Jubilee year every fiftieth year, as recorded in Leviticus 25 that says in the Common English Bible:
"This Jubilee year is sacred—it is a time of freedom
and of celebration when everyone will receive back their original property, and
slaves will return home to their families."
This is an important text for me, personally, because one of my “ordination
exams” back in 1977 was based on this text from Leviticus.
Imagine, if you will, this city and communities like
ours that are not conformed by the ways of this world but transformed
in doing what is good for the welfare of all the people….with good schools, plentiful
healthy food for all our children, police and fire support throughout the
community, brothers and sisters of all backgrounds and races living in harmony,
soup kitchens and missions closing down as poverty disappears…..an urban utopia
we continue to pray for as we “discern personally
and as Christ’s church what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and
perfect.”
Being
Christian is not easy. Centering our
lives in Christ is not easy. Sharing
what we have with others is one of the hardest things we are called to do. Being Christ’s church when so much in this
world is out of alignment -- not easy.
V. I WISH I HAD MORE TIME!
I don’t
have time to speak in detail to the other verses found on your insert. I hope you will reflect on your own what the rest
of this chapter says to you, personally, in the context of our centering /
aligning our lives with Christ.
Back to the
question I asked a few minutes ago: What
difference does it make? Being the
church? What difference does it make
that Jesus walked this earth so we can walk this earth continuing his work in
the world? Jesus taught and preached and
healed the sick. He openly and
generously shared what he had with others.
Our call to ministry is mirrored in trying to do the same. We are not going to be perfect. All God asks is that we be faithful in trying
to stay centered in his calling us to be aligned with Jesus. If we could take just a few baby
steps….today…..in moving forward in shifting our priorities more toward that
image we have of God’s Kingdom here on earth?
Finally,
this is all any preacher can ask….to listen and hear God’s word to “present our
bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is our
spiritual
worship.”
Amen.
2404
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