A Holy Offering to God — Paul Washer

You know, when I was listening to our sister share about the camp, I think it's wonderful that the people that would want to and be concerned about children and want to see their edification and their blessing.

But isn't it also at the same time a sad indictment against our culture that God has to raise up people outside of the family, burden them, and give them a heart for young children because their parents don't have that heart?

The Failure of Fathers in the Family

When I heard about that little boy given over to his grandparents, to be honest with you, it just makes me want to find that man and horse whip him. Because he's destroying a little boy. You see, I'm going to say something and it's going to sound really hard.

Sometimes I just think that some people should just be neutered. I wonder why on earth they have children. Why? And even some Christian fathers or so-called Christian fathers, I wonder to myself, why did they ever get married?

Because they don't seem to want to spend a lot of time with their wife or invest their life in their wife. And then with the children, God has to raise up another person to come in and try to bless the children, try to salvage the children.

I am not against Sunday schools or youth getting together or all sorts of things and camps. My boys have certainly had a wonderful time at this camp. But when those things have to be done in order to replace a father, that's just a sad indictment against our culture.

When you have to have women's groups in the church, because the men are not discipling their own wives and pouring their lives into their own wives. When you have to have youth groups, because men are not purposefully discipling their own children.

When you have to have Sunday school, because men are not doing what they're supposed to be doing. You know, folks, you can pray and pray and pray all day that the Spirit of God will fall down upon a place.

But unless you're willing to obey the word of God, he's not going to fall down on anything. Since I'm not going to bless your sacrifice, just do what I told you to do with your wife. Do what I told you to do with your children.

Then we'll talk. Then we'll talk. You see, Leonard Ravenhill said this one time, and if you find that I quote Leonard Ravenhill a lot, it's because I had a deep love for him. He was a rarity in our age and a rarity in his.

He was a man of God. And he said, all these preachers wanting to find a new definition for Christianity, we don't need a new definition of Christianity. We need a new demonstration of Christianity. And do you know where that look?

There's hardly anything more important in the Bible than Christ and his bride, would you agree? Christ and his bride. Well, how did God choose to demonstrate what that was supposed to look like through a preacher?

No, through a man and his wife. Children and lost people ought to be able to look at a man and his wife and say, that's how Christ loves the church. I would love to be a part of that. Got to look at the way a man cares for his children and say, is that the way God cares for his children?

I would love to be a part of that. Just to show you how how messed up we are, when you think of children and the care of children, you think of a woman, you think of woman's work. That's what women do.

That's what my wife is. That is a damnable lie. It does not represent the fatherhood of God to his children. And that's what family is about. Marriage isn't created just to be marriage in itself. Everything that God has made has a purpose.

That purpose is to represent who he is and what he does. So when he made a family, the mother is not supposed to be the center of it. The father is supposed to be the center of it. And he acts as a father representing God, the father, and he represents Christ as a husband.

Oh, man, please don't think of great moves of God and all these things. If even the basic things we refuse to do. Even the basic things we refuse to do. Well, let's go to Romans 12, verse one. 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.

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. Now, we explained yesterday that the word, therefore, at the beginning of our passage is very important because it connects Romans 12 with the rest of the book of Romans that precedes it.

Chapters one through eleven. And so he's asking us to literally give the most precious thing we have, and that is our own lives. And we're to lay our lives down to give them to Christ. And the motivation for that is this, the mercies of God, that God has been so merciful and so loving to us that it should move us to offer our lives as a sacrifice.

Now, those mercies are laid out for us in the first eleven chapters of Romans. Again, yesterday we learned that this is very common with Paul. He will set out the theology of what God has done for us in Christ, and then he'll come to a certain point in his book where he says now, based on everything God has done for you in Christ, this is what I want you to do.

This is how you should live. He does that here in Romans chapter 12. He does it in Ephesians chapter four. After giving us the deepest theology in the entire Bible, in the book of Ephesians, the first three chapters, he gets to chapter four and he says, therefore, live this way.

So our motivation for the way we live comes from what God has done for us in Christ. So if a person is ignorant, does not know much about God or what God has done for them in Christ, it is very, very difficult for them to be motivated to live the Christian life unless their motivation is just based on pure romanticism and emotions.

Which makes for good singing, but it does not make for a great life. Now, it goes on, he says, present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice. The word present here is in the Aorist tense. It's not in the present tense in Greek.

It indicates a once and for all thing. Do this. Finally, decide how long, as Elijah said, will you limp between two opinions? If Baal is Baal, then go ahead and worship him. If God is God, then worship him.

Make a decision. God even uses the language sometimes in the prophets. You are wearying me. You ever had someone who one day he's for you, the next day is against you. One guy, one day he's on the team, the next day he's not.

He's back and forth and you just become tired of being around that kind of individual. That's what it's talking about. Come on, once and for all, let's make this decision. And he says to present your bodies.

And I indicated there that it's very important that he used the term bodies and he didn't use the term heart. Because heart in our modern language is so filled with a soupy, meaningless romanticism. I have Jesus in my heart.

I love Jesus with my heart. Don't judge my life because you don't know what's in my heart. We talk about the heart as this thing totally independent of the rest of us, that we can love Jesus with all our heart, but it doesn't affect any other part of our life.

Paul says, no, the heart is the very center of your affections, your will and your emotion. If Jesus has your heart, he will have your will. If he has your heart, he will have your emotions, your affections, your intellect.

And if he doesn't have any impact upon your hands and your feet and your eyes and your ears, what you do with your body, then you're deceiving yourself when you say Jesus has your heart, because he most certainly does not.

A Living and Holy Sacrifice

Now, he goes on and he says, he says, offer your bodies a living and holy sacrifice. Now, a living sacrifice. There's two ideas there. The first one is this. God is calling us to a vibrant, vital relationship and servanthood, a zealous thing.

Men are zealous about so many things. I mean, it's absolutely amazing what men will do in order to gain something that's not eternal. There are men who have totally dedicated their lives to making money.

I mean, they've ruined their marriages, they've ruined their children, they've ruined their health, everything just to make money. There are other men who will lose everything for the sake of their toys, for the sake of their hobbies.

They don't even gather money. They just get money in order to buy toys. And they ruin their marriage, they ruin their family, their children, themselves, all for the sake of toys. They'll dedicate their lives to toys.

There are other people who will literally enslave themselves to debt in order to have a house that's too big. I mean, it's absolutely phenomenal. Or to buy clothes that have certain kind of stickers on them so they can impress people they don't even like.

Or to have cars or nice things. It's all, it's pathetic how zealous men will be. They'll go to a football game and act like an idiot. Paint their faces and their bodies and be sick for three days if their team loses.

I mean, all the things that men will do. It's absolutely just crazy. That's why the Puritans referred to sin as insanity, as insanity. I'm going to stop here because I got to say something because it just popped into my mind.

I want to say this to the fathers and the young men here. Has nothing to do with my text, so forgive me. That's why I got bad grades in preaching and seminary. But this needs to be said. I look at a bunch of, not so much here, I don't see this here.

But in the States, and I'm sure if you got to bigger cities in Canada, you see these 17, 18 year old boys. They got the cool car. They got cool clothes. They got cool, sissy looking haircuts. They've got, they've got everything.

OK, and I want you just to imagine, I think, and this is the way I want my sons to be. There's these boys and all these girls and they're all in this room and they're all impressed with their clothing and their cars and they're all the things that they've got.

But what would happen? And this is I'm not saying this will happen, I'm not boasting, I'm just giving you a dream of mine. And then and then in the midst of all that superficiality. My two boys walk in again, this is my dream, I'm not saying it's a reality.

It's a hope. My two boys walk in the room. They've got clothes on from Walmart or Goodwill. Their shirts are just, you know, seven dollar shirts they bought at the tractor supply store. They just got normal blue jeans on, they drive a old beat up pickup truck that their dad helped them fix up.

But when they walk in their room, they're tall. They've got chests, they've got shoulders. They're noble, they know how to stand. They know how to treat a young lady, not to even touch her hand, to show her the greatest respect.

They know how to stand and take on a whole group of men, if necessary, to protect the dignity of a young lady. Or even of an older person. I will submit to you that their nobility and their Christ likeness will win the day.

See, I don't want my children. I don't. Why would I want them in style? With this world that creates masculine girls and feminine boys, why would I want them? You see, it's just something I wanted to throw in there.

It's that it's them, not the external. You know, God is every king, every king down through the ages has learned. This Catholic priest did the same thing. In order to really amaze people, you put on robes, real shiny robes and all this beautiful, gaudy glory made by hand and you dress yourself up to make yourself look greater than you actually are.

God's the only king who doesn't do that. He dresses himself in himself. It's his character and his glory. It's the same way with a person. Just a young man with a strong jaw, tenderness and strength devoted totally to Christ.

That's what we want. That's what we want. Well, let's go on. This presents your bodies a living and holy sacrifice. Now, living here not only means we're to be zealous, but here is something that we must understand.

Probably I actually spoke to some of you yesterday and you did not know who the McLeod brothers were. I couldn't couldn't believe that. I mean, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. But the revivals and things that happened with the McLeod brothers and others are a demonstration of something.

It is not by the strength of a man's hand. It is not by the strength of a man's will. But this type of dedication to Christ is a product of the working of the spirit of God. First of all, in regeneration, only a Christian, a person who's truly been regenerated by the spirit of God, can live this kind of life.

And only a Christian who continues to be filled with the Holy Spirit and is really seeking not to quench and offend the spirit can live this kind of life. It's like I was listening to Ryan Fullerton preach a while back.

He's a he's a young preacher in the States who I believe God is going to use in a tremendous way. And he was preaching out of Proverbs 31, you know, the Proverbs 31 woman. And he said, now, you will say that this is against our culture.

He goes, you're right. This Proverbs 31 woman is totally contrary to our culture. But what you need to understand is the Proverbs 31 woman was also totally contrary to Hebrew culture. She's contrary to every culture, because this is God's description of a woman, not culture's description of a woman.

And no woman can do this at all. There's never been a woman that can do this apart from the spirit of God. You see, we're being asked to live a life that is not natural. It's supernatural, supernatural, it's above nature, it's beyond nature, it's beyond us.

But we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us, who strengthens us. Now, he says not only a living sacrifice, but a holy sacrifice. I love the story, I've told it a million times about an old violinist, famous, famous violinist who is very, very old and playing his last concert.

The whole world came to hear him play, and after he got through playing, it was absolutely marvelous. A young violinist, young boy came up to him and said, sir, I would give my life to play like you. And the old man looked at him and said this, son, I have given my life to play like me.

This is something, again, that I learned from from Leonard Ravenhill. Do you want God? Then you are going to have to cut yourself off from other things, and that's just awful. You have to discover those things which God hates.

And even though your culture will laugh at you and most Christians will laugh at you, if you truly want God in your life, on your life, empowering you, then you're going to have to make some decisions.

Holiness as Separation and Supreme Devotion

There are certain things that you cannot participate in. Because you will grieve the spirit who is shown to us not as a charging bull, but as a dove. Easily offended. Now, holiness, what does it mean?

I mean, I want you to think for just a moment when you think of the word holy, what is the word that comes what is it that comes into your mind? I would imagine that most of you would say without sin.

Right. It's holy. He's without sin. Well, well, then let me ask you a question. What does righteous mean? You say, well, without sin. Well, then why do they use two different terms if they mean the same thing?

Holiness does not primarily mean without sin. Now, holiness is used in the Bible, oftentimes in reference to being without sin or as being different than a man. But I'm going to explain to you why that is.

Holiness comes from a Hebrew word, which means in its most basic root to cut, to cut. Now, the word not only means to cut, but to cut and separate. My wife has almost cut off every finger on her hand.

She is the greatest cook in the world, but I want to get her one of those steel gloves to wear because she starts going with that knife. But it's like a chainsaw in the kitchen, especially you never want to get in an argument with my wife while she's doing that, because then the knife goes like this.

But I've always been amazed at how my mom and my wife, they sit there and they've got this cutting board and they'll lay a carrot across there. And I mean, it's and then they separate piles up and they separate it.

They cut some more and they separate it with the blade and they cut some more and they separate with the blade. So the idea here is to cut, to sever, to cut off from the wrist and then to move it to one side, to separate it.

Now, what is God saying about himself above all things when he says, I am holy? He is speaking primarily of his uniqueness, his separateness, his transcendentness. He is not like anyone. No one is comparable to him.

Let me give you a way of looking at it here from from Dr. Sproul. What's more like God? I'm going to give you two creatures and you tell me which one is more like God. An archangel in heaven, so majestic that if he were to show himself to the world, it would probably crack it in two.

An archangel in heaven or a bacteria or worm crawling in your sewer system, which one is more like God? The answer is neither. God is so other and so great that you can honestly say that archangel is no closer to being like God than a worm in a toilet.

Let me give you an example. OK, I'm at this moment, I'm the tallest one in this room. You're all seated and I'm on a platform. I'm on an average of probably three feet higher than the rest of you. Now, if I said I'm three feet higher than the rest of you, so I'm closer to the sun, I'm closer to the sun.

I'm a lot closer to the sun than the rest of you. That'd be absurd, wouldn't it? Absolutely absurd. Why? The sun is so far away. Doesn't even matter. Well, that is a poor illustration, because what I'm saying is the distance is so great between me and the sun that the distance between you and I really is insignificant.

But with God, it's even different, more different. I'm not saying that God is like us, just bigger or even infinitely bigger. What I'm saying is God isn't like us at all. There's nothing to compare the two.

That's an amazing thing. Now, when we talk about God's separateness, we're now talking about his transcendence. He is above all things. We're also talking about his supremacy, indisputed, undisputed supremacy.

Another way of looking at it, he has no competitor. He has no competitor. OK, now, let's just before we go on, let's take that back and look at ourselves. What does it mean if we are holy? It means that God is supreme.

No, really supreme, not just in our songs, not just in our heart, but in our actions, we demonstrate God is supreme and that there are no competitors at all. To him, you remember Jesus and the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount, remember what he said, blessed are the pure in heart.

Most people, when they hear the word pure, they're thinking, you know, just very clean. The word actually refers to unalloyed, no mixture. A good way of putting it is blessed are those who have no competing loyalties in their heart.

That they truly recognize the supremacy of God and nothing is brought into competition with that. Now, here's another problem, though, according to the book of Psalms, when there is no teaching on the attributes of God, no proper teaching on the attributes of God among God's people, they cannot hold him as supreme.

In fact, what they will do is reduce him and make him even like us and even lower than us, cause him to be our servant. And even worse than that, they will make man the center of all things and God exists to serve them.

And that's what's happened in the big part of American Christianity. God exists for us, it's all about us. Let me share with you a few things. There's a song that came out a few years ago, God loves people more than anything.

That's a lie. Sorry to bother you. I'm sorry to maybe ruin your self-esteem, but you're not the most important thing in the universe. I mean, in most evangelical or evangelistic campaigns I've seen, they make man literally God's not going to be happy unless you get saved.

God's going to be happy even though you spend an eternity in hell. God's happiness is not dependent upon you. As a matter of fact, what you should realize is if you go to hell, the last thing you will hear when you walk in through the doors of hell is all of creation, including your parents, if they're regenerate and everyone else standing to their feet and applauding God because he's rid the earth of you.

You see, I don't like language like that. You see how you can talk so much about Bible and wanting God and everything else. But when someone comes and says, OK, you really want to know what it's all about?

This is what it's all about. You go, I don't like that because I'm not the center of the universe. I want the Christianity where it's all about me, all about God saving me, all about how much God loves me, me, me, me, me.

I'm sorry, my friend, that's not the New Testament. God does love us. But do you know what God loves more than anything? Himself. Have you ever heard that you see how we are? If I sit there, if I were to come before you this morning and say God loves people more than anything, you go, yeah, let's sing a song.

But if I tell you God loves himself more than anything, you get angry. Isn't that amazing? You say, well, Brother Paul, how is it? How can you say that God loves himself more than anything? Have you ever read how many times he told Israel, Israel, I'm not saving you because of you.

I'm saving you for my own sake, for my own glory, for the love of my own name. Will I save you now? Let me show you a little bit how this works to be a rational being, OK, to be a rational being. And I teach this to our children and our children's catechism to be a rational being.

You must have a reason for what you do. Now, and what I teach our children when we talk about rationality, I teach them that if you go to if you see it pouring down rain and you see a man standing out there in the middle of the rain and you walk out there and you say, sir, why are you standing in the middle of the rain?

And he says, I don't really know. Then you can pretty much figure this man is not rational. You see that? But if he says I'm standing in the rain because I'm waiting for a bus, that might not be a good reason.

But at least he's rational. OK, now, a rational being, a high rational being, here's what we need to understand. We'll not only have a reason for what he does, he will always choose the highest reason for what he does.

The most supreme reason for what he does. Now, are you the most supreme reason? Are you the greatest virtue? Are you the greatest treasure? Absolutely not. So why does God do what he does? God chooses not only a reason for what he does, he chooses the highest reason.

And if he is the supreme being over all things, the highest reason he can choose for anything is himself and his own glory. As a matter of fact, if he was not motivated by himself, we would all go to hell because he would, a holy God would never find any motivation in us to save us.

All we've done is broke his law. The mere fact that he can save us proves that he does things because of him, for his own glory and for the love he has for his son. Now, let's talk about the glory of God for a moment.

The Bible says over and over that God does everything that he does for his own glory. Are you all in agreement with that? I mean, it's in the text. God does everything he does for his own glory. Now, if this is kind of hard, God does everything for his own glory.

So you say maybe immediately, what about me? I mean, how does that benefit me? Well, first of all, a proper creature wouldn't be thinking that way. All the proper creature would say, if God does everything for his own glory, glory, it's what he should do.

But if we say, well, if God does everything for his own glory, how does that benefit his creature? Well, it does this way. If if we dismiss this service in a little while and I'm standing at the door and when you walk by, I pull out a piece of bubble gum and I hand it to you.

And say, here, here's some bubble gum and you you look at that bubble gum and you go, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. And then you run around the whole camp. Look, he gave me a piece of bubble gum.

And then 30 years later, your grandchildren are sitting around in the living room and you're there rocking in a chair and they say, who's that man? Who's that picture over the mantle in the fireplace?

Who is that? Say, that's Paul Washer. What's he doing there? 30 years ago, he gave me a piece of bubble gum. I mean, you need some serious counseling. OK, that's that's not right. But now let's say that you're dying, you're dying.

And there's no hope. You need a heart transplant and you're on the list and you're about a thousand down. And I walk in the hospital and I say, and let's say it was legal, I walk in the hospital and I say, I understand you have a patient here so and so and they're dying and they need a heart.

Yes. Well, take mine. So they lay me on a table, they take out my heart, I die, they give you my heart and you wake up. Then that kind of response would be appropriate, wouldn't it? I mean, you'd be telling the media.

You would you tell your grandchildren, the only reason you're here is because 30 years ago, a man gave me his heart. So what do we learn from that? The gift often demonstrates the magnitude of the love, right?

A great gift will often demonstrate the greatness of love and the greatness of benefit. Now, if God wanted to give you, if God wanted to demonstrate the greatest love he could ever demonstrate toward you, what would he do?

He would give you his greatest gift. What could that be? Here it is himself, himself. When we say that God does everything for his own glory, what we do is God orders what we're saying is God orders everything in history, everything in creation so that he can take the center stage and demonstrate how wonderful he is, how great he is, how glorious he is, literally to reveal everything about him to the world.

Everything is designed so that God can stand at center stage and show everybody his glory. And that's the greatest gift he can give you. The greatest gift he can give you is to show you who he is and the greatest judgment he can ever bring upon you is to pull back and show you nothing.

He is the greatest thing he can give to his people. So when he glorifies himself, when he does everything for his own glory, when he orchestrates the entire world so that his glory might be known, he is giving his people the greatest gift possible himself.

You see, this is a totally different way of looking at everything. Most Christianity today is totally foreign to the idea of the supremacy of God. They will say God is great, God is this, but it's always in relation to God is great and God is wonderful because he thinks so much of me, because he does so much for me, because it's all about me.

No, God's greatness is independent of what he does for us, but he demonstrates his greatness by what he does for us. I know it's a complicated thing, but this is what we need to see in order to understand the holiness of God.

The holiness of God means that he is separate from absolutely everything and he is deserving of all love and all glory. He is even deserving of his own love. A rational creature will choose the highest end always for what he does.

He will always do the highest and most virtuous thing. If God is the person most deserving of love, it is right that he loves himself above all things. If he is the one who truly deserves first place, then it is right for him to always take first place and it would be wrong for him to take another place.

He's always first. He's always deserving of all love. For us to be holy does not mean primarily that we are avoiding sin. That's just a part of it. What it means primarily is this, that we truly recognize that God is supreme, that we truly recognize that he is everything and there is no one else like him and we have no competing loyalties in our hearts.

We don't want God plus this, God plus that. We don't equate something as important as God. No, God. Now, when that takes place, the result is when the world comes in and tries to tantalize you. When sin comes in and tries to tempt you, what do you do?

No. Why? Because God is supreme. God deserves my allegiance. God deserves my attention. God deserves everything about me. Every beat of my heart should beat for him. Every thought of my life should be for him.

That is holiness. A man separated unto the supremacy of God. A lot of times people say, well, keep God number one in your life. That's not biblical. God says you shall have no other gods besides me, not before me, not beside me and not even behind me.

God's not first on a list of things. God is first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth. He's everything. And whatever you do has to fit inside of his will. It's not I'm going to give this to God and this over here belongs to someone else.

No, it's all God. Even when you marry, you marry for God, you marry because it is his will. You have children because it is his will. You care for the children a certain way because of his will. You do everything you do, even when you eat and you drink, you do it because and for him and for his glory.

So you are a person consumed with God, which makes you a person who really, really functions in relationships also horizontally. Because since God is supreme and his will is supreme, you begin to understand that will, which is to love your neighbor as yourself, to lay down your life for your friends, to love your wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, to be kind and compassionate with your children as God says he is with his in Psalms 103.

Because God is supreme and everything you do, you do into his glory. That's why yesterday I was trying to teach that when you disciple your wife or you disciple your children, you can't do this thing of, OK, we're going to begin our discipleship time.

And then the whole of your life is not really lived out in the context of God. But you're going to take a half hour and do discipleship. That's not the way it functions. The way it functions is a man whose entire life is in the context of God's holiness, in the context of God's will.

And then he moves in that context. These are things that I want you to see, to be holy, is to have no competing loyalties in your heart. To be holy is to be a man given to God. Isn't it amazing how we can think that we're holy just because we keep a few rules?

You know, a woman can say, my dress is this long. A man can say, I don't have a TV in my home. All these different things can be said, but you're not holy because holiness means you're entirely given over to God as supreme.

But also on the other side, someone who says they're entirely given over to God and that their life is supreme. And yet they're dressing immorally or they're watching filthy things on TV. That's a lie, too.

So to be holy is to love God as God loves himself, to see God as God sees himself, which is utterly distinct. There is no one holy like the Lord. Now, we are to be a holy sacrifice. Now, here's the point where it comes down, people think, to obedience, but I say it comes down to faith.

Faith, Obedience, and Total Surrender

Am I really going to believe God? Folks, if you can grab this, this will be very helpful to you. You see, when I stood up there preaching last night, I thought I would have a much more secular audience.

Turned out, I believe that most were Christian. I was hoping for some sort of a I don't know what I was hoping for, secularist or atheist or university students. I was hoping they would all just come out in arms.

So I stood up there and I said this. I said, you cannot patronize me, do not patronize me. You see, I'm not just a man with a religion and that's nice for me. You've got to understand, if Jesus Christ has not resurrected from the dead, then I'm the most pitiful human being on the planet.

I am a fool and not only a fool, I am a dangerous fool. Because I am following a ghost who does not exist, I've ruined my life, I've led my wife into lies, I've led my children into lies. I'm standing before audiences and proclaiming a God who does not exist.

I am the most pitiful man in the world. Do you see that? So by faith, though, because of a revelation through the Holy Spirit and the word of God and the preaching of the gospel, I believe that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead and therefore I must live a certain way.