Romans 12:1

Coram Deo Reformed Baptist Church iconCoram Deo Reformed Baptist Church

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so after many weeks we have come to the we're not only well we came to the end of chapter 11 last week and have made it into chapter 12 there's a huge milestone in Romans quite a large one we're moving from the section of doctrine gospel presentation to section of application the next several chapters that we're in are all application of everything that Paul has stated beforehand so we're only gonna do one verse this week verse 1 he says
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I appeal to you therefore brothers by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God which is your spiritual worship so we're in Romans for about 18 months so far so not quite a slow roll but well enough and as I said before this is quite the milestone coming to the end of chapter 11 and the beginning of chapter 12 we've had the clear message of the gospel given to us made clear the doctrines of grace are utter depravity the other depravity of man our inability to please
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God our absolute necessity or our absolute need for the gospel or justification by faith alone the benefits of our salvation
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God's sovereignty in election the future state of Israel and our relationship as Gentiles with them and now that Paul has given all of the orthodoxy in chapters 1 through 11 he moves in to his section on orthopraxy how we're going to apply all of that now in human matters say such as our bylaws or our
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Constitution and whatnot we may differ on how things should apply in certain situations but because we're dealing with scripture it is authoritative so how
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Paul says it applies that's how it applies period now understandably the doctrines that we have been through are difficult to deal with especially if you're dealing with them for the first time most places don't even read chapters 1 through 11 they skip it because they don't want to deal with it you can't remain truly
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Arminian and have truly gone through chapters 1 and 11 you will absolutely come out believing the doctrines of grace on the other end of that but they are difficult to deal with even as we believe them they're difficult to deal with in the fact that we are raised in the world before the
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Holy Spirit grabs a hold of us so we not only struggle with the opinions of certain factions in the church but we also struggle with our own arrogance and our own presuppositions and biases that we come to the
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Scriptures with thankfully the Holy Spirit does all of the work of getting rid of that for us at different stages for different people but as we discussed before not only does he show us the truth he causes us to understand it but even in the understanding of these doctrines how do we apply them how do we apply them to our lives how do you apply the doctrine of election how do you apply the gospel sovereignty salvation by faith alone here in chapter 12 is where Paul tells us that and in the very first verse there is a load of application given just in verse 1 it's first in verse 1 he says
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I appeal to you therefore so take into account everything that he said from chapter 1 verse 1 all the way to the end of chapter 11 when
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Paul says therefore he uses this word by the way 47 times just in Romans every argument that he makes before he begins the application he says therefore so you can take chapter 1 through chapter 11 as an entire argument one for doctrine therefore this is what we do or in light of brothers or my fellow
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Christians both Jew and Gentile to those I have been talking by the mercies of God he makes his appeal not necessarily based not not not going back to a certain set of scriptures as he does beforehand as we've seen him do multiple times and it certainly as we'll see him do again but he appeals to the mercies given to us by God those benefits that we get as we are reunited with God through Christ to our justification and predestination the giving of the
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Holy Spirit our union with Christ our ongoing sanctification in light of these things these benefits that we should present our bodies as living sacrifices holy and acceptable to God now
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I want to point out that if this gives you a picture of old of the
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Old Testament sacrificial system it should that's what Paul is pointing to here that those in that time brought a lamb or a goat or the best wheat of their harvest to be given to God as a form of worship notice that in the
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Old Testament there were very specific rules as to the giving of sacrifices what they were how they were to be given but this is first illustrated to us in Genesis 4 so you have the institution of the sacrificial law given to ethnic
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Jews the state of Israel but before that even before that we have the institution of sacrifices themselves the first sacrifice we see is in Genesis 3 where God clothes
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Adam and Eve and animal skins is a covering right this points to Christ that something must die to cover sin but then when we get to Genesis 4 we read about Cain and Abel and in verse 2 through 7 it says now
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Abel was a keeper of sheep and Cain a worker of the ground in the course of time came brought
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Cain brought to the Lord an offering of fruit of the fruit of the field and Abel also brought the firstborn of his flock and of their fatty portions and the
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Lord had regard for Abel and his offering but for Cain and his offering he had no regard so Cain was very angry and his face fell the
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Lord said to Cain why are you angry and why has your face fallen if you do well will you not be accepted and if you do not do well sin is crouching at the door its desire is contrary to you or to his benefit but you must rule over it now this may be confusing for some because there's not an absolute explicit reason given as to why
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God didn't regard Cain's sacrifice he seems to have given of his labor and of his crop as he should so why was it not regarded but one of the we're given multiple context clues throughout the scriptures as to why
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Cain did what he did but one of the things that you can see right here is his behavior one of the issues that Cain has in the giving of his offering is his intent in the giving of the offering
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Cain lacks a sense of reverence and humility when he brings his offering
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Abel doesn't he's humble before the Lord and he gives of his sheep and the sacrifice is accepted much in the same way you hear the story or the parable of the
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Pharisee and the tax collector later on the
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Pharisee goes to the temple and prays for himself in selfishness asking that he does this and he does this and he does this and I don't want to be
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I'm not that tax collector and the tax collector comes and he prays I am an evil man help me and he walks away justified we should never come to worship out of anything other than thanksgiving and humility for what
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Christ has done for us what God has done for us in the giving of ourselves as a sacrifice this also applies denying ourselves and glorifying
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God and everything that we do no matter the task he puts before us now as human beings in our flesh we tend to gripe and complain at the very beginning of things whenever we come to a task
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I don't want to do it or this seems terrible or whatever else forgetting the fact that several weeks ago we went through chapter 8 where Paul explicitly explains to us that everything that is set before the elect is to sanctify them all of the tasks that we will walk through for the rest of our lives are to our benefit we should remember that and trust in him when we go through the things we go through in 1st
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Corinthians 6 19 and 20 Paul says do you not know that your body is a temple of the
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Holy Spirit who is in you whom you have received from God you are not your own you were bought at a price therefore glorify
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God with your body now some take this to incredible extremes completely out of context where it ought not go look up flagellation but by our worship being the giving of our lives to God this is a fulfillment of not only what
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Paul is talking about here what he is talking about in Corinthians what
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Peter and James talk about but also our original design in the first place now
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I'm not gonna lead into an entire lesson on the doctrine of work I'm gonna save you the time we can do that later if you want but there is a reason why our lives are meant to be worship this isn't just some arbitrary doctrine we were created for this purpose in Genesis 2 15 it says the
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Lord God took the man named Adam and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it now in the original
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Hebrew the word for work and the word for worship are pretty much derivatives of the same exact word work and worship the same thing some of us we've discussed this before when we went through the doctrine of work so as we it may seem silly but as we go through our daily tasks as we do things that we have to do to support our families that we should do rather than half that we should do to support our families to support our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ our daily tasks are worship when
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Adam named when he named the animals that was a task giving given to him by God that was worship when they presumably took care of the garden that was worship when they ate that was worship when we pay our taxes that is worship when we work our jobs that we don't like and do it as if we are doing it for Christ that is worship so from the beginning our work has always been worship this is why in the scriptures both in the scriptures and in the world today and then we consistently see a rebelling of mankind in the work that they're doing they either do it for themselves and for their own selfish reasons
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Babylon is a good example of that what do they want to do by the building of the tower reach heaven on their own it sounds silly but think of all the things that we do today that are absolutely ridiculous and contrary to the truth for our own selfish gain but not only the work do we corrupt the purpose of the work we outright deny working at all how many times in Proverbs does
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God tell us does the writer tell us how much
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God detests laziness consistently the outright refusal to work we see this both in Scripture and we see it today in our own country we have a serious problem with laziness they want for the end of the work for the fruit of the work but no desire at all to do the work again to go with 1st
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Corinthians what we read there in Hebrews 13 it said in Hebrews 13 15 and 16 says through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God that is the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name do not neglect to go to do good and to share what you have for such sacrifices are pleasing to God this is part of the reason why we give we're told to give joyfully not only to church establishment but to each other we give to each other not because we necessarily have an abundance we just don't use it and it sits there but because we can we have the ability to we give to each other first and then when necessary not when absolutely necessary but when we're given the opportunity and it's necessary we give to even those outside the church we've done that since the establishment of the church this is worship but the end of the verse he says which is your spiritual worship now
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I'm an immediately going to point to John 4 21 through 24 and Jesus said to her woman believe me the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the
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Father you worship what you do not know we worship what we know for salvation is from the
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Jews but the hour is coming and is in is now here when the true worshipers will worship the
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Father in spirit and truth for the Father is seeking such people to worship him
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God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth the truth part is fairly simple for people to get okay understand what is objective truth okay that's one way that we worship
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God the truth of the word the objective truth of reality understanding these things okay applying them to our lives is the second part of that Paul says this is your spiritual worship it is lost on many and it tends to lead to all kinds of very irritating errors and a costal ism for one other things that should not be done new age it leads to things similar to the strange fire that were offered offered up and by the sons baron but in fact
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Paul is saying that the offering of ourselves of our lives moment by moment is in fact our spiritual worship the living of our
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Christian lives Matthew Henry says of this section the spirit or the soul of man has as influenced by the spirit must worship
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God and have communion with him spiritual affections as shown in fervent prayers supplications and thanksgivings form the worship of an upright heart in which
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God delights and is glorified the purpose of the church the establishment of the church in its structure for us to come together be reminded of our
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Lord of the work he's done for us to be renewed in spirit for the week to come but it is not meant to be our sole means of worship as it is treated the vast majority of the church lives just like the rest of the world does but they go to church on Sunday and that makes it okay we went to church we did our worship thing all right let's go have some beers watch the game and act like just like everyone else no the church is for us to do this together it is for us to worship together because we are separated during the week we don't live in a community removed from the world like some we live in the world that we may carry the message of the gospel to the world first with our words and then with our actions
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Paul then in verse 2 gives us a command it's a command in the negative but we will go through that next week it's a whole 45 minutes on its own as I said before as we move from a section of doctrine into a section of application let us burden ourselves with just what is in verse 1 but the primary means by which we worship
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God individually in our daily lives is our work our prayer supplications our thanksgivings praying in a closet if you do that family worship time that we would be ever mindful of glorifying