Following Christ — Paul Washer

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Presenting the Body as a Living Sacrifice

I would like for us to open up our Bibles to a passage that means a great deal to me. It's been very helpful to me. It's found in the book of Romans chapter 12 and honestly I must tell you that it has been the basis in a sense of my walk with Christ and I hope it will be helpful to you.

Romans chapter 12 verse 1,. 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. 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 this passage is so important to me because it speaks not only of a genuine following after Christ and what I mean by that is today following after Christ seems to have more to do in our culture with doing than being.

We honor men because of the size of their ministry rather than the character of their heart or their godliness or their progress in the things of God, the deep things of God. This passage also helps me because it speaks to me of the motivation.

What is it that should drive me in the Christian life to follow him? Because I want you to know that our hearts can be very, very deceptive, especially in the ministry, because our hearts can drive us for reasons that are not pure.

That are not pure. And so this passage for me is a standard and a great help and a reminder of real Christianity, of what it means to follow after Christ. Now, let's look at this. He says, therefore, I urge you, brethren.

Now, Paul was an apostle. That is true. But with this this word here, I urge you, brethren, I beseech you, brethren. Here we see something very important in the heart of Paul. We see a passion not only for God, not only for the gospel, but for people.

He cares a great deal about the people of God. Now, this is a man who has experienced what we could say, what I would say I've never experienced, and I would say the great majority of us have never experienced.

He has been given open doors and open windows into the will of God, into heaven itself. He has a reality to him because of the revelation that has been given to him. This is a man. Who has an idea of what's really going on, what's really important, he sees how extreme the human life truly is, that our relationship with God is utmost and the using of our life for the glory of God is utmost.

He realizes this is not a game. This is heaven. This is hell. This is standing before God. This is eternity. And so when Paul ministered. There was an urgency about him, a pleading, he wasn't content to just simply say the truth and leave it at that.

He wanted men to be changed. He wanted them to be moved in the right direction, especially among the people of God. There's no doubt we can see in the book of Romans nine, 10 and 11 that Paul had a passion for his people, the lost people of Israel.

He would consider his own self accursed for them. But we forget that it's the same Paul who said do good unto all men, especially those of the household of faith. If Paul had such a passion for his lost brother and the Jews, what kind of passion, pastoral passion did this man have for the Christian, for the people of God, his heart, his body, his life, his strength was literally consumed out of his desire for the churches to be pure and for God's people to walk with him.

And so we see that this is not, although, although I cut myself off here, although this is the greatest theological treatise, it's not a systematic theology, but it is quite systematic. This book of Romans, we see this, this blending, the theology as it ought to be, and especially for the apostle Paul was not some cold intellectual thing.

It ultimately came down to praxis, to the way we live. It ultimately came down to the glory of God. It ultimately came down to these are necessary things that God's people may be as God's people. He's pleading with them.

The Eternal Stakes of Following Christ

Now, I look out over this congregation and I see the old and the young. And I have not been given a glimpse of the things that Paul has seen, but I have done this for many years and I look out over here and I realize I'm not a prophet, I can't discern what's in the heart of people.

But if this church is like any other church, there are those of you who are on the way to glory. There are those of you who are on the way to hell. There are those of you who are walking circumspectly, there are those of you who are probably walking in some very dangerous territory and it's going to end up hurting your life.

There's all kinds of things going on. There's some of you who will be caught in vanity fair and spend a great deal of your life in vanity and not serve the Lord as you ought to be distracted, you'll be careless.

The things of this world, the materialism of our own culture, it will grow on you until you become asleep. And I know that in all of this, there is this final day when Jesus Christ is going to come and you're going to stand before him.

Don't you know that it's not a small thing? Because if it was, then it's either the most extreme thing or all this is foolishness and we should have just gone fishing today, eat, drink for tomorrow we die.

But this is not foolishness, this is reality, this is real. Everything out there, everything out there that the world throws at you is shadow land. It's the unreal. It's not right. But what we're talking about here, heaven, hell, life, death, eternity.

It's real, it's real. And therefore, how can we preach these things without a burden in our heart, without urging you to listen, begging, begging you to listen, pleading with you to listen? He says, I urge you, brethren.

Now, what is he going to urge them to do? We look down here, he says, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice. That's what he's going to urge them to do. Now, let's say a little about that and then go back to something else he's asking you to do, to offer the greatest thing you can offer.

It's an amazing thing if someone, I suppose, were to come forward and said, I wanted to offer my car for four missions or I want to sell my house and give it to the poor. That's that's quite an amazing thing.

We would all applaud, but that's nothing compared to a man saying, I give myself. You see, even the devil was right with regard to Job. He says, yeah, take away everything Job's got, but you touch his flesh and you'll see something else.

The greatest thing you can ask of a man is give away the thing he has only once. And that's this life. And that's what Paul is doing, he's saying, look, I'm going to I'm asking you to do something, and this is offer your life as a sacrifice.

The Mercies of God as the Christian's Motivation

That means everything that has to do with your will, your plans, your dreams, your visions, put it all to one side, say goodbye to it forever and give yourself to the will of another. Now, for something like this to happen, we need a strong motivation.

It takes strong medicine, someone could say, to bring a man to this this point in his life, to do something like this, what on earth, what in heaven could motivate a man to give away absolutely everything that he is?

Well, let's look back up now, he says, I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God. So what is the one thing that is to motivate us to do the greatest thing that is the mercies of God? Now, what does he mean by this?

Well, if you look at the word, therefore, at the beginning of our text, therefore, I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, this acts as a dividing line between two things in this epistle, the theology that Paul is laying down and now taking that theology.

How then shall we live? He does the same thing in the book of Ephesians, the first three chapters of the book of Ephesians, possibly the deepest theology in all the Bible, the first three chapters of Ephesians.

And then he comes to chapter four and he says, therefore, therefore, what live this way? Basically, based upon everything God has done for you in Christ, based upon this now live this way. OK, so my motivation for living the Christian life, for being a disciple, for taking up my cross, for dying to sell, for putting away all my dreams, my motivation is what God has done for me in Christ.

Now, if you just glance at the first eleven chapters of this book, you see, first of all, in the first three chapters, Paul laying down something very important, what is man are better said, what has he become?

We come down to to finally we get to the bottom of chapter three. We can say things that are horrid about men, vile, loathsome beasts, radically depraved haters of God. Murderers. All of it applicable to each one of us here, worthy of condemnation with absolutely no recourse, but to fall on the ground and to place our hand over our mouth.

Life. With no attempt at justification. And then he comes in chapters four and five, the end of three, four and five, and he tells us of the great work that God has done for us in Christ and that we are saved by faith.

And then he goes into six, seven and eight explaining for us how that's worked out and how God has given us many precious promises with regard to the Christian life and how to grow and be changed and be conformed to the image of Christ going from glory to glory.

And then he goes in nine and ten and eleven and it and comforts us with an explanation of the sovereignty of God working among the people he has chosen. He lays it all out for us, what God has done for us in Christ, and then he says, based on this offer your life, offer your life.

The Attributes of God and the Cross of Christ

One of the greatest needs. In Christianity today, I would say if I could point out two things, it would be this to teach who God is. I know that that sounds novel, but I want you to think about this, how many churches in America in the last twenty five years.

Have taught on the attributes of God, and I don't mean some dry intellectual discourse, I mean, full of glory and joy, unspeakable to teach on the attributes of God and then to teach on the cross of Christ.

And you say, well, I know all about no, no, you don't. You won't know all about it the first day you step into heaven with a glorified body. You won't know all about the cross of Christ after an eternity.

As a matter of fact, I would almost submit to you that a great portion of what heaven is all about is tracking down the glories of God and what God has done through his son, through the cross of Calvary.

You see, that's one of the great pains I have in America. It just kills me that we've reduced the cross of Christ down to four spiritual laws or five things God wants you to know are the simple phrase he died for your sins without any attempt to explain what that means.

And yet they're there in itself. Christ died for our sins. That's enough for a man of God to spend 80 years of his life, 13 hours a day just studying that passage, and he will not even reach the foothills of Everest.

And see, here's the thing, you can be motivated by so many wrong things, but none of them are strong enough to truly lead you into a life of discipleship. But this this picture, biblical picture of who God is, it's strong enough.

There's such glory there, such amazement, so astounding, his person and then the cross. Greater and greater understanding and comprehension of this magnificent God who becomes man suffers the wrath of almighty God himself.

The prize, the gift that was given to us is absolutely astounding. And when you take all that, you don't need other motivations. I, I hear preaching today that they'll say, you know, come to Jesus and he'll fix your marriage and come to Jesus and he'll he'll prosper you and come to Jesus and he'll give you self-esteem and come to Jesus.

The Worthiness of Christ and the True Gospel Call

And that type of preaching, the only word I can I can use that I feel when I hear that kind of preaching is I loathe it. I hate it. I literally despise it, come to Christ because he's worthy, I will have no problem telling a person.

Even though it is quite hypothetical, will never be the case, but I would have no problem telling a person this. Repent of your sins, even though God sends you to hell because he's worthy, believe in his Christ, though he sends you to hell because he's worthy.

Give everything you have all the days of your life to the glory of God, though he cast your soul in hell because he's worthy. Of course, we know that someone who does such things will not be cast into hell.

But what happened to. He saved me, don't cheapen the call with something else, I don't care. I don't care. It's enough to last me a lifetime to push me and motivate me and constrain me a lifetime that my sins have been forgiven.

What are you going to cheapen the call by offering me something else? It's like the time I heard Charles Leiter in Romania for an hour and a half, I've never seen him pour himself out like he poured himself out, trying to explain to people the glory of Christ in heaven and Christ being the prize of all things.

And when he finished just totally spent, he said, are there any questions? And a guy raised his hand and says, what else do we get? But you see, you know, brother Paul, I need motivation. Many sincere Christians have told me that I just need motivation.

Motivation. And I understand the question because so many preachers are directing you towards things that are no motivation at all. Well, let me direct you to two things, the person of God and the person and work of his son.

And that's all the motivation you'll need. That's it, that it'll last a lifetime just because it just keeps going. It's like if you ever thought about eternity for a moment, I mean, after all, swinging on gates of pearl and walking down streets of gold, that's going to get old pretty quick.

I believe that. The only reason we would not go insane throughout all of eternity out of just utter boredom, I'm human, I'm speaking humanly, avoiding the idea of heaven and time and all these other things, I'm just speaking humanly, is that we are going to be chasing down.

The glories of an infinite God, and it will never reach its end, we will go forever, a thousand eternities, an eternity of eternities, and we will never be able to search him out. And every if we can say such a thing every day will bring more glory.

Which will be so glorious, we will have to be strengthened in our inner man to even contain it without going mad, it'll be chasing after him. And so this is the motivation. That's why after twenty five, thirty, forty years, fifty years, I've seen them, these men of God who are much more motivated at the end of their life than at the beginning.

They're not wore out, their bodies are wore out, but their inward man is being renewed. And as they see the finish line come, they go, oh, that I could give more, that I could give more. Why? Because they know him more.

They know what this is all about. It's not something it's not a cross in your pocket, it's not a cherry on top of your cake, it's everything. It's absolutely everything, and so he says, I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God.

The Whole Person Under Christ's Lordship

To present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice now to present your body, I think it's very important why he uses this word, I don't want to be trite, but I sometimes think, you know, the Holy Spirit had us in mind, our generation, our age.

Of superficiality and super spirituality. Well, I have Jesus in my heart, I've given him my heart, even people who are living in blatant, open sin will tell you, well, yeah, but I do really love him. He has my heart.

Well, let's just look at this statement for a moment. First of all, the heart, whenever we talk about the heart and scripture, I mean, in the spiritual realm, we're not talking about a blood pumping muscle.

We're talking about the very core of our being, the seat, the the place of government, of our entire being. We're talking about the source of our intellect or our mind, our will. It's the very core of who we are.

It's what we really are, it's the essence of our person. So you're going to tell me Jesus has he owns the very core of your being, the essence of everything you are, the chief seat of your will and your mind and your thinking, but it's not reflected in any other aspect of your being.

He has all of you and none of you at the same time. Well, he has my heart. Well, look, what's said here doesn't say to present your heart. This is to present your body. The whole of you to him. The whole of you to him.

The desire to bring every thought, everything about you into submission to the lordship of Jesus Christ. Now, we have to be very careful here. Why? Because people can when I start what I'm about to say, they can get into legalism.

I mean, we have this ability that when we start to think, well, I'm going to really take serious the word of God and I'm going to begin to submit every aspect of my life to the to the word of God, somehow we get to the word of God and run past it and start adding rules and things that God never placed upon anyone.

So we have to be very, very careful. We're not talking about legalism. You know, we see Christian groups down through the ages, many of them very, very sincere that have found, you know, have discovered just how long a dress ought to be.

And that's not what I'm talking about. But I am talking about the other extreme that in which our culture finds itself. Jesus has your heart. But there's very little evidence he has anything else. Again, I mentioned this, I think, yesterday or the day before that I have a great respect for the Puritans in their intention to not only do good theology, I mean, just amazing thoughts about God, but their desire to submit every aspect of their life, what we could call their practical life to the word of God.

Although they were not perfect because they were men, and I'm sure there were extremes among them as there are in our day, but but you can see their their whole character is marked by a desire to submit themselves in every aspect of their life to the word of God.

They didn't want a lot of loose threads hanging around everywhere. Where do you see that now? Let's just think about it for a moment. I sometimes I was I don't know how this happened, but I was asked to teach a state convention of music directors and I thought, well, this boy, Lord, you know, I'm not a musician.

But I asked them, I said, I asked them this question, I said, all of you direct music, you have music ministries. Let me ask you a question. How many of you in this audience tonight have gone from Genesis to Revelation studying what God says about worship?

And what he desires in worship, you just saw people hang their head. I mean, now think about it. This is his worship. You see what I'm saying? This belongs to him. And we already know we don't really have evidence much of God killing a preacher in the Bible, but he killed two music directors in Leviticus.

Dan, that's stretching it a bit. But I like saying that around directors of music. But the point that I'm making is this. We will do so many things without consulting. Is this what God requires of me?

Discipline, Scripture, and Practical Godliness

You know, just let's just think for a moment, let's start off with the mind. People have Christians today, and I know this because of my own personal battles, we wage so many battles in the mind, in the mind, we let our hearts talk to us so much.

My heart feels this way. My heart says this. My heart's telling me that all these things. But my question for you, have you ever gone through scripture and said to discover what God says about your mind?

How it's supposed to think. What it's supposed to dwell on in your heart. No, I don't want to draw a distinction between the two, but I just use common terminology. What does Bible say about the heart?

What's your heart should entertain? What does it say about what you should listen to? You know, some of you may not gossip, but you listen to it. I mean, what what does the Bible say actually about what you can hear and what does it say about your tongue, what you should be speaking and what does it say about your eyes?

And if you have you discovered, especially young people, young men and women, what does it say about your body? What does it say about clothing? I know that sounds every time someone hears that they look at me like I'm some 1950s fundamentalist, you know, who's been resurrected from the dead.

But the Bible does teach about clothing. It does that doesn't go into all these intricacies, but it lays down a few biblical principles that if they'll just be followed, they'll it'll protect you greatly from stumbling and causing others to stumble.

You see, here's what he's saying, it's not just this mystical, OK, I had this experience at these meetings and I went forward and I laid it all on the altar. Listen. First of all, this is not an altar, OK, we have an altar, it's the cross, this is not an altar.

Second of all, this is become one of the most psychological trap. It's a psychological trap that keeps that hinders the work of God. In what way? The Holy Spirit begins working possibly genuinely in the heart of a person.

There's a altar call given. They come forward in five minutes. They lay it all on the altar. They've been cleansed. It's like a psychological catharsis. They've just been cleansed and they go back unchanged instead of the Holy Spirit dealing with a person and they going home and getting in the word and seeking out godly counsel and everything else and setting up a thing to to really be transformed by the word of God and dealing with the issue, possibly over a period of months.

No, we've laid it all here on the altar and we can go to Denny's. You see, that's wrong, he's talking about reality and isn't that wonderful? You say, well, Brother Paul, what do you mean for years I would see these types of things participate in them, leave it all at the altar, all these different things and just still feel like nothing happened.

It was superficial and nothing lasted. And then to get into the word and discover, hey, there really is some reality to this Christianity. You don't lay it all on the altar and the Holy Spirit deals with you about a sin.

You start going into scripture, you get on your knees, you work through it, you discipline yourself to godliness, you seek out godly counsel and you deal with the problem. And this is what Paul is talking about.

He presents your bodies. The reality of it is astounding. No longer just get your heart right. If your heart's right, everything else is going to be right. And it's actually sitting there. And, you know, I love this passage and I teach this to young ministers all the time is when we get to, like I said the other day and in First Timothy, chapter four, he tells us that the world is going to fall apart and people following doctrines of demons and all these different things.

And what does he tell Timothy to do to start an evangelistic crusade or something? No, he says, son, discipline yourself to godliness, be absorbed in these things and the things of the lecture of the word of God.

Exhortation study, son, watch yourself. And your doctrine, just get serious, listen, listen, young person, let me let me say this. I heard someone yesterday say, you know, I have very limited time and all things like that.

And I start reading a good book like Sharnock or something. It's so huge. I'll never get through it. The Bible so big I start reading in Genesis. I don't even understand the first verse. I get discouraged.

What you've got to do is you've got to look at this Christian life, not as a day in your life, but over a course of 20, 30, 40 years. That if you will continue reading this book, continue it. I mean, sure, you can't cover a whole lot in an hour a day, but an hour a day over 40 years.

Sure, you can't read through Sharnock and Sharnock in 15 minutes. The existence and attributes of God. But over a period of a year and a half, 20 minutes a day, you'll probably work through it. You see, and then and then sitting there instead of just going around looking for some spiritual key that's going to bump you up to another level, sit there and go, OK, I'm going to start with my heart.

What does God say about my heart? I'm going to memorize scripture that deal with the heart. I'm going to I'm going to compare myself to the canon, to the standard of God's word, to the measuring read.

I'm going to deal with these issues of the heart. Or maybe there's something that that genuinely, you know, is a problem area in your life that you've not turned over to the Lord. And so you get into scripture, you consider it, you study about it, you begin to apply, you begin to discipline yourself for godliness and work through these things in a real practical manner.

I know it doesn't sound as spiritual as getting zapped, but it is spiritual. And so he says, present your bodies and then he says a living and holy sacrifice. Now, we've all heard that story about it's much easier to be a dead sacrifice than a living one that, you know, a dead lamb stays on the altar and you put a live one up there, he's going to squirm off every chance he gets.

There's some truth to that. There's also a truth that it's a lot easier to die for Jesus than it is to live for him. I know a man in Peru whose brother was martyred after six months of ministry years ago.

And the brother became quite famous for his martyrdom just north of Peru. Few people know that this other brother who didn't get martyred has served in Peru for an eye on 50 years. No one even knows who he is.

The one brother hardly starts his ministry, gets martyred and becomes very famous. The other brother works for 50 years. No one even knows his name. Not only is it easier to die for Jesus than to live for him, it's easier to do great things than it is to do small things.

And yet the small things are the important things. Any fool can preach. The devil is quite an eloquent fellow. And loving your wife, that's a whole nother thing. So I was preaching in in a church about three years ago that needed a pastor, and after I finished my first sermon, the pulpit committee came towards me.

You can always tell who they are. They have those big glasses on with the eyebrows and the fake mustache and they come toward you. And and they said the guy just said, we want you to be our pastor. And I looked at him and I said, with just a gleam in my eyes so they wouldn't get mad.

I said, are all of you out of your mind? And they said, well, what do you mean? I said, you don't know if I love my wife. You don't know if I'm a consecrated man. You don't know if I play with my children.

You don't know anything about me. How can you say something like that? That's what it's one of the reasons why our church is in such problems today. They avoid all the other characteristics of a godly bishop and they just look at apt to teach and apt to teach.

They don't even look at does he speak well? Paul didn't speak well, but he had knowledge. Now, so what we're looking at here, a living sacrifice. Now, I look at this in two ways, first of all, as a living sacrifice.

It's an energized sacrifice. This is not a work of the flesh. This is a work of the spirit. This is a person who has been born again by the power of God, because any other person doing any other work in the name of God, the name of Jesus, it's absolutely worthless.

So this is a person energized by the Holy Spirit, renewed in the Holy Spirit, regenerated a true Christian who is now bearing fruit, offering himself not by the power of the strength of his arm, but by the power and the strength of the Holy Spirit and the God who works in him mightily.

Secondly, another thing about this is it's it's a living and it's vibrant. You know, this this thing, this lackadaisicalness, you know, of all the people, how could we ever say that we lack motivation?

I need someone to motivate me. You need a motivational speaker. No, you need to know who God is, you need to know his Christ, you need to know their glories to become living. We ought to be zealous people.

We should be precise people. I think one of the reasons why why all the the the measurements and things of the temple. What were for us to see that that when we strive to serve the Lord, we ought to be a very exacting people, a precise people, a people who, in a sense, strive to do this with excellence, to do our best, to give our all.

We look at people who are overly zealous, we think today, and we make fun of them instead of saying, look, where is our zeal? I mean, I could take or I don't know where to go, but many of you could probably take me to some football game and I would watch you act like some sort of distorted fool.

You'd be beside yourself. Looking absolutely ridiculous and yet barely a grunt out of you in worship. So there's this idea of being made alive by Christ, but there's also this idea of continuing to renew our mind in the things of God that we serve him with with it, with a strength and with a zeal, with a joy.

God's Promises, Holiness, and Persevering Faithfulness

One of the one of the things that hinders this. Is the damning effects of the charismatic movement on the reformed brethren. Now, what do I mean by that? The charismatics are all about prosperity and promises and all these different things, and they're presuming upon God in the sense that they're believing things he never promised.

And they're motivated by many things that are carnal and materialistic. But because we don't want to be like them, many times we have forgotten. That there are great and precious promises in the Bible for those who serve the Lord.

There's exciting things awaiting us, not only in the next life, but in this one, no one outgives God, no one out blesses God. There are many things he has promised us. Those who leave houses and lands and mothers and fathers, they receive much more, not only in the life to come, but in this life and persecutions.

I can tell you, you know, I used to in the flesh, I would so you looked at me and boy, you just saw a martyr man. There's a guy works all the time and he doesn't even got holes in his pants and everything else.

He's just so holy in every way. He's just giving it all for Jesus. And I realized that the whole thing was just a pile of flesh. And then I learned something from a dear friend of mine, George Mueller.

Although he lived with great frugality and he gave away, was not materialistic by any means. This is what he said one time. I don't want anyone to see me tired and wore out and worried and tattered and unkept because I would not want them to think that my master was not a kind master.

Part of the motivation, part of the zeal, and this is OK if the heart is right, is is what awaits me. I mean, there are great things awaiting the believer, there are great promises of God, of his care, of his providence, of his blessings.

He loves his children and he cares for them and gives them gifts, great gifts. And we should not be ashamed of that just because other people take the doctrine of prosperity and twist it into some hellish heresy.

God blesses his people, so we should be living. And I want to finish here. We should be holy, holy. Holy. Now, just really briefly, I think there's a great misunderstanding with regard to holiness today, I'll ask a guy, what does holiness mean?

And they'll go, well, you know, they'll basically say sinless, without sin. And then I'll ask him, well, what is righteousness? And well, you know, sinless without sin, and I'll go, well, do you see a problem there?

I think that holiness, I think we're missing the point in the root, it means to be separate, to be separated. And I think that that holiness has more to do with the condition of the heart and the God wordness of our lives.

A man is holy because he is separated from the things of this world, the things that contradict the will of God. But that is not the extent of his holiness. That is only a means to an end. He is separated from those things with intent and purpose to be separated unto God.

It is a desire for him. So you can be a rule keeping Pharisee and not be holy because holiness has this idea of recognizing the supremacy, the uniqueness of God, of of seeing God as worthy above all things and is being drawn to God.

So we're offering ourselves to him and it's not a burden, it's not some grinding wheel upon wheel endeavor. It is like the woman of the alabaster, just broken and pours out everything, just extravagant upon his feet, calculating nothing.