Living on God's Altar - Brandon Scalf

The Purpose of Life and the Call to Holiness

If I were to ask you why you are here, that is, why you are living on this earth right now, what would you say? What is your purpose? Or we could say it this way, what do you believe the will of God is for your life?

Now, this is a very important and very probing question for a myriad of different reasons, but primarily because a lot of us ask these types of questions. What am I here for? Some of us grow up from the time we're little to the time that we're older, thinking that we are going to be policemen or firemen or IT guys, that is somebody who works with computers.

Maybe some of you little girls from the time that you're just a little girl, you want it to be a mother, you want it to be a wife, maybe you want it to be a chef. There are many things that we desire to do when we are younger.

And as we age, we fall into our profession or our desired life outcome, or it happens to us, and we might define ourselves by those things. I'm here to be a mother. I'm here to be a father. I'm here to be a policeman.

But might I suggest to you that the scriptures plainly, clearly, emphatically, and explicitly teach that the reason that you are here on this earth now primarily is to be conformed to the image of the son.

That is to be made holy, to look more like Jesus. In fact, the scriptures teach that this is the will of God for your life, comma, your sanctification. But as you know, this pilgrimage, this walk with God is one that can be hard.

It's one that can be tiresome. It's one where we wish we were more holy than we are, or it's one that we keep moving forward thinking, I don't need to care about holiness or sanctification at all. And the question becomes, when we get weary or we have the wrong attitude, what is the balm that's going to help us to pursue holiness with all our might?

To care more than just loving some words on a page, but loving with our life. Well, in order for us to find the right type of motivation, in other words, we need to get to the heart of the matter. And the heart of the matter is the problem of the heart.

And what I mean by that is many of us don't just have a not striving for holiness problem, we have a worship problem. That is, we misunderstand, misapply, and misconstrue what it means to worship God.

And as our text is going to show us, worshiping God is far more than coming to church on Sunday. It's far more than coming to church on Sunday morning and Sunday evening. It's far more than coming to church on Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and coming to fellowship group on Wednesday.

It's far more than anything that you think. True and biblical worship requires all of you all the time for the glory of God and the good of his people. In other words, it requires you to give your whole life to God.

And we're going to see first and foremost why that is and how we can better understand worship in light of the reason that we're here, namely to pursue holiness. So if you would please stand with me for the honoring and reading of God's holy and fallible and all-sufficient word.

And as I said, I will be looking at Romans chapter 12, verses one and two. Paul begins, therefore, I exhort you, brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a sacrifice, living, holy, and pleasing 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 approve what the will of God is, that which is good and pleasing and perfect. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever, amen?

Go ahead and have a seat. As you well see, the thrust of this text or the thing that Paul is wanting his audience to do is to present your bodies as a sacrifice. But of course, you also notice that we are in the middle of an argument.

And we know that because of this word, therefore. And so as we look at this passage, there are quite a few different things that I want you to know. The first one is the movement.

And what I mean by the movement.

Is the linguistic movement away from something he has been talking about to something that he is now going to talk about. And they do in fact differ, and yet they are absolutely connected. And we know that because of this word, therefore.

So we're going to get to a command, an exhortation, but we have to understand what came before the therefore. Now, when I teach hermeneutics here at Heritage, or if I'm talking to the children, I want them to memorize a cliche, but helpful question to get at what is going on.

And that question is this. When I see a therefore, I have to ask why it's therefore. We don't get to, in other words, just skip past this word.

Now, when we're reading,.

We oftentimes see words that seem inconsequential and we just keep moving. But we see here, among many other things, that Paul does not flippantly or carelessly bark orders. He is methodical in the way that he does what he does.

And here, there is a division happening between essentially Christ's work and how to use it, as the Puritans would say, how to apply it. In other words, truth in and of itself is only as good as what you do with it.

It's the reason that the other scriptures can say that knowledge puffs up. You can be filled with information, but you might not be transformed. And so this therefore is here to answer the question, so what?

So what? Who cares, or rather, what do I do with the information that you have presented? Well, as we have seen, if we've looked at the book of Romans in any sort of detail, the book of Romans is split right down the middle, as it were, much like many of Paul's letters.

We've been walking as a family through the book of Ephesians and we see that Ephesians, after chapter three, we get done with the doctrine and then we move on to how to apply it. The same thing is here in Pauline fashion.

He is wax eloquent about sin, about the deadly nature of it and what it has done to ravage the people of the world and how not one of us is devoid of needing his atoning work. And what he has done is he has laid out, essentially, in the best way possible, many consider this to be Paul's magnum opus, the gospel itself, that Jesus lived the perfect life, died the death that we deserve to die and that he resurrected on the third day and ascended into heaven and now sits as mediator.

His atoning sacrifice having been one that was pleasing and acceptable to the Lord and those who trust in the Lord by faith have that balm of Jesus' finished work applied to their account, so to speak.

And here in Romans chapter 12, he transitions to the so what. And every good sermon, every good letter written by an apostle is going to have this so what piece. That is, what does this mean for my life?

So Paul here is transitioning from doctrine to duty. That is, he's transitioning from what you should know to what you should do. And what you need to know about these first two verses is this is the first command that the apostle Paul lays forth in the book of Romans.

Here's what this means. Here's the big payoff for paying attention to that reality. It really matters. In fact, it might matter more than any other command that he's about to give. It's the first thing that his pen writes.

After all of this treasure has been thrust into the lap of God's children. And so if we are going to get any further in understanding this, we need to understand that it's not enough to know truth. You have to know what to do with it.

And what you need to know is that knowledge, which is the possession of truth and applying it is not simply the end. What do I mean by that? I mean, having information that tells you who Christ is, is not the end of the road.

Now, sometimes the application, as you've heard me say many times is, behold your God, acceptable application. But other times, it's the road to helping us do what it is that we're supposed to do. Maybe another way to say this is, the indicatives of the Bible often empower the imperatives.

That is the truth contained in the Bible, the beauties and glories of Jesus Christ, help us to fulfill what he has commanded of us to do. So if we're going to understand this text, we need to understand why the therefore is therefore, and it is to connect Christ's finished work with the work that you now as a Christian are called to do.

Which is why he goes on to say, I exhort you brothers, brothers. Brothers is important here because he's speaking to Christians. He's not speaking to non-Christians because non-Christians, when they hear, you're going to have to give yourself up, present your bodies as a living sacrifice, are going to think that's complete and utter nonsense.

It's those who have had their spiritual eyes opened and their spiritual ears opened and are attentive to what Christ has for them are the only ones that are going to desire to live in such a manner. And he doesn't just present information, even as he's applying it, he exhorts them, right?

Therefore, I exhort you brothers, I exhort you. Now this word exhort is an important word because this word exhort means call for a verdict, to urge, to plead, to beg, or my favorite definition, to summon one to action.

Here's what this means. It means that Paul was not content with giving his preference. He wasn't content with just giving a little bit of information or even a little two fact sheet on what it is that you are to do.

No, he was laying out the matters of life and eternal death with the authority that he had as an apostle. He was representing almighty God and he did not have a take it or leave it attitude. What he was saying to these people and what he is saying to us by extension and what I am hoping to do with you today is this.

He's trying to say, you must hear me, you must believe me, you must obey what I am saying because Jesus is that good. And this is the heart posture that every Christian should have for every brother and sister in Christ that they have, that they live unto the glory of God, for the glory of God and the good of his people.

And that they would live in such a way to show off the beauties and glories of who Jesus Christ is. Anything less is unacceptable. Lukewarmness is unacceptable. Jesus in the book of Revelation talks about lukewarm Christianity in such a way that it would put non-Christians above those who would gauge in lukewarmness.

He would say there's no use to it. Those who are hot at least serve a purpose. They're kindling for the fire. And those who are cold in the positive sense, quench thirst. And the question becomes, are you quenching thirst or kindling for the fire?

The middle ground is no way at all. The middle way is no way at all. There are two paths according to Matthew chapter seven. There is the broad path and the narrow path. There's not a detour. And Paul's aim here is to exhort, to bring to bear the truth in such a way that he is begging his people to listen because he knows that it means the difference between spiritual maturity or damnation.

And he understands that doctrine is dead until it is applied. The Puritans used to say it like this, that doctrine is kind of like loading an arrow into a bow. And the sermon is not preached until that arrow is let go from the bow and it flies into the heart of the target.

Or you can consider the words of Jonathan Edwards, who it was often said of him for the first half of his sermon, he was laying out the doctrine. And people would say, oh, that's amazing. And then they might want to stand up and leave.

But all he was doing was loading the barrel for the second half of the sermon, which was to cause shrapnel to rain down upon them from that device so that they might actually live a life worthy of the calling that they have them.

So what do we do? He's moving from doctrine to duty, and he's doing it in such a way as to implore the brothers and sisters in his sphere, in the Church of Rome, to take seriously what he's saying, pleading with the very heart that he has for them.

This is someone who cared and lived what he preached. The second thing that I want you to see after looking at this movement linguistically from what came before to what is here now is this motivation.

The motivation. The reality is a simple exhortation is not going to motivate you to live as a sacrifice, which is what Paul is after here. Whips and chains and fear and terror are not going to get the job done.

Now, of course, along the way in the Bible as you read it, there are many motivations for why we should live holy and godly lives. For instance, there is oftentimes kind of a reward-reaping motivation.

For instance, in Galatians 6 ,8, Paul says, for the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. So you see here, Paul is trying to motivate the church in Galatia to consider the two paths, saying that you will either reap death or life.

Or oftentimes in the Bible, there are ways of motivating individuals by talking about how judgment awaits them. 2 Corinthians 5, verse 10, for example, says, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body according to what he has done, whether good or bad.

Sometimes the Bible says, pay attention to how you live because you're going to have to answer for it someday. You may think you're getting off light now, but you're not, ultimately. Or another way that is motivated, which is not unlike the first two, is people are often motivated by the idea of being rejected by Jesus for their false worship and faith.

For example, in Matthew 7, 22, Jesus says, many will come say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, in your name did we not prophesy? And in your name cast out demons, and in your name do many miracles. And I will declare to them, I never knew you.

Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. As helpful as these motivations might be, as often as they appear in the Bible, they still are not motivating enough. The law, we can add that to the list.

Thou shall do such and such. But the reality is, according to this text, there's one motivator that stands atop the rest. Look with me at our theme verse, verse one. Therefore, I exhort you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a sacrifice.

So what will best motivate us to live a life of godliness that ultimately results in worship? What will motivate us the best? Not all of these things. Not your do better, try harder attitude, but the mercies of Almighty.

So the question becomes, well, what does he mean by mercy? Well, first and foremostly, he means everything that he has talked about from verses one of chapter one to verse 36, chapter 11. He's laid them out in great detail in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In other words, when he's saying that the mercies of God ought to be motivating you, he is saying that every drop of saving grace that is found in Jesus ought to motivate you to live this way. His life, his substitutionary death, his resurrection, his ascension, and his current mediation should cause you to strive after holiness, to strive after the Lord Jesus.

Now, if we look, of course, at the Greek, we get a little bit more of a nuance, or even if you look in an English dictionary, I'm not trying to remove your faith in the text that's here. Well, what does mercy mean?

Well, to display mercy or to show someone mercy means they display a concern over another's misfortune, to pity them, to lavish love upon them and compassion. Or more pointedly, to show mercy means that one is concerned about someone's misery and they do something about it.

So when you are sinning, when you are falling on your face in whatever area that might be, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, trying harder, making new resolutions is not going to cut it. You need to look at God.

You need to quit navel-gazing and you need to look at the love of God and the person and work of Jesus Christ, the God-man. And you need to realize that you were in a place of needing to be pitied, that you were in the place of someone who was manifesting misery, someone who had misfortune.

Now, a misfortune that you took upon yourself, a misfortune that I took upon myself, namely the rebellious nature that we all possess, that we hate God. And that apart from his working might, he stands at odds with us.

But you see, while we were dead in our transgressions and sins, when we were unable to respond to spiritual stimuli because of our self-made blindness, he reached in with the heavenly defibrillator, namely the Holy Spirit, and he caused us to be alive.

Do you get that?

When you hated him, he loved you and gave himself up for you so that you could, as Ephesians chapter two says in verse four, you could be begotted, he could step in the way and reconcile you to God and to others because of the great love with which he loved us.

Friends, the mercy, the love, the compassion of God rooted in the person of Jesus Christ for you is a far better motivator than any chain or whip, a far better motivator than any energy drink, a far better motivator than anything that you have.

So why can't you get motivated enough? Plainly, explicitly, you don't love God enough and you don't appreciate what God has done for you. The mercy of God is greater fuel than your desire to be more holy.

The love of God, as it is reflected upon, contemplated, will move you forward before you think to do it. Children, would you look at me? I want you to think about what I'm saying right now. I know some of this might be going over your head, but here's what I mean.

When I say that the mercy of God is a great motivator for living a holy life, what I'm trying to do is get you to see, maybe like if there's something you really wanna do. For instance, if you wanna go to the park and play, or maybe you want a certain toy you've been asking your parents for, or a certain dessert, and your parents say something to the effect of, well, if you just hold on a minute, and if you just calm down, we'll be able to get to that in a minute, or if you behave yourself in this situation, we'll make sure that you get it, and you really buckle down, and you do what mom and dad say, and you're really well-behaved, and you do what you need to do so that you can get that thing that you want, well, that just motivated you to do something that maybe you wouldn't have done had you been motivated to do so.

And so as we think about when we sin, and we mess up, and we do something we shouldn't have done, we remember that Romans 8 tells us that there's no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. That means that there is no punishment because we've been saved by Jesus if we love Jesus, but that his love, even in that, will help us not to do that again.

Does that make sense? And so we must look to God in his mercy because that will spur us on. That will help us, as Hebrews chapter 12 says, run the race, run the race. And running a race haphazardly or lukewarmly is no way to run a race at all.

So now that we've looked at the movement, now that we've looked at the motivation, what I want you to see here is the mandate, and this is really where it all lands. This is the thrust of the passage.

This is the climax. This is what Paul wants all of us to do in light of what he has already said, right? Everything up to this point has just been prefacing this sentence, and this sentence is a hard sentence, and it's a sentence that if you're paying attention to, should either offend you or convict you.

If it's encouraging you, you might not be reading it correctly because nobody's doing it perfectly. Not even the guy with the Bible and the pulpit. He says, by the mercies of God, present your bodies as a sacrifice.

Well, that sounds pretty harsh. Does he really mean that? Is this poetic language? Yes, he really means that. And yes, it's poetic language, but it's rooted in reality. So let's take this phrase one at a time.

This word present here is a very important word. This word is borrowed from his own background, namely, as a Pharisee. Old Testament Israel had a sacrificial system that typified the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

It was a shadow of the atonement that would come, where sheep and rams were slaughtered to cleanse the sins of God's people as they looked to him in faith. And so it is a technical term, specifically for priests placing an offering on the altar.

So in other words, what Paul is doing here is telling his people that they are to live a life as if they were living on God's altar. It's weighty, it's very weighty. In 1 Peter 2 .5, what's interesting is we are called a kingdom of priests as the new covenant people of God, when he says, you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

And the reality is, we as Christians also must consider ourselves spiritual priests who make spiritual sacrifices, because that is the thrust of what Peter is saying. And so what is that sacrifice? That we would present our bodies as a sacrifice on God's altar, namely our lives.

But instead of a ram, we're going to be called to kill our evil passions. Instead of slaughtering goats, we're gonna be called to kill unclean affections. Instead of offering up fowls, we will kill idle thoughts and on and on and on and on.

But the reality is, Paul was not speaking here to the Jewish people. And so though he was using imagery, and though he was using a language that the Jewish people that he understood that fit into his sacrificial system, I don't believe that's actually what he was getting at.

And commentators are kind of split on this. But the reality is, if he would have just used his Jewish imagery, speaking to a bunch of people inside of the Roman pagan system, they wouldn't have understood what he was talking about fully, because they didn't, well, they weren't Israel.

They weren't Jews. But one of the things that the Romans were aware of, though they may not have understood all of everything that the sacrificial system of the Old Testament under the Old Covenant entailed, they understood sacrifice because they did it all the time.

As a matter of fact, they arguably did it much more than the people of Israel did, because they had far more altars and far more gods, right? When Paul goes up in Acts 17, he looks at all of these altars that are set up to have sacrifices thrown on them for their foreign gods.

And he very wisely points out the one to the unknown god, because here's the thing about Rome. They understood there to be many gods. Now, they were wrong, but that's the way that they thought. And what's more than that is they were okay with you adding yours.

That's what that was for. The altar to the unknown god. They were fine with that. In fact, they were fine with Christianity being added. Despite what you may have heard or read, that's the truth. They were welcoming of Christianity until they said, no, there's one God.

So the problem wasn't the addition of Christianity. It was the exclusion of everything else, because how do you have a pluralistic society when you stand on the truth of one God? You can't, according to Rome.

And so Christians being dubbed the first atheists, by the way, if you didn't know that, atheist is a term that was created for Christians, though now we use it the other way because we won for a little while and we get to pick the dates and flip turns.

But what he's doing is he's looking around, he's saying, look, all these altars that you see around you where all this blood is pouring down and all these fowls and all these different types of animals are being cut open and all of these sorts of things and presented to their gods.

You see that all the time when you go to the public place. I want you to pay attention to this, guys. Paul's speaking to a people who would have saw this every single day. It wasn't a theological concept.

It wasn't something heavy that was in an encyclopedia somewhere that talked about history past. This was right in front of their eyes. And Paul leans into it and what does he do? He says, I want you to be that.

I want you to present your bodies as a sacrifice as if you were on God's altar. Now, what does this mean? Does it mean that we are to do good works on the outside so that people would see how great a Christian we are?

Talking about our bodies or is it talking about asceticism which the early church at times engaged in especially by the time you get to the Roman Catholic Church where they would beat them and give themselves the wounds of Christ because it says that we need to sacrifice our bodies.

Does it mean to be martyrs? Give ourselves over to be burned? Well, if it comes to that, sure. But what's actually being said here in this word body is that we are to give our whole being over to God.

Not part of you, but all of you. And not one time, but for all time. It's not enough to offer just work and wages. It's not enough to serve the church as it were and give tithes and offerings as we saw with Cain and Abel.

You have to give. That means your mind, your eyes, your ears, your mouth, your hands, your feet, your fill in the blank. They belong to Christ and you live as a sacrifice unto Christ. What you think about, Christ's.

What you look at, governed by Christ. What you listen to, Christ. What you say, governed by Christ. What you do with your hands and your feet, Christ. In other words, it is your head, your heart and your hands, your intellect, your affection and your will.

So you're to present all of yourself, all of the time as a sacrifice. Now this one is not easy. We like other people to sacrifice for us, but we don't like to sacrifice for others. But friends, the reality is the sum of Christianity can be summed up in this word sacrifice.

Christ sacrificed for us. We live as a sacrifice unto him and for his glory and for other people. Even and up to our own death. It's going to cost you to be a Christian. It's going to cost you to live for God.

It's going to cost you to be something else other than lukewarm. I was over at my brother and sister-in-law's house the other day and she was listening to somebody that really pumps her up. And this guy was running down the street and somebody yelled at him, why are you running?

And he said, because you aren't. And the idea here that he was trying to get across, at least from what I took of it, is he's willing to do the hard things that not anybody else is willing to do. And the reality is God is calling you to do the hard thing even if nobody else is willing to do it.

It's going to cost you something. And if it doesn't cost you anything, it's not biblical Christianity. One of my favorites around here, you know the name, Martin Lloyd-Jones, says it like this. He said, Christianity has not been tried and found wanting.

It has been found difficult and not tried. Reality is there are far less Christians than you think there are because there are far less people living unto God. There are far less people living as a living in sacrifice though they're willing to receive the sacrifice of many.

They're totally fine with other people living unto God, but they don't want to live unto God themselves. So he says to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, give yourself, bleed for it, for it.

Do you get it?

Like, do you get the thrust? It's not an intellectual game, it's an exhorting to reality. And the only way you can get there, the only way that you can say, yes, I will give myself as a sacrifice.

Every time I open my eyes,.

Is if you are motivated by the mercies of God and the truth found in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Everything else is worthless. So what does it mean to live as a sacrifice? Because I bet if you're paying attention or at least you're trying to pay attention, you'll say, okay, but how do I do that?

Or what does it mean to live as a sacrifice? Well, it gives us three adjectives to explain what it actually looks like to live, which I'm kind of giving it away a little, to present our bodies as a sacrifice.

Namely, that we are to be, look at me, a theme verse here, living, holy, and pleasing to God. Now, the reason I keep saying living is because that's a holdover from an old translation that I used to use that puts a living in front of sacrifice.

It says to present your bodies as a living sacrifice. As a matter of fact, many translations do that, but there is no exegetical warrant. There is no, once you get underneath the Greek, reason as to why that is.

These are all adjectives that come after explaining sacrifice. So why do they do that in translations? I don't know. They didn't ask me to be a part of their committee, but they shouldn't. My guess is probably that they're trying to lessen the blow, right?

They're probably trying to say, but don't think about this like actually presenting yourself as a sacrifice, like present yourself as a living sacrifice. Like don't do the die thing. But you see what that does when you start flipping words around like that?

It takes away that punch. It takes away what you need the most, which is to hear sometimes the hard things, right? Because hard things produce soft people and soft things produce hard people. That's just the reality of it.

But let's say these one at a time. The first adjective used is living. What does that mean? Firstly, it means not dead.

Very simply,.

Like old sacrifices, lifeless sacrifices, you are to be one that is not like them dead or lukewarm, but one that's living and on fire for God. One that takes Him seriously in everything that you do. One that is willing to at great cost to Himself, promote the goodness, graciousness and goodness of their Lord in His time now and until He breathes His last breath.

And if you're not doing that, why not? That's a good question to ask. If I'm not being that type of person, why am I not being that type of person? Is my motivations upside down? Do I not actually believe?

Because actually that's what I believe this is saying more pointedly, right? The other one is good homiletically. This one is good exegetically, namely that it is those who are regenerated. To be alive means to be spiritually awakened, to have a spiritual resurrection from spiritual death.

This is not the first time that Paul has talked like this. He has been talking about how Christ has made it possible for those who are dead and sin to be alive to God in Him. For instance, in Romans chapter six, verse 11, Paul says, even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive in Christ Jesus.

And in Romans 6, 13, he says, and do not go on presenting, familiar word in light of our passage, your members or you could say body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.

So in order for you to present your bodies as a sacrifice, you must be alive to God and you must be on fire for God. You must be regenerated by the Holy Spirit and you must be propelled by the Holy Spirit.

Second, holy. Now this word here, holy, interestingly enough, is not a word that is a Christian word. It is a word that has been adapted to mean what it means. Like if I say holy, you think purify, you think righteous, and that's good, that's right.

But the word is actually used even of prostitutes, for example, in the temple in Ephesus. And the reason that they were called holy is because holy literally means to chop up and set apart for a specific purpose, a special purpose.

Purpose.

And so as those women were given for the special purpose of temple worship, God's people are cut and pushed aside for a very special purpose, namely to honor God with their holiness, right? They're to be clean, not defiled by the things of this world by our own sins, much like the Old Testament sacrifices.

And of course, now it has this meaning of symbolizing spiritual and moral purity because that's how the New Testament writers expanded upon it and placed it. And this is why, for instance, we start out our worship service doing confession of sin and assurance of pardon because we cannot be living in holy sacrifices.