A Sermon Delivered by Pastor Jim Scott Orrick

May 20, 2001

I want to continue the series of messages that I have begun on loving God, and I hope that you will remember that this is actually a series that is an introductory to another series on the attributes of God. The purpose of this introductory series is to show us the great need for understanding the attributes of God. Our ultimate goal is that we will love God – not merely that we will know what His attributes are – but that we will love Him, with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength.

I preached one sermon on loving God with your heart and soul, that is, with your affections and your emotions. Last week I preached on loving God with your mind. Now this week I want to preach on loving God with all your strength.

I think I must have been four or five years old when this story that I am about to tell you happened. I wanted to buy a Christmas present for my dad. Of course, at that age I didn't have any money, and so how could buy a Christmas present for my dad? Well, I told my dad about it, and he gave me a dollar to buy him a Christmas present. I loved him. I wanted to show my love, but I didn't have any money, so he gave me the money. I can remember going through the dime store with that dollar. Back in 1964, a dollar would buy quite a bit more that it will now. I don't remember what I got for my dad, but the point of this story is that I used his money to buy his present.

When we love God with all our strength, where do we get our strength? We have to love God with the strength that He gives us. We don't have any strength of own. So we go to the Lord and we say, "Please give me strength. I want to love you with it." And so God gives us strength.

Over the doorway of any sermon about loving God with all your strength must be written the words of Jesus, "Without Me you can do nothing." We can have no strength at all unless God gives it to us. But He does give us strength, and He expects us to use the strength that He gives us to love Him. After we have loved God with all our strength, we must say, "We give thee but thine own." We have to pray, "Thine is the power," because He is the one who gives us our strength.

When we love God with all our strength, the effects are often apparent to those around us. Loving God with your affections and your emotions is not always observable to outside observers. In fact, I can observe the tenure of your emotions and affections only as they find expression through your body and your actions. Loving God with your mind is not always observable. Hopefully, it will govern your emotions and affections. Hopefully it will govern the way that you live, but the only way that I can tell that you are loving God with your mind is if you demonstrate it through your strength, that is, through your body.

And so while loving God with your heart and soul and mind have dealt primarily with inward and unobservable characteristics, now, in talking about loving God with your strength, we are turning to outward and observable characteristics, ways that you love God that the whole world can see. And, of course, immediately we start getting a little more uncomfortable when we are dealing with characteristics that other people can see and that other people can judge. It is one thing for God to tell me, "Jim, your mind is cluttered. You need to clear up your mind and concentrate on me." It is one thing for God to tell me that. It is one thing for me to admit to myself, "I am so distracted. My heart is divided and I need a united mind that I might fear the Lord.” But it is quite another thing for someone else to say, "Jim, your life is not the life of a Christian." When criticism comes from someone other than myself I, proudly, have a tendency to become defensive. So we need to have special grace when we are praying, "Lord, give me strength to love You, and help me to do it with all my strength." Other people are going to be watching us while we live, and they have a right to watch us. Because we say that you are Christians, we are claiming to be people whose lives have been made observably different by our love for God.

The commandment that we must love God with all our strength does not give us much guidance on how to do it, so let's turn our attention to a text that does. Romans 12:1 gives us some very good guidelines on how we can love God with all our strength: I beseech you, [the word beseech means urge], I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God which is your reasonable service.

There are two points to this sermon. The first point is A Strong Incentive to present our bodies to God as a living sacrifice. He says I beseech you brethren by the mercies of God, and so a powerful incentive for us to present our bodies as a living sacrifice is the mercies of God. And then secondly, we will see Our Reasonable Service. The reasonable service is that we present our bodies to God as a living sacrifice. So those are the two points.

The strong incentive comes first. Paul says, I urge you, or I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice. Now notice the little word "therefore" that appears early in the verse. I beseech you therefore. And I believe that this therefore refers back to all of what Paul has said in the first eleven chapters. I think it is such an all encompassing therefore because this is a turning point in the book of Romans. Up to this point, up through the first eleven chapters, Paul has been laying down great doctrinal truths and great doctrinal foundations, but beginning here in chapter 12, he changes gears and he says, "Now this is the practical outworking of what I have been telling you. I urge you, therefore, in view of everything that I have been telling you about the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice."

Before going on to review what these mercies of God are that he has proclaimed in the first eleven chapters, let's notice this great principle: practice should always proceed from doctrine. This is the pattern that Paul follows in virtually all of his letters. The first part is doctrine. The last part is application, practical application. Practice grows out of doctrine. It should always grow out of doctrine. Look at it from this perspective. Doctrine is never intended to be mere knowledge. It is intended to overflow in the way you live. When you love God with your heart and soul, when your mind is filled with God's truth, it is always supposed to express itself in strength. Doctrine results in practice. Now look at that same truth from another perspective. Not only ought doctrine to make a difference in our practice, all our practice should be rooted in doctrine. In other words there must be a reason why you do what you do. Simply going through the outward motions of worship is not really worship unless there is a doctrinal foundation behind it. I am not saying that someone must be a theologian or have ever even read one page of a systematic theology in order to be an appropriate worshiper of God. But I am saying that if with your lips you are saying, "I love you, Lord," there must be in you heart a foundation for that and you are not simply going through the motions of pretending like you love God. It would be as insulting to God for you to do that as it would be insulting to a bridegroom for his bride to stand before him on their wedding day and repeat her vows while looking past the bridegroom to an old boyfriend sitting on the front row.

I don't think that any bride would be so brash as to do something like that on her wedding day, but sometimes we try to pull the same trick with God. We go through the motions. "I love you, Lord. I am serving you Lord." But all the while we are looking past God at something else, maybe the praises of men or something else, but our worship of God, our love for God must grow out of a foundation of truth about God. So that is what Paul does here. He sets us that great principal down that practice must grow out of doctrine. Doctrine mustn't remain by itself. It should produce practice, and looked at from another perspective, practice must be founded upon doctrine.

What, then, are these mercies of God that Paul says ought to be the foundation for offering your bodies up to God as living sacrifices? What are the mercies of God that Paul has unfolded in the first eleven chapters? Now I am going to review them. I am going to divide these mercies into two broad categories that are going to serve as a powerful incentive for us to offer up ourselves up to God as living sacrifices. The first category of these mercies is mercies to you. The second category is mercies to others. So in view of God's mercies to you, offer your bodies up as living sacrifices, and then in view of God's mercies to others, offer up your bodies as living sacrifices to serve others because of what God has done for them.

First of all, in view of God's mercies to you, offer up your bodies as living sacrifices. What are the mercies that God had bestowed upon you that Paul has taught us in the first eleven chapters of Romans? First, in Romans chapters 1, 2, and 3, Paul tells us that we have received mercy from God in not getting the wrath of God that we deserve. That is the first great mercy that we have received from God. We have not received the wrath from God that we deserved. You may recall that in Romans chapter 1, the Bible explains that the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Then he breaks down that great pronouncement of wrath that is being revealed from God from heaven, and he says that it's coming against Gentiles. It's coming against people who have never heard the truths of God's word, yet the witness of nature is powerful enough to hold them all accountable before God. Their conscience is a powerful enough testimony to the truth of God that they will be held accountable on the day of judgment for having rejected the testimony of God that beats in their own conscience and their own heart. The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against the godlessness of the Gentiles.

But then Paul also says that the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against the Jews, the people who have heard God's truth, and yet have rejected the truth of the saving grace through Jesus Christ. So Paul says, "Are we any better? Are we Jews any better off?" Then he answers his own question. "No, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." Both Jews and Gentiles have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Consequently, as it says in Romans chapter 2, You are storing up wrath against yourself for the day God's wrath when His righteous judgment will be revealed. For me, the idea of storing up wrath evokes strong images in my mind. When I was a little boy I loved to play in the creeks in the woods around our house. One of my favorite games to play at the creek would be to take sticks and rocks and mud and leaves and make a dam across the creek. The water would build up behind that dam, forming a little pool. Then we would play in the water. But eventually the water would find a place in my little dam where it would get over. The water would start rushing through that crack in the dam, and soon the dam would be all washed away. The water had been storing up behind the dam, but once it began to escape it rushed out quickly and forcefully.

Paul says you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath when His righteous judgment will be revealed. The dam is holding now while you are still alive, but all the while, the wrath of God is gathering. It is getting bigger. One day His righteous judgment will be revealed. This is going to happen to Jews and Gentiles. Oh, the terror of the wrath of God! No wonder the Old Testament prophet says, “Flee from the wrath to come!” Run like a crazy man being pursued by some kind of wild beast! The wrath of God is being revealed.

For all of those who are not found in Jesus Christ, a fearful day is approaching when the wrath of God will come suddenly and unexpectedly. It will be far more mouth-shutting and more terrifying than you have ever in your life conceived that it could possibly be. You will throw you idols and your silver and your gold to the moles and to the bats and cry out for the hills and the mountains to fall on you. Who can conceive the wrath of God? Flee from the wrath to come.

But now here is a powerful incentive for those of you who have been delivered from the wrath to come. You're not going to go to hell. The wrath of God that you stored up behind the dam of your life through your stubbornness and your impenitence has been poured out on Jesus Christ. That's a powerful incentive to offer your bodies up to God as a living sacrifice. Your have not gotten what you deserved.

Imagine that God takes you in a vision to the gates of hell, and there He lets you see what goes on in hell. You hear the screams and the hopeless groans and the weeping and the wailing and the gnashing of teeth and you feel an awful wave of that sea of hopelessness that that characterizes in everlasting destruction. You feel the despair of outer darkness. You frantically turn to God and say, "Oh, God, please don't put me in there." And God says, "I won't. My Son has suffered all that you have deserved and all that you would have received in this place had He not intervened and took My wrath for you. I'm not going to send you here, but I have brought you here for a purpose. I have been hearing you complain quite a bit lately. You have been whining." You hang your head in shame and blush. You know that it is true. You have been complaining lately. And the Lord says to you, "I want to ask you. What would you do to get out of being sent here if I were going to send you here?" "Oh, God," you say, "I'd do anything. Nothing is so bad as hell. Anything would be better than going to hell." And the Lord says, "What if I were going to send you here, but I said you can get out of going here if you will suffer every day for a thousand years. Would you do that?" And you say, "No doubt about it. I would do that. Yes, a thousand years of suffering every day on earth would be far better than coming here and suffering for eternity." Then the Lord says, "Very well, what if I were to ask you just to spend a lifetime of say seventy or eighty years offering up yourself as a living sacrifice? Would that be reasonable?" "Oh, yes Lord. That would be reasonable." "Well I want you to quit complaining so much then." "Yes, Lord."

You see, if we have any inkling of what hell is really like, then comparatively, nothing on earth is very bad. We ought to stop complaining so much. While being a living sacrifice may not always be pleasant, still, in view of the mercy of God in delivering us from the wrath we deserved, we ought to offer up ourselves to God as living sacrifices. No wonder Charles Wesley wrote, "Tell it unto sinners tell. I am. I am out of hell." God’s mercy ought always to be a source of amazement to us and a motivation for us to love him with all our strength.

But God has shown mercy to you not only in delivering you from the wrath that you deserve, but He has also bestowed upon you the grace that you did not deserve. Paul unfolds that in Romans chapters three through eleven. After consigning the entire world to sin in chapters one thru the first part of chapter three, he interrupts himself in chapter three and says, but now a righteousness from God has been revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last. A righteousness from God has been revealed, and everyone who has faith is made partaker of this righteousness from God. Do you deserve that? Of course you don't. In chapters three through five Paul explains that God has bestowed the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ upon believers. He has justified you. He has exerted an act of His own free grace wherein He has pardoned you of all your sins and has accepted you as righteous in His sight only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to you and received by faith alone. You didn't have to work a bit for it. Jesus paid it all. And now this great righteousness has been bestowed on you. Now isn't that a powerful incentive for you to offer your bodies up to God as a living sacrifice? He has justified you. Therefore in view of that, offer up your bodies as living sacrifices.

Not only has God justified you, but also in chapters six and seven, Paul talks about God sanctifying you. Some people say, "If our justification depends entirely on what Jesus Christ has done, then it does not matter how we. We may live a sinful life if we wish." Paul addresses that misunderstanding in Romans chapter six when he says, What then, shall we sin because salvation is by grace? Shall we sin so that grace may abound? You see the twisted logic of it though. They are saying, “If God is glorified by saving great sinners, then let's just be great sinners and let God get a whole lot of glory.” Paul says, "Can we do that?" and then he answers his own question, "God forbid. May it never be. It is impossible. Don't you know that those of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead to walk in newness of life, so we too are to live a new life now. Or don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as servants you are servants to the one whom you obey, whether you are servants of sin leading to death, or of righteousness leading to glory?" He says there has been a principle implanted in you so that you are no longer bound to be slaves to sin. That's good news. That's good news to people who hate sin and who love God.

God is in the process of sanctifying us. He is giving us free passage into heaven, and that is marvelous. But He is also doing a work of making us like Jesus Christ, making us like Himself. And in making us like Jesus Christ, he is fulfilling His grand scheme to make human beings second to Himself in the universe. Psalm eight will be fulfilled: I have put all things under His feet. We do not yet see all things under our feet, but we see the first fruits of this process already sitting in heaven. We see Jesus who was made a little lower than the angles now exalted in heaven. Because the Head is there, His body will be there too. The process of sanctification, then, is a powerful motivation for us to offer ourselves up to God as a living sacrifice.

But that is not all that God has done for us. His mercies include not only deliverance from wrath, justification, and sanctification, but beginning in chapter eight, Paul tells us that we have been adopted into God's family, and that God has sent forth His Spirit into our hearts crying out "Abba Father." We're received into the number of His sons, and we have a right to all the privileges of the sons of God. We have been adopted. That is a powerful incentive for us to live like sons of the king. Did your parents ever say to you like my parents did when we were going out, "Remember who you are"? That is what God says to us, and it is an incentive for us to offer our bodies up as living sacrifices. Remember who you are. You are my child. Live like it.

Those are some great blessings, aren't they? Oh, the mercies of God to us! You have not received the wrath of God that you deserve. You have been justified. You have been sanctified. You're in the process of being sanctified. You have been adopted.

But there is yet another mercy that ought to move us to offer our bodies to God as living sacrifices. God has also included you in the number of His people, His holy nation. In chapter eleven Paul pictures His holy nation as a tame olive tree. He says that there are some branches that have been broken off and cast aside. These are the branches that we read about in Matthew 21 this morning when Jesus asked, "What will happen to the men who have treated the servants of the owner of the vineyard in this way?" The answer is, He will take the vineyard away from them and He will give it to people who will produce its crop. The holy nation of God is no longer an ethnic physical people. The holy chosen nation of God is now a spiritual people. You who believe in Jesus are the Israel of God. It consists of both Jews and Gentiles. It is a Jewish tree. It is an Israeli tree, but the only people in the tree are the people who have faith in Jesus Christ. The only people who are in the holy nation are people who have submitted to the terms of the new covenant, those who have received Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord. Acts 3:23 says everyone who does not listen to the new prophet will be completely cut off from my people. And that is what Paul says in Romans chapter eleven, branches have been broken off, and you Gentiles, like a wild olive branch, have been grafted into the tame olive tree so that now you share in the nourishing sap that comes from the root. Now that ought not to make you proud, because just as the tame branches were broken off and cast off, so also the Gentile branches can be broken off and thrown away. If the Jews do not continue in unbelief, but if they will turn and receive Jesus Christ, then they, too, will be grafted in again. After all if you, being branches from a wild olive tree can be grafted in, how much more readily will the tame branches be grafted into their own olive tree if they receive Jesus Christ? But think of it, folks. Once you who were not a people are now the people of God. You who were once far off have now been brought near so that you are no longer aliens and strangers, but you are the people of God. God has broken down the middle wall of partition, the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, and now out of Jew and Gentile, out of black man and white man, and red man, and yellow man, there is one glorious choir constituting the Israel of God, and you are part of it. Now that is a strong incentive to offer your bodies to God as a living sacrifice.

But not only has God shown mercies to you, God has also shown mercies to other people, and that ought to be an incentive for you and me to offer our bodies up as living sacrifices in loving people. Jesus Christ is not here. We cannot pour perfume on His head. We cannot anoint His feet with our tears and wipe them with our hair. Or can we? The head is in heaven, but where is the body? The body is on earth. There is no need for you to look enviously at Mary as she stands at the feet of Jesus and anoints His feet with the box of expensive perfume. You can anoint His feet because His feet are on earth. His body is here. And you and I can offer our bodies up as living sacrifices to the Lord by living in love towards His people, living in love toward His body that is upon the earth.

I quoted a proverb to you a few weeks ago that I read in Spurgeon's Collection of Proverbs The Salt Sellers. It went like this, and some of you smiled, "Love me. Love my dog." God says, "Love me. Love my people." You cannot be a lover of God and not be a lover of God's people. It is utterly incongruous for someone to say that they love God, but they can't stand being with God's people. Not many people will say that with their mouths, but many of them say it with their lives. They say that they love God, but they are quite content to go week after week and never be with God's people at God's house. There is something drastically wrong in a life like that. You cannot love my head and always be hitting my body or despising my body and saying, "Jim, I love your head, but I don't love you body." We go together. So do Jesus and His body. Do you remember when Saul of Tarsus was persecuting the people of God? On the way to Damascus one day he was smitten down with a bright light, and out of that bright light, the Lord Jesus Christ said, "I am Jesus whom you are persecuting." Saul had been persecuting Christians, and Jesus said that in persecuting Christians Saul was persecuting Him. In the Old Testament the Lord says to Israel, "He who touches you touches the apple of my eye." The apple of your eye is the pupil of your eye. You are probably more sensitive about protecting your eyes than any other part of your body, and the Lord says, "He who touches you touches the apple of my eye." Because God loves people, and because God has demonstrated His great love to the world in what He has done, that should be an incentive for us to love the people of God.

The book of Romans unfolds to us that God has purposed to show mercy to people. The fact that God has planned to show mercy to people should be an incentive for us to offer up our bodies as living sacrifices in obedience to Him. Sometimes those of us who believe that God does everything according to his eternal purpose are criticized, and the criticism goes like this: "If I believed as you people do, that God has an elect people whom He has planned to save, then I would not preach. What is the point in preaching if God is to save people anyway?" these critics ask. My answer to that is this: knowing what I know about human nature, if I were not convinced that God had an elect people I don't believe that I would preach. What a useless, foolish thing it would be to preach to people who love sin so much that they will under no circumstances turn away from it on their own power. But when we understand that God has chosen a people before the foundation of the world, and that He has sent Jesus Christ to die for those people, and that He has sent the Holy Spirit to call those people, and that the means of calling those people is through the preaching of the gospel, then that gives me courage and motivation to offer up my body as a living sacrifice. I suppose that there are a few causes that I would give myself to knowing that those causes were doomed to fail. But there are only a few. But when God calls us to offer up our bodies to Him as living sacrifices for the salvation of the world, we are not being called on to offer up our bodies for a useless cause. The sovereignty of God as revealed in the book of Romans guarantees that we will not fail.

When I go turkey hunting, do you know where I go? I go where I think that there are turkeys. I go where I have seen turkey feathers, and turkey tracks, and other indications that turkeys are frequenting the area. I don't go hunting in downtown Kansas City where there are no turkeys. I go where there are turkeys. If I know that turkeys are in the woods where I am hunting, I am encouraged to persevere in my efforts to harvest a turkey even when I may not have heard a turkey that day. If I am going in search of sheep, do you know where I want to go? I want to go where I know there are sheep. Well, the sovereignty of God assures us of this: The world is full of sheep. God has made certain that Jesus is going to get what He paid for. He will not have suffered in vain. There are sheep out there, and Jesus says, "My sheep hear my voice."

Continuing with my turkey hunting illustration, when I am hunting for turkeys, I don't go attempt to call turkeys with an elk call, or with a duck call, I use a turkey call. I use what the turkeys are going to respond to. Similarly, if you want sheep to come into the kingdom, then utilize what sheep will respond to, and that is the gospel. Jesus says, "My sheep hear my voice." Jesus has not promised that they are going to hear the voice of modern psychology, or modern business practices, or modern methods of corporate management. He has not promised that they will listen to entertainment. He has promised that they will listen to His voice. That ought to be an encouragement to you and to me. If our success in evangelism depended upon entertainment, then only entertainers would be successful evangelists. If it depended upon proper management skills, then only good managers would be good evangelists. But success in evangelism doesn't depend upon those. It ought to be an encouragement for you and for me to offer up our bodies to God as living sacrifices because God has made provision to your success. When you are obeying God, he will give you as much success as He wants you to have as an evangelist, as a missionary, as a preacher, and as a servant of His. He has made sure that Christ's work will not be in vain, and He has made sure that your work will not be in vain. Therefore, in view of God's mercies, offer up your bodies to Him as living sacrifices.

Then when you think of the mercies of God, think of the tremendous price that was paid for those mercies, both the mercies that have come to you and the mercies that come to others. It was the price of His own dear Son. That's a strong incentive for me to offer up myself as a living sacrifice.

I am sure that there have been times when you have read the life or the biography of some great missionary, or some great preacher, and after reading that, you shut the pages of that book with the resolve to dedicate yourself more fully to God than ever before because of the sacrifice of the person whose life you have read. For example, God has mightily used the biography of David Brainerd to inspire hundreds of persons to dedicate themselves to lives of sacrificial service in foreign mission work. Brainerd died when he was about thirty years old. He was a missionary to the American Indians, a very sad man, but he sacrificed himself to God as a living sacrifice and then a dying sacrifice. And through reading the example of Brainerd, hundreds and hundreds of people have dedicated themselves to missionary service. Likewise, hundreds of people have dedicated themselves to missionary service after having read Elizabeth Elliot's book Through Gates of Splendor in which she describes the death of five young men who were serving as missionaries to the Auca Indians in the late 1950's. Brainerd died young. Jim Elliot and his brethren died young, but in reading the example of their dying sacrifice, others are moved and motivated to offer up themselves as sacrifices. The example of Brainerd and Elliot are powerful motivation, and rightfully so, but how much more powerful ought the unparalleled example of our Lord be? And it has been. An uncounted multitude have looked at the cross of Jesus Christ and said:

When I survey the wondrous cross on which the prince of glory died,

My richest gain I count but loss and pour contempt on all my pride.

Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small;

Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.

Drops of grief can never repay the debt of love I owe.

Here Lord, I give myself away. 'Tis all that I can do.

We look upon our dying Lord and say, “In view of the great price that You have paid to show mercy to me, and to show mercy to others, I offer myself up to You as a living sacrifice.” That's reasonable isn't it? This is your reasonable service. The second part of verse one says that you offer up yourself, your body as a living sacrifice.

Now moving into the second point, our reasonable service, notice first of all that we are to offer up our bodies to God. Your body matters to God. There are two extremes that we must avoid when we talk about our bodies. The first extreme that we must avoid is that which says that our bodies are not important at all. Some people would say, "It does not matter what you do with your body. It is only what is in your mind that really matters." But that is wrong; both body and mind matter. Your body matters to God. Then the other extreme that we must avoid is that which people leads people to make a god of their stomach, as Paul says in Philippians three. Or their physique, or their figure, or their hair, or their face becomes their god. They actually spend more time putting on makeup than they do reading God's word. They spend more time trying to get big muscles than they do praying to God. They spend more time preparing food and eating food and dreaming about food than they do in thinking about their soul. Those are extremes that we must avoid. Your body does matter to God, but it is not to be a god. It mustn't become a god. Your body matters in life, and your body matters in death. This very body that you have will one day be resurrected. It won't be a different body. It will be this body.

Because I am your pastor, I am going to talk to you for just a minute about something that needs to be talked about, and that is the issue of how to treat the bodies of the dead. Does the Bible have anything to say about it? Does a dead body matter to God? Let me say before I get into what I am about to say that God is capable of resurrecting bodies that have been drowned in the ocean and have been eaten by fish and scattered all over the world. God is capable of raising those bodies, and God is capable of raising the bodies that have been burned to ashes and have been scattered in the ocean or thrown to the winds. God has no trouble keeping track of every molecule that composed those bodies. But does the Bible say something about how bodies are supposed to be treated after they are dead? I believe it does. I am going to have you turn to a few verses of scripture to give you something to think about. Turn first of all to Jeremiah 14:16. My purpose here is not to cause despair to any of you who have had loved ones whose bodies have not been treated the way that I am going to say bodies should be treated. Sometimes people do things in ignorance that cannot be retracted. God is able to take care of that. But you're still alive. You're still able to receive instruction. So I am going to try to give you some instruction about what should happen to bodies after they are dead. You body matters to God. Jeremiah 14:16. This is a part of a curse, and the Lord says, and the people to whom they prophesy shall be cast out into the streets of Jerusalem because of the famine and the sword. They will have no one to bury them, them, nor their wives, nor their sons, nor their daughters, for I will pour their wickedness on them. Notice that part of the curse against these people is that they would not be buried. Turn a couple chapters forward to Jeremiah 16:4. They shall die gruesome deaths. They shall not be lamented, nor shall they be buried, but they shall be like refuse on the face of the earth. They shall be consumed by the sword and by famine, and their corpses shall be meat for the birds of heaven, and for the beasts of the earth. Verse 6 of the same chapter: Both the great and the small shall die in the land. They shall not be buried. Neither shall men lament for them, cut themselves, nor make themselves bald for them. The various rituals mentioned in this last text were signs of mourning, signs of respect for the dead. But the Lord says that these rituals will not be performed for these cursed ones. They won't be buried. Turn forward to Jeremiah 22:19. This is said concerning Jehoikim, the son of Josiah, a very bad man. He shall be buried with the burial of a donkey, dragged and cast out beyond the gates of Jerusalem. In other words, he is not going to be buried at all. He is just going to be thrown out. It seems to me from these verses of scripture that the Lord has a preferred method of dealing with deceased bodies, and that is that they be buried, or that they be entombed. Of course I say this because cremation is becoming increasingly popular in this country, and I think that some Christians cremate their dead without giving any serious thought to the matter.

Turn in your Bibles to Amos 2:1 and here I'll make a point as to why I think that cremation is not an ideal method, or a preferred method of dealing with deceased bodies. Here in Amos 2:1 the Bible says, For thus says the Lord, for three transgressions of Moab and for four I will not turn away its punishment because he burned the bones of the king of Edom to lime, but I will send a fire upon Moab, and it shall devour the palaces of Kerioth. First of all, you see that the Lord is punishing a people for burning the bones of the king of Edom. It was not the mere act of burning, but it was an act of hatred, an act of meanness that they did this. Then the second thing that I want you to notice here is that fire is a sign of God's judgment. For that reason, I think that disposing of a body through burning is an inappropriate means of disposing of a dead body. I don't want to dwell long here, but I did want to mention that to you because probably everyone in this room will sooner or later have the responsibility of making funeral arrangements for someone. I want you to have heard at least one perspective on what the Bible teaches regarding interment of the dead. Your body matters to God in living and in death.

Back in Romans 12:1, having observed that your body matters to God, notice next that you are to offer yourself up to Him as a living sacrifice. We can get some good instruction by thinking about what a sacrifice is. Of course a sacrifice is something that dies, and so you don't get your sacrifice back. You offer your bodies up as a living sacrifice. You are offering it up to Him. He is the owner, and you belong to Him now. He allows you to continue living, but everything that you are and everything that you have now belong to God. So if God wants to take it, it's His. Now there is some relief in that. If you wreck your car, you are able to say, "Lord, somebody wrecked your car." If your house burns to the ground you say, "God, your house has burned to the ground. You are going to find someplace else for your servant to live. It is your responsibility. If you want me to drive a car, take care of it. I belong to you." On the other hand, if God wants to use your possessions and your body for whatever purpose he pleases, he has the right to do that; you have given them to Him. You have offered yourself up to Him as a living sacrifice. It is something that is once for all and you don't take it back.

Further, a sacrifice ought also to be the best that you have got. Don't offer God something that is ragged. God criticized the people in the Old Testament for offering up to Him animals that were blind or crippled. Sometimes that is what we want to offer up to God, just the off-scourings of what is left after we're finished with it. We'll give Him what is left over, the off-scourings of our time, or the off-scourings of our energy. We try to offer those up to God. It is like offering a lame animal, or a blind animal up to Him. A sacrifice ought to be the best that you have got. It will cost you something. You remember there was a time when David had sinned against the Lord, and God sent a plague on Israel. Apparently there was some kind of visible sign that demarked in the heavens how far the plague had progressed, because it says that the angel stopped over the threshing floor of a man named Araunah. So King David went to the threshing floor of Araunah. He was going to offer up a sacrifice to God, hopefully, to appease Him and avert His wrath and stay the further execution of the plague. He comes to Araunah says, "Araunah, I want to buy your threshing floor, and I want to buy these cattle that you are using to operate the run the threshing sledge." Araunah says, "King, you can have it. I give it to you." Now it seems to me that this was no time to quibble about how you obtained your animals for sacrifice. But David thought that is was a time to quibble. In fact he saw his argument not as a quibble but as something that was very important when he said to Araunah, "No Araunah. I will pay you for them. God forbid that I should offer to the Lord that which should cost me nothing." Too often that is exactly what we want to offer to God: that which cost us nothing. Do you think that is an acceptable sacrifice? A sacrifice is costly. It is the best that you have got. Offer up your bodies, then, to God as a sacrifice. What kind of sacrifice? A living sacrifice. In some ways this is harder than being a dying sacrifice.

Let me make some practical application of this. Let me speak first of all to mothers. Some of you mothers work your fingers to the bone. You have such difficult tasks in your running after children, and your life is seems to be utterly consumed with the responsibilities of the home. You have poured yourself out as a living sacrifice for the family. Sometimes you are so tired. I believe that if you are doing it for the glory of God, it is an instance of you offering up your bodies to God as a living sacrifice, and He is pleased with it and he will reward you for your labor of love. You are giving your strength. It is a living sacrifice.

You men who have the responsibility of providing for the family, you work all week. You work so that your family can be fed and clothed and have a place to live. If you are doing it for the glory of God, then you are offering up your strength as a living sacrifice, and you're loving God with your strength. Then at the end of the week you get a paycheck, and that paycheck is like a distillation of all of your work. It is a token that represents your work that you have done all through the week. What are you to do with it? You are to offer it up to God as a living sacrifice. When you come into church on Sunday morning, and you put your offering in the offering box, I urge you to pray a little prayer something like this, "Lord, you have given me a job. I would not have any money if it were not for Your generosity, and now I offer this up to You as a token of my appreciation; it is an offering of my strength to You. Receive this and receive my entire life as a living sacrifice for You." Give God your strength. Give God your time. Give God your wealth. Give God your abilities and your talents. Offer up your bodies to Him as a living sacrifice. Your body is the way that you serve Him in this world. It should be then a living sacrifice, an ongoing sacrifice.

Finally, it should be not only a living sacrifice, but also a holy sacrifice. Holiness indicates the quality of being set apart. You're to be set apart from sin, and set apart from the concerns and the worries of the world. Let your life be holy to God, and when you do, the Bible says that it is acceptable, or pleasing to God. I know that there are times when you work so hard and no one appreciates it. No one accepts it. But that will never happen with God. When you offer yourself up to Him as a living sacrifice, it is be pleasing to Him. It will be acceptable to Him. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, for as much as you know that your work is not in vain. It is acceptable to God. Love God with all your strength.

Other uses require written permission. Contact jimorrick@hotmail.com

Scripture from The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by
Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Back to the Sermons Index