Bible Treasures from the Reformation #6

Stewardship– November 12, 2017 Bible Treasures from the Reformation #6: The Priesthood of All Believers Romans 12:1-2

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Dear brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus, How many priests are there in the Lutheran church? Would you say “none”? Or maybe all the pastors? Since I talked about our theme for today right from the beginning, this should not be a trick question. How many priests are there in the Lutheran Church? The right answer is all of us--every single believer, pastor and people alike. All of us make up the priesthood of all believers.

You heard it in our theme verse for today: But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 1 Peter 2:8

The idea that God calls us his priests may sound strange in our ears, but in Luther’s day it was even worse. This truth, which he had rediscovered in the Bible was not only considered radical, but heretical. In his day, priests were considered to be a special religious class, better than the regular people and much closer to God, because they had dedicated their lives to the Lord.

Luther wrote: “To make a priest, the pope or bishop anoints, shaves heads, ordains, consecrates, and prescribes garb different from that of the laity, but he can never make a man into a Christian or into a spiritual man by so doing. He might well make a man into a hypocrite or a humbug or a dumbkopf, but never a Christian or a spiritual man. As far as that goes, we are all consecrated priests through baptism.”

Where did the idea of the clergy being priests come from? It came from the Old Testament, as the Lord appointed Aaron, the brother of Moses, to be the first high priests, and all of his descendants were to be in this special class to serve the Lord. In the Old Testament, priests prayed to God for the people, they served in the temple and offered sacrifices of animals for the sins of the people. The stress was on sacrifice. Only a priest could do that. So in the church of the middle ages, they taught the priests were a special class of people, like in the Old Testament. In addition, only a priest could conduct the mass, because the Lord’s Supper was supposed to be a sacrifice of Jesus over and over again.

But here’s the important truth: Something changed, and that was the coming of Jesus. He was the great high priest, the fulfillment of the priesthood. Hebrews 7:27 Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day. He sacrificed for our sins once for all when he offered himself. And to signify the end of those sacrifices of animals, when Jesus sacrificed himself and died, an earthquake shook the temple and the great veil hiding the Holiest Place of God split apart. The temple and its sacrifices were done. All sin had been washed away in the blood of Jesus, the great Lamb of God.

So the New Testament has a different message about priests and they are definitely not the clergy. Pastors have a different function. Luther explained: “For although we are all priests, this does not mean that all of us can preach, teach and rule. Certain ones of the multitude must be selected and separated for such an office. He who has such an office is not a priest because of his office, but a servant of all the others, who are priests. When he is no longer able to preach and serve, or if he no longer wants to do so, he once more becomes a Christian like any other.”

So as your servant, I am here to guide all of you priests in functioning like a priest should. And the most important thing a priest does is make sacrifices.

1. We Offer Living Sacrifices What does St. Paul say about that? Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Let’s look at the end of the verse first. Paul mentions worship. There are two main words that are translated as worship. One is to bow down before God in humility and reverence. The other means to serve him. This is the word for service. It is no accident that we call what we are doing a worship service. . What is true and proper worship? It’s offering our bodies as living sacrifices. Paul’s not talking about going to church, not even daily devotions and Bible reading and prayers. That’s offering our souls to God. Here, he is telling us to do something with our physical bodies, and this will be something holy and pleasing to God.

Does that strike you as strange – talking about using our bodies as something that’s holy and pleasing to God? So often we talk about the sinful flesh, and we might get the idea that our bodies are innately evil. But our souls were messed up by sin just as much as our bodies. Jesus redeemed us and freed us from sin completely, both body and soul. Our bodies will be saved too, as they will rise from the grave and we will glorify the Lord for eternity, both body and soul together. And the Lord desires that even now, we worship him with our whole being, both body and soul.

We worship him with all parts of our bodies. Our ears are holy to God as we listen to his Word. Our hands are holy to God as they reach out to work and to touch someone with love. Our feet are holy to God as we walk in God’s ways, not in the ways of the world. Our eyes are holy to God when they turn away from sin and lust and look to Jesus. Our lips are holy to God, when they are speak and sing about God, for God and to God. God wants all of us, not just a little part.

Paul says: Offer your bodies as living sacrifices, and this is our spiritual service. Before Jesus came, the priests in the temple offered the sacrifices of animals, whose blood atoned for sins. No longer does the lord desire dead sacrifices of animals. He desires our living selves as sacrifices. We act as priests serving God when we offer ourselves. And when we worship God like that, it will mean sacrifices. It means doing things for the Lord and for others when we’d rather spend our time on ourselves. It means following his commandments when our sinful nature would rather follow the world. It means sacrificial giving for his work, not just leftovers.

Once again, the Lord wants us to be LIVING sacrifices, not dead ones. Many Christians offer themselves as if they were dead sacrifices. What do I mean by that? They have been taught what is the right thing to do, and do it because they have to, not because they want to. Have you ever felt forced to make a sacrifice for God, forced by the pastor who asked you to do something, or forced by a guilty conscience? That’s a dead sacrifice. Sometimes Christians think: I’ll do what God wants, I’ll give money for his work, so he’ll bless me and give me what I want. How would you feel about a gift that’s given to you, only because the giver wants something from you? Let’s say someone gives you a car, only because they want you to take them wherever they need to go. That’s not a gift, that’s a job! How do you think the Lord feels when we give our lives toward him, only because we want something from him? That’s not a gift to him, it’s more like a bribe.

In baseball, there is a play called a sacrifice. A player is willing to hit the ball, usually far out into the outfield, to advance another runner. He knows he will be out and it doesn’t help his batting average. He doesn’t think of himself, he does it for the team. A living sacrifice is loving others because you care and you want to, even if it means inconvenience or money or time or you don’t get what you want. So, why would you do that? What’s the motivation?

For the right motivation, let me remind you about another sacrifice. That sacrifice was given freely and lovingly by the Son of God. Jesus gave himself totally, gave his very life on the cross so that we could be his forever. He knew we were headed for eternal trouble because of our sins, so he willingly paid for every sin. And for him, that meant cruel punishment, and pain and suffering. It meant heartache and backache. It meant separation from God, and then separation from earthly life in his death on the cross. That’s sacrifice, direct from the love of God.

Do you notice what Paul says at the beginning? Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice. Paul doesn’t threaten, he doesn’t thunder with fire and brimstone, death and damnation. He simply urges us: View God’s mercy, look to Jesus, see his sacrifice, witness his love. He’s the reason for doing something so extreme as offering your whole self, body and soul, as a sacrifice. He’s the one who makes it a living sacrifice. Because he took away all our selfish sins and made us alive, we can offer our whole lives to him, and to others. In view of God’s mercy, we can live totally for God. Jesus makes all the difference.

Part of giving sacrifices to God is sacrificial giving for his work. Today we want you to take home the materials for this and work through a plan for your financial giving for 2018. That’s a part, but only a part of our true and proper worship. But remember: you are a priest and that means serving the Lord in every way possible.

You may have noticed that I have only covered one verse of our passage for today. I had a decision to make: Either rush through the second verse right now or wait until next week. The second verse is worthy of an entire sermon by itself, and it’s still on the theme of being a decent priest for God. So for today remember that you are a priest, and priests worship God. We serve him and thus worship him willingly, freely, cheerfully every day of our lives. So what I want you to think about is this: What is one specific thing I need to sacrifice, to honor the Savior who sacrificed everything for me? Amen.