Sermon: The Divine Liturgy Pt. 2 - Living Sacrifice (Romans 11:34-12:3)

The Divine Liturgy Pt. 2 – Living Sacrifice Sunday, April 6th, 2025 Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA Romans 11:34–12:3

Prayer

Father, we thank you for the measure and diversity of your gifts, through which the church is built up and perfected. Teach us now by Your Holy Spirit, to offer ourselves as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable in your sight. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Introduction

Imagine for a moment that you are an ancient Israelite, and you live in a tent in the middle of the desert. However, unlike those naughty Israelites, who complain all the time and grumble about the food and their living conditions, you are a good Israelite. You are like Moses and Joshua, an Israelite with faith. And so as a believer, you know that God is a spirit, He does not actually live in a temple made with hands, He does not have a body that gets hungry or tired and needs to eat. You know that God is the Most High, the Creator, and that the worship He desires is a spiritual soul that clings to Him in love.

• God says in Psalm 50:12-14, “If I were hungry, I would not tell you; For the world is Mine, and all its fullness. Will I eat the flesh of bulls, Or drink the blood of goats? Offer to God thanksgiving, And pay your vows to the Most High.”
• So as a true and believing Israelite, as a spiritual Israelite, you want to worship God in spirit and in truth. And that means first and foremost thanking God, paying your vows, offering to Him your whole heart, soul, mind, and strength. That is your spiritual worship. But it also means manifesting those interior/spiritual affections of the soul with external/bodily actions. And at this time in history (1,500 years before Christ), what external act of worship does the law of Moses require? You have to kill one of your animals.
• Now depending on what kind of sacrifice you intend to offer, there are four basic features that you need to observe if God will be pleased with your worship.
• First, your animal had to be brought to the priest alive.
  • And that meant, transporting your living animal from your house to God’s house. And depending on what tribe you are from, and how far your tent is from the central Tabernacle, you might have to walk a good distance with your animal. We call that a commute to church.
• Second, the animal had to be holy and without blemish.
  • That meant knowing the state of your flock (Pr. 27:23) and then finding the best and healthiest animal among them (the animal you prize the most). Usually this would mean finding a male from the herd, a year old, without any blemish. It might be an ox, or a sheep, or a goat, or if you are poor, you could offer a turtledove or a young pigeon. But whatever the animal was, it could not have any defects, it had to be holy.
• Third, the animal had to be killed, usually by you (here’s the knife, cut the throat, drain the blood). And then the priest has his duty, he takes the blood and sprinkles it on the altar, he divides the animal into pieces like a butcher, he washes the inward parts and then places it on the altar to burn.
  • Notice that you are not a passive spectator in this act of worship, you are involved. The priest has his role, and you have you yours. You have to get your hands dirty and even a little bloody. You are slaughtering something of value, something living, something that belongs to you, and you are offering that to God’s consuming fire. Worship of this sort is work; it costs you something. And when that work of sacrifice is done in faith, that is what pleases God.
• The fourth and final feature of worship i