In his sermon 'Present Your Bodies,' Scott Brown focuses on Romans 12:1, emphasizing the call to present our bodies as living sacrifices to God. He draws on biblical examples and teachings, such as those from John Stott, to illustrate the importance of daily consecration and the pursuit of a life that pleases God. Brown also discusses the distinction between the regulative and normative principles of worship, advocating for worship practices that adhere strictly to biblical commands. He encourages believers to live under the 'new management' of God's authority, integrating both personal and corporate worship into their lives. The sermon underscores the necessity of offering ourselves fully to God, both in everyday life and within the gathered church community, as an expression of our faith and gratitude for God's mercies.

Open your Bibles to Romans 12, find verse one. That will be the only verse in Romans 12 that we will focus on today. But this is, this is the inerrant, all-sufficient sweeter than honey and the honeycomb Word of God 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. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. Let's pray.

Oh Lord, we thank you for this verse for us. We Lord, so know that we need to live a consecrated life. And so Lord we pray that you would take us further today. Amen. You have a very strange outline in front of you that actually just walks through each word or phrase in this text.

Romans 12, one and the entire chapter is a supremely practical street level testimony from the Word of God. It addresses every moment of your life. That's how significant it is. You know at the beginning of the year on January 1st Trent and I announced that this would be the year of practical Christianity because we're cruising into Romans 12 and more of the book of Acts as well. And so the Apostle Paul is here and he's delivering a very strong appeal to present our bodies as living sacrifices.

You know, back in the 1970s and the 1980s, I was reading the books of John Stott and one of the things that he did, what he said he did every morning when he woke up was to say when his eyes first opened and he regained consciousness he would say Lord I give my body to you as a sacrifice. He would open his eyes and say this. He wrote the prayer out, heavenly father, I pray that I may live this day in your presence and please you more and more. Lord Jesus I pray that this day I may take up my cross and follow you. Holy Spirit I pray that this day you will fill me with yourself and cause your fruit to ripen in my life." This is actually the cry of a true believer and it's the cry of all of our hearts who love the Lord and we all we lament at the same time because we saw fall so short of it we lose us we lose consciousness of the sense of the presence of God this is just part of our humanity But what if God would give all of us in this congregation an extra measure of grace that when we opened our eyes, the very first thing we would say, oh Lord, I give my life to you.

Take my body, take my mind, take my emotions. I give all to you. What a blessing that is. There actually is scriptural support for this idea of doing such a thing in the morning. You know when my kids were growing up I would try to teach them about how to greet the day because as we all know some people greet the day with perhaps more sour attitudes than others might do naturally.

But David in Psalm 5 verse 3 he declared, My voice you shall hear in the morning, O Lord in the morning will I lift up my prayer unto thee and Will look up I love that language and will look up to God in Isaiah 26 verse 9 Isaiah he cries out he says with my soul. I have desired you in the night. Yes, by my spirit within me I will seek you early. There he puts the bookends of the day, the night and early in Psalm 63 verse 1. I mean David actually gives us a vision of for his life in the morning.

He says, oh God you are my God, early will I seek you. My soul thirsts for you. My flesh longs for you." And then in Proverbs 8 verse 17, God himself says, I love those who love me and those who seek me diligently will find me Well, what what if what if God gave us an extra measure of grace? So that when our eyes open wide the very first thing we would say is oh Lord I give my body to you. Well that's what the Apostle is speaking of here.

I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God that you present your body, bodies a living sacrifice. What does it mean to do that? It means to hand yourself over. It means to put your heart and your will and your plans under his authority. It means that you subjugate yourself to him, but you're subjugating yourself to a good shepherd.

If you've ever trained dogs or tried to, you know that a well-trained dog will keep his eyes on his master and he will lay down and he will have his eyes on his master. It's such a remarkable thing that God Almighty has invested in dogs because they're able to do that well-trained. And if their master moves, the dog's eyes follow him, his head moves. And if the master gives him a command, he does it. This is the kind of thing that we're talking about here in Romans chapter 12 verse 1.

Now there are two parts of these first two verses. We'll handle the second verse next week. The first part, of course, is the presentation of your body. That's verse one. And then verse two, the implications of that, do not be conformed to this world.

We'll handle that next week. So there's a positive and a negative. The positive is present your bodies. The negative is do not be conformed to this world. We'll handle that next week.

So there's a positive and a negative. The positive is present your bodies. The negative is do not be conformed to this world. This is Christianity. And of course this morning we're just focusing on the first part the presentation of the body so that there would be a church in the world there would be people who when their eyes open and they first gain open and they first gain consciousness they say oh Lord take my body it's yours.

Now there are also two parts of this first verse and the first verse is very clearly about the personal activity of the believer in all of life every day. At the same time there is the language of worship of biblical worship and the worship of God even the worship of God in the sanctuary Even the worship of God in the church. So these two things are resident in this one verse. So we're going to be talking about both of them. The presentation of the body every day all of life and also the presentation of the body in worship.

And we're going to talk about the regular principle of worship. Josh Keith has already set me up so beautifully by reading Leviticus 1, 1 through 9. Thank you very much. And of course David captures these blessings in Psalm 63. I just, I read the first part of it.

Oh God, you are my God, early will I seek you. Then he says, so I have looked for you in the sanctuary to see your power and glory. He addresses both the personal everyday worship of God, your life as worship, and also this regulated worship of God where God brings his people together formally to do very specific things which he has commanded. So those two things are what this sermon is all about. And so let's first talk about the worship of God in all of life.

Does anybody here need to hear this? To just receive encouragement again to live a consecrated life? Do you need that? Amen. Do you need to love God more?

Do you want to love God more? Do you want to love God more? Do you want to be a holy instrument in the hands of God? Well of course you do. Well you have this very strange outline in front of you.

The first line in the Outline is the first word in the text. I I This is Paul the Apostle. He has said at the beginning Paul the Apostle the Apostle a bond servant of Jesus Christ Paul has authority to order the church in a particular way. The church is built on a foundation of the Apostles and the prophets. So here we find this very practical religion and it's created by the work of the Holy Spirit through the Apostles.

And it's very interesting when we get further into this passage, we'll see that there are many, many commands, there are, depending on how you count them, there are 30 to 34 commands from an apostle, commands from an apostle to the church of Jesus Christ. I'm sure this might diminish the force of what this is, but think of it as an executive order. We've had lots of executive orders. I think our president has signed over 70 executive orders and there might be hundreds to come. President Roosevelt issued 1, 081 executive orders.

JFK did 214, LBJ did 325, Reagan did 381, Clinton did 364. So this is the common territory of a president of the United States. Here the Apostle Paul though now is issuing executive orders, commands for the church to fall in line. And as we've spoken about already, most of these are commands for the creation of the relational life in the church how people treat one another but it really begins with how you treat God you present your body as a living sacrifice everything flows from that without that it's very hard to love one another in the church. But you have so many direct commands.

Do not be conformed to this world be transformed by the renewing of your mind think with sober judgment let love be genuine abhor what is evil so and it just goes on 30 to 34 commands we're going to this church is going to walk through on Sunday mornings these commands. They're fantastic. They're so life-giving, they're so helpful. So Paul is a bond servant of Jesus Christ and he is calling the church to be bond servants of Jesus Christ, to put themselves under the authority of God. And then there's this very earnest personal pastoral plea, I beseech you therefore brethren, and he uses a word here that's that is it's a word picture of the Greek words parkelo but what it what it means is one called alongside to help Paul is coming alongside the church in Rome to help them and he's pleading, by the way this I beseech you therefore is not a command it's an appeal.

He's calling for the church to voluntarily from the heart serve the Lord and in a way no one can command you to believe and follow Jesus Christ. Only God can change your heart so that you might do such thing. But here the Apostle Paul is beseeching and this actually is a word that indicates tremendous urgency and it indicates pastoral care and coming alongside to help a church and so would we receive the help that he's offering us today to receive the admonition. Now at the same time it's very clear that the church is a place of exhortation. Pastors are commanded by God, it's their duty, it's their job to exhort.

That's what we have to do, whether we want to or not whether people like it or not we have to do it you know somebody has to do it but it's it's not it's not God's intention to leave us alone God wants to mess with your life God wants to alter the direction of your life and if you're before the Word of God every day, he will do that if you are before him in spirit and in truth. Because our sanctification is progressive, it's actually a never-ending surgical work. You know, I've been very well aware of surgery and what happens with surgery, but to walk with God is to always be in surgery except that where he hurts with his sword he heals at the same time on the way out. But this is the great disturbance of the gospel, I beseech you therefore brethren. And then the word therefore, of course this announces a change in the message and he's referring to the section before in chapters 1 through 11 where the Apostle Paul explains in detail the doctrine of salvation and particularly justification by faith.

He's explained in many different ways what God has done to save sinners and how sinners might be saved in the first part. And so you really, you cannot go forward into chapter 12 until you have understood the first 11 chapters, which speak of what it means to be a child of God and what a blessing it is to have forgiveness of sins to be justified by faith. So that's why he uses the word therefore and it's as if he's saying okay you got you got the basics you've been to school now go out to the street and do something about it that's what he's saying and then he says there's a reason for this plea by the mercies of God I urge you brethren by the mercies of God You could also say the compassions of God. He's appealing to the compassion of God. The motivation for this exhortation is rooted and grounded in love, which is manifested in God's mercies.

Now notice it's plural, mercies. David actually he talks about the multitude of your mercies when you come in to the worship of God when you open your eyes in the morning and you greet the day you are met with a multitude of mercies this is your God praise the Lord God is always trying to pull you into some more beautiful pasture and drink the clearer water that's out there. He is so good. David, now David, he talked about this in Psalm 116 verse 12. What should I render to the Lord for all his benefits toward me?

What? What should I render to him? For all the benefits. In another place he said forget not all his benefits in the Psalms he says what what should I render to the Lord for all his benefits toward me I will take up the cup of salvation I will call upon the name of the Lord I will pay my vows to the Lord now and in the presence of all his people." In other words, now in every part of life and when I come together to worship God, he says, Lord, I am your servant. You have loosed my bonds.

I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving and will call on the name of the Lord." That's Psalm 116. That's an illustration, sort of a exposition of Romans 12 verse 1, but the appeal is based on God's mercy. In other words, you should accept this appeal because God is so good, He's so merciful, you can't find any better than him. He's only asking you to do things that are beneficial to you. You remember remember the story of Polycarp who was one of the early church martyrs and in fact the Carrington's wrote a beautiful book called Perpetua, just beautifully illustrated book, talking about that era and polycarp.

And Perpetua, who is a young girl who was also executed at the hands of the Romans. But they are chiding polycarp to take the vow to accept Nero or Caesar as Lord. But you know they're chiding Polycarp you know to take the vow to to accept Nero as or Caesar as Lord and they're telling him take the oath I'll let you go just revile Christ That's what the Proconsul said. And this beautiful, famous, so relatable line for a Christian, Polycarp answered, for eighty and six years I have been his servant and he has done me no wrong. And how can I now blaspheme my King who has saved me?

By the mercies of God." He loved the mercies of God. It was greater than any possible threat on his life. So God is motivating us through love and mercy. You know at the end of chapter 11 we read, what is the fountain of all blessing, of him, through him, and to him, are all things to him be glory forever, amen. So this is the motivation, it's the mercies of God.

You can build your life on the mercies of God. Remember, do you remember what Jeremiah said? His mercies will never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness, oh Lord.

Now, notice he's speaking to brethren. He's speaking to brethren. They're living in Rome. Nero is the emperor. They're being slaughtered in the Colosseum.

Life is really hard. Christianity is directly opposed to the Roman system. For 300 years, the Romans tried to stamp out Christianity and then Christianity stamped out Rome and that's the way it'll always be. You cannot persecute the church out of existence because these are people who've known mercy they know someone better than Pharaoh and Nero so these brethren they're being sanctified in Rome in this pagan city And then we come to this command regarding the body, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. In this sentence, we find both parts of life, all of life and the worship of God.

Now, but they have some blending actually. The language that the apostle uses is the language of temple worship in the Old Testament. And the, as we read in Leviticus chapter 1 verses 1 through 9, the worshiper, the one who loved God, would bring a sacrifice, an acceptable sacrifice without blemish and deliver it into the hands of the priests and the priests would lay it on the altar as a sacrifice for sin and of course in the New Covenant Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. But now in the New Covenant, you are the sacrifice, not the animal. You are not a dead sacrifice but you are a living sacrifice.

How many times, okay, how many times have you heard a preacher say the problem with a living sacrifice is he always wants to crawl off the altar. Have you heard that before? Wow! Well, I've heard that many, many times. Maybe that's just because I've been around a long time.

But that's true. A living sacrifice often wants to crawl off the altar. And that's sort of our problem. It is a holy sacrifice. That means that this is a person whose life has been set apart.

To be holy is to be set apart, to be distinct like no other, like the Lord's day. It's a holy day. It's like no other day. God says don't live the Lord's day like you live every other day. Make it so different, focusing on God, you know, from the beginning to the end of the day.

It's a, you are a holy sacrifice. In other words, you've set, you have set your life apart from God, before God. Now, the two ordinances of the church, baptism and the Lord's Supper, are really a declaration of that same thing. When you get baptized, you're saying, I have set my life aside to be under the authority of Jesus Christ. I Am living a distinct life like I did not live before in the Lord's Supper.

You have the same thing you're saying You're saying that you have been saved by grace and your holiness is from the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ. And so All of this to say is that the cost of discipleship is the complete surrender to God. And Jesus Christ is the example. Jesus Christ conquered death through the laying down of his body, through the suffering and death. He was crucified and consecrated.

That's the picture of the life of the believer. It's actually a totalitarian demand. He wants all of you. Take my life, my whole life, and let it be consecrated, Lord, to thee. He says to present your bodies.

This is the idea of yielding your body, yielding your body. And the apostles already made it clear in Romans that we're always yielding our body to something. If we flip back to Romans chapter six, all through Romans chapter six you have this idea. He says, therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin." So he's talking about what you present your body to, not as an instrument of unrighteousness, But he says, but present yourselves to God as alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness.

So he's talking about the whole body. You're the instruments of your body, your hands, your feet, your eyes, everything, your emotions. You present it to God. In verse 16, he says, Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness. So we're always presenting our bodies to something.

Verse 19 in Roman 6, for just as you presented your members as slaves of uncleanness before you were a believer and maybe Have even fallen into such a thing as a believer and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness So now present your members as slaves of righteousness. This is the presentation of the body. Either one way to sin or the other way to righteousness. And we are either presenting ourselves one way or another. Paul also makes it clear that we were once slaves of sin.

In 1 Corinthians 6 19, the Apostle makes it very clear that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. He says, or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own. So it's so appropriate when you will first wake up in the morning when you gain consciousness that you would say oh Lord take my life. In first Corinthians 6 20 we learned that we were bought with a price and there's an implication of it for you were bought with a price therefore glorify God in Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit which are God's.

The Apostle Paul he talked about the the way this works in life he says in 1st Corinthians 927 but I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified. Now when we were in Romans chapter 6, I gave an illustration that your body is like a castle and there's always some someone vying for the control of your castle, wanting to get in and take over. But here, your life, your body, your mind, your mouth, your ears, your hands, your feet, your emotions, every part of your body, God is saying, I beseech you. I beseech you. Listen to the beseeching.

Now, frankly, what we do with our bodies tells the story of our spiritual condition. It not only shows us who we are and what we value, but it also casts us in a direction. And we're actually presenting ourselves all day long, even from the moment that you wake up and gain consciousness. We're always subjecting ourselves to some thought or some object or some person or some sound or some philosophy. And there's never a moment in which we are not a slave of someone.

And he's urging a different kind of slavery. It's a voluntary slavery where you present yourselves. Here's how this gets down to everything in life. When you listen to a podcast you're presenting your body. When you listen to an audio book or you turn on Spotify, you are presenting your body.

And when you click on an internet site, you're presenting your body. But the Christian is a holy sacrifice. And notice also an acceptable sacrifice. This is also rightly translated pleasing, a pleasing sacrifice. Hey, this is one of the most important phrases in the chapter.

What does it mean? Well, it means that you can actually be pleasing to God. You can. You can be pleasing to God. There's this popular idea and you hear it quoted, you hear Isaiah 64 6 that all your righteousness is filthy rags you've heard that before and but there's a there's a wrong way of understanding that as if everything you've ever done is just filthy rags.

You're just filthy rags. And my view is Isaiah 64, 64, 6 is talking about heartless, hypocritical, half-hearted obedience. It's smoke in the nostrils of God. Isaiah 1 talks about it, Isaiah 58 talks about it, and other places. But here's what we learn here.

Presenting your body as a holy sacrifice means that it pleases God. It pleases God when you do that. And there are all kinds of other places in the Bible that tell you that you can be pleasing to God. Everything isn't filthy rags. Now none of our obedience is perfect, okay?

That's not what we're talking about. But in Colossians 1 10, Obeying your parents and honoring them pleases God. In 1 Thessalonians 2, 4, teaching the word of truth pleases God. Like I think when men actually come up here and preach the word of God in sincerity and truth, I think it does please God. Praying for governing authorities pleases God, 1st Timothy 2 verse 13.

Supporting your family members pleases God, 1st Timothy 5 4. Keeping his commandments pleases God, 1st John 3 22. When you obey God, when you present your body to God, you are pleasing God. And that's why it's possible When you die and you open your eyes before the throne of God, God will say well done good and faithful servant. You can please God.

I hope that's encouraging to you. Everything you're doing isn't filthy, okay? If you want to read more about this there's a great section in Kevin DeYoung's book A Hole in Your Holiness and he talks about this really false interpretation of Isaiah 64. Okay, don't forget this. If God has your body, He has everything.

If God has your body, he has everything Have you ever driven down the road and seen a sign under new management Somebody picks up a decrepit business and they're going to make it better. And sometimes actually it becomes, you know, quite, quite very, very much better. But the Christian is under new management. The Christian is submitting himself, his body, to God. And so he has a completely different authority in his life.

It's not the culture, it's not his friends, it's God. So, when we wake up in the morning, it can be a declaration that you're under new management. Baptism is a declaration that you're under new management. The Lord's Supper is a declaration that you're under new management. Presenting your body before God is a declaration that you're under new management.

Okay so this is I've been speaking about the personal everyday life, you know, God's authority in all of life. Now I want to talk about the gathered worship of God, which is actually a very, very special thing. God has always gathered his people together and he's always told them exactly how to do it. So there's nothing more important than to gather with the people of God to engage in the right worship of God. And our confession, the Baptist confession, speaks of this.

There's a distinction in the way that worship is conducted in modern churches and you can call one way the regulative principle of worship and another way the normative principle of worship. In the regulative principle worship declares that the church should only worship in the way that God has explicitly commanded and permitted in Scripture. That if the Bible doesn't authorize a particular practice, it must be excluded. And of course, it's based on many, many places, not just in the Old Testament. You have in Leviticus 10, one and two, where Nadab and Abihu, they offer a sacrifice which God did not command.

That was their problem. You find the same thing with Saul when he went to sacrifice prematurely. He did something that God did not command him to do. In Matthew 15, nine, Jesus rebukes worship based on the commandments of men. In the normative principle of worship, says that you can do whatever's not explicitly forbidden, as long as it in your mind glorifies God.

If you embrace the normative principle, you've accepted a way of worshiping God that is subject to the creative imaginations of man. And if you embrace that, pretty much the sky's the limit. You can do whatever you want. And here's paragraph one in the Baptist confession on religious worship. But the acceptable way of worshiping the true God is instituted by himself and so limited by his revealed will that he may not be worshiped according to the imagination and devices of men nor the suggestions of Satan under any visible representations or any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scriptures.

And so you know in modern worship you have skits and plays and movies and movie clips and things like that. I even I can't believe I saw this with my eyes. Tim Keller's church, he's now deceased, in New York, he had men in tight leotards dancing across the stage doing interpretive dance in the worship service. These are like the invention, that's like a pretty extreme example, isn't it? But the acceptable way of worshiping God is listed here in the confession.

The reading of the scriptures, preaching and hearing the word of God, teaching and admonishing one another in Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with grace in our hearts to the Lord. Also the administration of baptism and the Lord's Supper are all parts of religious worship to be performed in obedience to Him with understanding, faith, reverence, and godly fear. Moreover, solemn humiliation with fastings and thanksgivings upon special occasions, they ought to be used in a holy manner. You know, last week I was reading Leviticus chapter eight, and you have this statement, which I think so summarizes the Regulator Principle. This is what the Lord God commanded to be done, Leviticus 8.5.

And so the worship of God by divine command must be regulated by God and by God alone. I was reading Leviticus 23 probably last week. Six days shall work be done and the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work on it. It is the Sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings.

Matthew Henry says this, it is a holy convocation and assembly, an act of publicly making a symbol, a signal or a sign for the purpose of the community gathering together, and that's what we do. We gather together and we do the things that God has commanded, and the elements of worship, our prayer and scripture reading and preaching, all the things that we attempt to do here. You know, I saw recently at church, they had Star Wars Sunday, everything was Star Wars. Okay, look, this is the normative principle of worship. That it leads to wherever the most creative guy in the room is basically.

And it subjugates the church to man's creativity. A few years back, I traveled to Scotland and I was studying the Scottish Reformation. And I was very focused on John Knox. I ended up, as a result of that, writing a small booklet called Counterfeit Worship, Essays on the Inventions of Man and the Worship of God. But here is John Knox, All worshiping, honoring, or service invented by the brain of man in the religion of God without his express commandment is idolatry.

And the problem with the normative principle is that it really subjects the church and the worship of God to really a production by a priesthood of coolness technicians and artists and actors. And there's tremendous pressure on church leaders to do something just so fantastically amazing gripping you know to scintillate everybody but what God has done is He's given his word and he's given singing and he's given fellowship. He's just given us things that we actually really thrive by, even though we're often looking for sort of the next emotional jag. But God wants to take you, take you in a more compelling direction. And of course, you know, as we come together and worship God the way that he has prescribed, no, we don't do it perfectly, We're doing the best we can.

But God meant worship to be an encounter with Jesus Christ. And even with one another in our singing because we sing to one another and we admonish one another and we sing the same words, we're bound together in unity. Now here's a reality. If the worship service that contains the scriptures and singing and all those things, if it's boring to you, it probably means that you are boring to God. That you weren't all there.

You did not present your body as a living sacrifice in the prayers. You did not present your body as a living sacrifice in the preaching or in the Lord's Supper. You just weren't into it. So, here's a diagnostic. Okay, how are you doing?

How are you doing with that? You know, one time years ago, probably 20 years ago, somebody came to our church and said, boy, it's really hard to worship in your church. And what she met was the band just wasn't cool enough. Well, in the worship of God, you are the band. You are the one who's presenting your body as a living sacrifice.

It's not done for you. So a diagnostic. Okay, so when you get in your car, you know, you probably should pay attention to what's on your dashboard. How's the oil pressure? What about the gas gauge?

What about the speedometer? What about the heat gauge? Well that's what I think we should do here. You know, what are the dials telling us about the oil pressure, the work of the Spirit, the gas gauge, the speedometer, you know, how are we doing? This passage is a wonderful diagnostic to just confront us with that.

There's really no excuse for a true believer to come into this church and say I didn't like the worship it didn't move me We're not trying to move you. We're trying to bring you the truth of God And that's why when we open up the service, we open up the Bible, and then a man who's cried out to God, he prays. And then men pray in the church, and We sing several songs. They're all focused on truth. They're all grounded in the truth of God.

That's what the church needs. And then we read scripture. We read scripture in this service, usually at least four times. I don't know if you noticed. We read, why?

We want the church to be focused on God, on the word of God. And if it's not enough for you, maybe you're not enough for God. Or maybe you don't love God and his word. You want something more interesting and there are coolness technicians all over the place that can really wow you up. But at Every step of the way in our church literature, we're trying to provide an opportunity for all of us to present our bodies as a living sacrifice to God and the truth of his word.

And that's why we plan our worship services the way that we do. Usually when the worship fell short, it wasn't the worship that fell short. We fell short of presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice. Now I'm not here to say that it's always so easy to do that. We come in tired, we might come in discouraged, there are all kinds of things that affect us.

And we know that. I think in God and His mercy, He knows our frame. And so what He does is He gives us thing to try to take us out of the state in which He found us when we came together to worship. Okay. I really had one single motive or desire or goal this morning, And that is that when we meet a new day, we would be the kind of church who when we opened our eyes, we said, Lord, take my body, take my life.

I want to glorify you today. And that when we come in to the corporate worship of God, that we all come together. We call we we come in from all places around town And we come in here together and we're coming to present our bodies a living sacrifice as one body together to worship the God of the universe. I was grateful that Josh had us sing the song before the preaching. Take my life and let it be.

Consecrated Lord to thee. Take my moments and my days. Let them flow in ceaseless praise. Take my hands and let them move at the impulse of thy love. Take my feet and let them be swift and beautiful for thee.

Take my voice and let me sing, always only for my king. Take my lips and let them be filled with messages from thee. Take my silver and my gold, not a mite would I withhold. Take my intellect and use every power as thou shalt choose. Take my will and make it thine, it shall be no longer mine.

Take my heart, it is thine own, it shall be thy royal throne. Take my love, my lord, I pour at thy feet its treasure store Take myself and I will be ever only all for thee. Let's just take a few moments to meditate on these things. Lord, we thank you for giving us your word to teach us the way in which we should go. Your mercies are new every morning.

You are the God of all mercy. Where would we go to find more mercy than at your throne? There's nowhere. So Lord I pray that you would give each of us a heart to seek you, to seek your face, and to present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is our reasonable service. Amen.