8/16/2026 Sunday morning sermon

Romans Week 11 : Get Off the Altar and Get to Work 

Transcript

SPEAKER_06 4:38

That has birth Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord.

unknown 5:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 5:34

It's the square Jesus. I call you, I call you. Something comes out of the grave. Jesus. I call you I call you sing you. Worthy of glory. Something comes out of the grave. Every time I call your name. I have a key.

unknown 6:26

With a beauty of a tail.

SPEAKER_05 6:47

Do you have I call you Jesus? I call you, I call you real. Crazy and raining in hell. Something comes out of the grave. I call you Jesus. I call you, I call you single. Worthy of glory forever. Something comes out of the grave.

SPEAKER_04 7:31

James break. Every time I call your name.

SPEAKER_05 7:45

Every time I call your name. Every time I call your team. Every time I call your king.

unknown 9:24

I call you Jesus.

SPEAKER_04 9:28

I call you, I call you here.

SPEAKER_05 9:36

Something comes out of the grave. Every time I call you Jesus. I call you, I call you Save. Will be a glory forever. Something comes out of the grave. Every time I call your name. Something comes out of the grave. Every time I told you Jesus. I call you I call you saving. Will be a glory. Something comes out of the grave. Every time I told you, I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

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. Now, I want you to focus back on the beginning of that just a little bit, to that phrase, a living sacrifice. Living sacrifice. Now, if you know anything about sacrifices in the Old Testament, they uh there's a problem that's built into this phrase that Paul's using because sacrifices usually didn't stay alive. Sacrifices were dead, okay? They offered their animals and they no longer were alive because they uh they killed them and shed their blood so that you know you could have your sins forgiven. They had sacrifices for special things. They had things, rules, and regulations that you had to follow. The whole point of a sacrifice is that it dies when you sacrifice it. So you bring the lamb, you lay it on the altar, and it will stay there. Okay? It doesn't get up, it doesn't wander off and get a snack or check its phone or anything like that. Once that lamb is dead as a sacrifice, it lays there. But Paul said something here that's kind of different. He says, offer yourselves as a living sacrifice, which means that God is asking us to do something that other than Jesus, no sacrifice has ever been able to do, and that's to be living. To be living. All right? So that's a problem for a lot of us. A lot of us have a problem with being a living sacrifice. We come to church on Sunday, we sing the songs, and we raise our hands, and we say, Yes, Lord, take me, take all of me. And we have good intentions and we really mean that at the time that we're saying it. But then Monday morning, once again, we find ourselves negotiating with God like we're uh trying to get out of jury duty, all right? Like we've been assigned a task, but God really can't I just take care of this my way? So I don't know about you, but during the week, I've crawled back off of that altar many times. When I sacrifice my life and I say, God, it's no longer mine, I give it to you. By Monday or Tuesday, I'm crawling back off of that altar because things have changed in my week, and I suddenly don't want to rely on God for everything. We stay on the altar as long as it's convenient for us to do so, as long as the music's good, as long as nobody asks us to actually do anything. But the moment that it gets inconvenient and that serving costs us a Saturday morning or an uncomfortable conversation with somebody, we go back to living ourselves as though the altar were on fire. We have to get off of that altar just as fast as we can because we don't want to do those things. So, how do we actually stay there is the question. I don't think anybody in here has ever had a problem laying your life on the altar. It's staying there that's the problem. So the word conform is used here. It says, do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. We've got to think differently, we've got to act differently, we've got to love differently when we lay ourselves down on the altar of God as a sacrifice. The word conform is interesting here. It's the idea of being pressed into a mold, like jello or something. How many's ever made jello and you and you press it? And once it you put it in the refrigerator, it molds to whatever that container is that it's holding. Well, Paul tells us not to do that. Do not conform or let the world mold you into something that God has not created you to be. That's what he's saying here. It it we don't want to be in the mold of looking out for number one. We don't want to be in the mold of my feelings are the ultimate rule, or of the mold of uh comparison is basically a hobby now, thanks to Facebook. My daughter sent me this Facebook reel, and it was uh of someone in their their beautiful home, and they were getting ready to for fall, and they had their pretty decorations out, and they were eating and drinking pumpkin spice lattes and things like that, getting ready to watch fall movies together. And that's just a screenshot of a moment in time, but we have a tendency to think, boy, I wish my life was like that. We have got to get out of trying to conform to what we see, trying to conform to what society wants us to be, and we've got to learn that we need to fit the mold that Jesus Christ made for us, not what the world is asking for us to do. Paul says, don't get pressed into that mold, instead be transformed. Now, transformed in the Greek, that word is metamorphoo. Metamorphoo in the Greek is transformed. So it's kind of like where we get our word metamorphosis from. Like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. All right? Be transformed from that caterpillar to that butterfly. Do not fall into the molds that this world has that's going to keep you cocooned up and not let you spread your wings and fly. Like God has intended for that to happen when we live in the freedom of Jesus Christ. So here's the key. This transformed doesn't just happen by trying harder. We can't just try harder and make it happen. It happens when we renew our mind. We change what we think about, we change what we believe and what we feed our soul on a daily basis. It matters because what goes in comes out. Y'all have ever heard what you eat, you become. And that's true most of the time, right? You see these people that are larger, and you can look at what they consume compared to the smaller people that are fitness fanatics, and you can tell who's who. It's the same with Christianity, it's the same with spirituality. What you are putting into yourself is what comes out. Are you truly feeding your body with those things that are upright, that are holy, and that allow God to work and to move in you so that when you see other people, God comes out and not the world. How transformed this morning are you? I want to give you two practical rules today, straight out of Romans 12, for being able to stay on the altar. They uh help us to actually live out the living sacrifice phrase that Paul gave to us instead of just singing about it on Sunday and then just abandoning it by Tuesday. Rule number one, let's look at verse three. Verse three of Romans 12. Verse 3, yeah. For by the grace given me, I say to every one of you, do not think of yourself more highly than you ought. But rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. Now, that's hard to do because, guys, whether you know it or not, whether you recognize it or not, we live in the world of a mirror. Everybody has one on them this morning. Your cell phone screen. How many of you you get the selfie shots and you run and you got to get the selfie shot of this? And I see some of you grinning because some of you are like that, and you're constantly in your screen. Uh we have that mirror in our pocket, and we will take approximately 400 pictures of ourselves. This is an average, a week, trying to find the one where we don't look like we haven't aged since 2010. Right? We do that. What's gonna make me look like I'm not the age I am? Let's flip back and take all these selfies and see which one shows. Then you throw the filters in there and they aren't real, right? Right? So what we need to do, we've got mirrors in our cars, mirrors in the gym so we can watch ourselves really not lifting those weights exactly correct, right? We've got mirrors in the gym. Uh what about those magnifying mirrors in a hotel room that shows all your pores and stuff like that, right? So mirrors, there's always mirrors, but here's the deepest issue. We don't just look in physical mirrors, we live in a culture that has turned into self-focus overdrive. Self-focus overdrive. Now, there's a healthy version of taking care of yourself. That's not what I'm trying to say. Everybody should take care of yourself. And it's biblical to take care of yourself, but somewhere along the way, healthy self-care has morphed into an obsession where the mirror. You're thinking too much of yourself. And you say, Well, why shouldn't my feelings get hurt? Guys, because there's a real world out there. There are real people living in that world. The devil is still roaring about like a lion, seeking whom he may devour. And if you give in to every feeling, every whim, every thought, every word, you will live a depressed life and you will always be on edge. Guys, stop thinking of yourselves as somebody that should never be touched or hurt or and realize you are a servant of God and it doesn't matter. It's all about Him. In answer to that post that I saw, why should I help them? Because it's not about them. It's about you and your relationship to God. It's about you and your relationship to God. Their attitudes don't matter, their attitudes do not matter when it comes to where you're going to spend eternity and how spiritual and how close you get to God. Here's a good way to remember what I'm trying to show you. Humility isn't thinking less of yourself, it's thinking less of yourself. Does that make sense? Humility doesn't mean I have to think of myself as less, it means that I stop thinking of myself so much. That's what humility is. You've got to take yourself out of the picture. Then you discover your purpose when you finally look up to God and do everything for God. So that will bring us now to rule number two. Do something with your charisma. And you say, Pastor, I don't have charisma. Every single person in this room was gifted from God with a gift of charisma. It's just where is yours? Where is yours? What is your gift? Verses four through nine will clear this up just a little bit. For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body. And each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy, in accordance with your faith. If it's serving, then serve. If it's teaching, then teach. If it's to encourage, then give encouragement. If it's giving, then give generously. If it is to lead, do it diligently. If it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully. That's how God explains stuff with us. He's saying not everybody has the same gift, but whatever your gift is, that's your charisma. That's what you were blessed with. That's what he gave to you so that you can serve his kingdom to the fullest of your ability. Now, the Greek word for gifts is charisma. The Greek word for gifts is charisma. And you've heard that word before. We usually describe someone who walks into the room and the light just beams from them. That's how we usually think of a charismatic person. But in the New Testament, charisma simply means a grace gift. It's a grace gift. Something given to you by God's grace, not earned by your effort, specifically so you can serve the body of Christ. That's what that's for. So here's what I want you to understand. Every single person needs to find their charisma and get busy for the Lord. Not charisma like in the life of the party, but charisma as in God has deposited something in each and every one of you that is unique, there is a purpose, and He wants you to fulfill it. So most of us are sitting here kind of like a kid that just got a birthday present and they don't know if it's time to open it or not. So you're sitting here with this gift in your lap and you're thinking, what do I do with this gift? Let me let me paint a picture of this. So let's think about a locksmith's shop. All right? Everybody think about a locksmith's shop. He can cut a thousand keys in a single afternoon. They all almost look identical. If I was to take these keys and dump them out on the floor, most of you couldn't just sift through them and find your key that fits your door. Why? Because they all look alike. They all look alike. But I guarantee you there's one key in there that will fit the right door. Which one is it? So it's kind of like with God. You might say, I sing, but there's already singers on the stage. You're that one key that will fit one door. Somewhere there's a person out in this community that has a need, that has a desire, that only you have the key that can unlock it for them. So if you choose to sit and to not serve because you think other people are already stepping up and serving in that role, you're wrong. We each have our own special purpose. We always need more singers. We always need more servers. God didn't hand you a generic mass-produced gift. She's gonna sing, he's gonna sing, she's gonna sing, he's gonna sing. He didn't do that. He has given you your unique gift. Ephesians 2.10 will back this up. It says, for we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which he prepared for us ahead of time. God already knows what he prepared you to do. So don't sit back and not use the talents and the gifts that he's blessed you with because you don't think you'd be of much use. Everybody, the key to the back door is just as important as the key to the front. You might not have a talent that would get up here and hold a microphone. Maybe your talent, Micah. Micah, this past weekend at Back to School Bash. I bet you nobody noticed what Micah was doing. But I watched Micah because I had given him a special job that day. I said, Micah, when you see this parking lot starting to get messed up. Up, get you a broom and start cleaning up the parking lot. And once everybody had stopped what they were doing, some had sat down, somewhere inside, Micah was sweeping the parking lot, picking up balloons that had busted or trash that had been thrown down. Guys, the reason you came to a clean parking lot was because Micah did work that nobody noticed he was doing. You see how that works? It's not important that you stand right here and address everybody. It's not important that you be seen by people. What's important is how God sees you. Does he see you as a servant for the kingdom of God? Or does he see you as a performer that wants to be in front of people making the biggest difference? Who are you today? Look in the mirror and honestly look at yourself spiritually, sober-minded, where are you in your relationship with Christ? These inefficients said that works were prepared for us in advance. God planned it out ahead of time what he wanted us to do. So here are some excuses that we use. You ready for this? Now, some of you are going to nod your head. I did when these excuses when I was when I was writing this out, it says, I'm too busy. I'm too busy. I got too much going on. Busy doing what? Busy doing what? Did you know that some of the greatest workers in God's kingdom, some of the ones that you see heading it up, that are out in front, do other things during the week that keeps them busy? Guys, I work a 40-hour plus job that has nothing to do with this church. So this past week it was much more than 40 hours because we were in the middle of a review. But yet, here's my sermon, all typed out. I'm delivering it this morning, and I was able to play. Now I'm not tooting my own horn, but I'm showing you. You make time for what means something to you. My daughter and her husband, um, they were talking one day, and Caitlin said, Here's what we need to do. We need to start reading. We need to have a time where we're going through the Bible together. And uh I think his comment to her, though he's not against reading, but I'm too busy. But he goes home and he'll plays games. But he doesn't think of that as time that could be used in the word. Like I said, I'm not saying anything about him because I do the same thing. I will go home and I love my Facebook games, y'all. I love them. I had to delete them about two or three weeks ago. And I think y'all remember I sat up here and told you my struggle. I would go home and I would play this game. And then when it got like 11 o'clock at night, I'd say, just one more time, just one more time, 2 a.m., just one more time, just one more time. And and look, if I was gonna make time to stay up to play that game, why didn't I make time to stay up and read the word of God or to talk to him in prayer? So saying I'm busy is not a good excuse. We always make time for what is important to us. For what is important to us. How about I'm too old. That's one I'm on right now, guys. I'll tell you that. That's one I'm on right now. Y'all, I turned 59 in a couple months. And I think, whew, it hurts to get out of bed. My knees creak, my back hurts, I can't walk upstairs. I sit and I watch these young people come in. Uh Christina and Susan and the kids. I call them my kids over here. I've got Aiden and Allison and Ruby, who's downstairs with the kids in Carson, who's probably busy doing schoolwork today, if I was gonna guess. Um I watch them work and I'm like, gosh, I am not pulling my load. That's horrible. God, I guess it's time for me to just hang it up and let the younger folk take over because I'm just too old, God. And I tried that. And you know what he said? Moses was 80. Moses was eighty when God first called him to lead his people out of Egypt. 80. Right? I'm too young. That's the opposite. I'm too young. I've heard that before. I'm too young. Did you know that Timothy was young enough that Paul had to actually write, don't let anyone look down on you because you're so young? Timothy was so young. Guys, this morning we were up here, we were doing praise and worship practice, and here comes little Casen, seven years old. Creamer, taller than he is, and he's lugging two things of creamer up to set it on the coffee table this morning so you guys could have coffee. Seven. You are never too young to serve the Lord. Never too young to serve the Lord. I don't know what my gift is. Lots of people say that. I don't know what my gift is. Fair enough. But if you're just gonna sit in a chair and not try, how are you ever gonna find out? Right? You say I don't know what my gift is. What you're really telling me is, and I don't care to get up and find out either. If you don't know what your gift is, jump in there and give something to try. If you don't like it, we'll find something else. Everybody is able to serve the Lord. So, Paul here, oh, my favorite one of everything, and I've done touched on this some. My gift isn't as important as somebody else's. My gift just isn't as important. That's that's not right. Stop keeping that key in your pocket that might reach somebody else's life. Just like this morning, I asked you to share online. Y'all, you have friends that I will never know. You have friends that I will never reach. And by you sharing that, you can reach them. It's as simple as that. So there's always room for you to work in the kingdom of God. Always. All right, so the foundation, we're looking at the foundation here. What is the foundation that we need to have to be able to transform our minds? Here's what Paul's saying. And this is what I need you to take away from today. If you decide that you want to come out with guns blazing and just serve everywhere and do everything, you're probably going to burn out. You're going to die out. That's what happens. So if we look back at verse 1 one more time, it says, in view of God's mercy. In view of God's mercy. Everything Paul says after this, the living sacrifice, the renewed mind part, the sober judgment, the charisma part, all of it flows out of one thing, and that's God's mercy to you. It's not your effort towards God. It's his mercy towards you. You cannot manufacture humility by trying really hard to think less of yourself. You just can't do it. I told y'all this morning we need to learn to think less of ourselves. Well, here's what happens. Pastor said, I need to think less of myself, so I'm going to start thinking less of myself. Oh, am I thinking about myself too much? Maybe I shouldn't have thought about myself right then. And what happens is you end up thinking more about yourself than you did before, right? So you cannot do these things on your own power. It comes from a relationship with Jesus Christ. You cannot sustain using your gifts for a long haul unless you have God's mercy flowing over your body to allow you. Guys, you wouldn't believe the things that people go through. And if you don't have God's mercy directing you and your and your uh service towards Him, you're not going to you're not going to continue in it for very long. You're going to fall by the road. Uh, you cannot sustain your gifts if you're doing it to prove something to somebody. If you are trying to prove that you can outwork such and such, then you're doing it for the wrong reasons. If you're serving so that you can be seen, you're doing it for the wrong reasons. If you're performing instead of praising, you're doing it for the wrong reason. If you, if Micah would have swept that parking lot just because he wanted everybody to come and give him a pat on the back, it would have never happened because y'all didn't even know it happened until I told you so this morning. You have got to let God's mercy flow on you, and you don't do it for the recognition. You do it for your Savior. You do it for your Savior. 1 John 1 9 says, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. Now, this is your first step in serving the Lord. You have to have a relationship with him if you're going to serve him. You can show up to every Operation Lifeline we have, every back-to-school bash we have, every Easter egg hunt we have. You can show up every Sunday, every Wednesday, Tuesday night. You can knock on a thousand doors in this community with us. But if you don't have a relationship with Jesus Christ, you're doing it all for naught. Because it's all about the relationship, not the religion, the relationship with Jesus Christ. And that's how you sustain the drive that you have to use your talents for him. That's the starting point. He doesn't say clean yourself up and then come and we'll talk about it. You can't do that on your own. He says, confess. Bring him the real you, the real you that you see with sober judgment. Don't try to sugarcoat yourself because he knows you better than you know you. Bring him your real self. And he's faithful to forgive and to purify. Romans 10, 9 and 10 tells us how this relationship begins. If you declare with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and you are saved. Before you can stop staring in the mirror, you need something bigger than yourself to look at. You need something bigger than yourself to look at. Before your charisma will mean anything, it has to be flowing from the source. Right? It has to be flowing from the source. So maybe, as I've been talking to some of you all today, maybe you're doing rule two pretty good, but you're messing up on rule one, or vice versa. Or maybe you've never done a relationship with Jesus Christ at all. So you're not at rule one or rule two because two, because you've never tried. You've never got that relationship with Jesus Christ. That's who I'm talking to this morning. So if y'all will stand with me for just a second, I'm going to ask one thing first this morning. If you have never accepted Jesus Christ into your heart ever, and you want to do so this morning so that you can start having that relationship flow through you, then I want you real quickly to just step out of your seats and come down here. All right. Now, if you have, if you have accepted Jesus into your hearts, but maybe you need some work. Maybe you've been uh crawling off of that altar on Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday, and you feel like you need God to help you transform your mind so that you can stay on that altar all week. Come on down. If that's you, come down this morning. All right. With all heads clear, I'm taking that everybody's right with Jesus this morning. You can take your seats. Take your seats. So now, what happens? You've accepted Jesus into your heart, and you know that you're saved, and you're wanting to transform your mind and you're wanting to have good works for Jesus. What's the next thing that you do? Well, I've got the answer for you. How can I know what God created me to do? That's exactly what your church is here for. That's what we try to help you do. We have something called next steps. And it's where you take a class, I hate to say it like that. We all have a gathering, and we go through a book that tells you what the Church of God believes, it tells you what the Church of God doctrine is, and then we explore a little bit about you and your likes and dislikes, and by the end of it, you are given a list of things that you could possibly do, whether it says you're good at administration, maybe you're a good prayer warrior, and that's what you need. John right here is an excellent prayer warrior. I John is the head of our prayer team. And when you come to the altar, John's always right behind you to pray with you as you come down here because we don't want anybody to do anything alone. But the exciting part is we're doing that class today, okay? I announced it last week, but for those of you that may not have been here, or for those of you that are unsure, we're staying today after service, and we're going to run through that. I'm getting pizza for those that take this class today so that you don't have to worry about going out for lunch. Um, if you can't stay today, but you want in, maybe you want to become a member of the church, you have to go through that gathering together. Maybe you want to teach downstairs to all these kids. I got so tickled last week. Susan was down there, and Susan usually sits over here. Susan is like 70, and she went down there and she was like, Oh, Carla, please make sure you only have me on for one Sunday a month. Because I don't think I could do it any more than that. But if you want to help with the kids, you have to go through that because we background check everybody that works with our kids. You can't work with the kids unless you went through the background check. Um that's going on. If you can't take it today, but you're interested in going through it, then come see me. We'll find a time where we can go through it together. Um, announcements tonight, youth. I see about five of you in the building right now. Five of you. Youth is tonight at six o'clock. But we're starting something new tonight for all of you and for the kids, moms and dads that's listening online this morning. We're starting a kids' group tonight at six o'clock. Um, our kids group have grown. Uh, we're regularly seeing around 15 to 20 a week, and so we decided that we're gonna start them on Sunday nights too. So Sunday night um at 6 o'clock, we're gonna start kids' groups tonight. And then Tuesday night is a night that we go out into the community and just love on people a little bit. We pray for them if they need it. We um we tell them about the church. We don't try to pull them away from any other church. We don't want to do that, guys, because God has a purpose for everybody in every church. We want you where God puts you, but we want them to know that if they don't have a home church, we're here and we're available. Wednesday night, we have a men's group, we have a youth group, and we have a um kids' group, and I'm waiting for someone that God wants to rise up to do women. And I'm sure that she's here somewhere because we don't have a women's group right now. Um, because our women's leader went to youth. She's doing youth now, which is probably the best. What is she, 21? Yeah, so that's a better fit for her anyway. So, but be praying with me that God raises up a female leader that's willing to take over a group. We do all of that on Wednesday nights, and then Friday. Friday, we have missed that. They haven't been they haven't been here for a few weeks because they've been up in Ohio taking care of some business up there. I told John, I said, Bron's been trying to woo, but it's just not like you. Brian's like, woo! But but that celebrate recovery Friday nights. The dinner at 5:30, and that's free. And then at 6 30 the meeting starts. And what that is is for anybody who has any herbit's habits.

unknown 1:02:05

Herb's hang-ups and habits.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:07

Hertz, hang ups and habits. I don't care if it's addiction to alcohol, addiction to drugs, or if it's grief, pride, uh, whatever it might be. Codependency, it doesn't matter. This group's for you. So be here Friday night at 5:30. Um, I think that does it for everybody. Uh anything else that I have forgotten? Nope. All right. Brother John, will you dismiss us this morning?