A Living Sacrifice

Summary

Summary prepared by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon's captions — published in summary form; watch the full sermon at the source.

Preaching in a week of prayer and fasting, Williams starts with the discovery consecration makes: coming off a fast he ate, and ate more, and felt emptier the more he ate — the flesh is never satisfied, and whatever it desires it will always want more of. Against that appetite stands the text: "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service" (Romans 12:1). Living for God is not hard if your mind is made up — you wake up every morning and choose Jesus, die daily, and keep your flesh weak enough that your spirit man can be strong.

What he learned about sacrifice, he says, he learned from his five-year-old son. Training the boy to behave in restaurants with pastors' families, he watched the question grow up: the child used to ask, "Daddy, am I being good?" — and now asks, "Daddy, are you pleased with me?" That is the question of the whole sermon. Sacrifice is not about rules and regulations; it is about never stopping asking God, are you pleased with the way I'm praying, the way I'm living? And a hard distinction follows: abstaining for a season from things God hates is not fasting — that is repentance. Fasting is pushing away the plate of legitimate things for the opportunity to get closer to God.

To understand a *living* sacrifice you have to understand the dead ones. Out of Egypt God instituted the offerings — grain, heave, wave, burnt, thanksgiving, freewill, tithe — and above them the trespass and sin offerings, because all have sinned. In Leviticus 4:23-24 the sin offering is a goat without blemish, inspected in every orifice and behind the ears — and when the perfect one is found, the sacrifice has only begun: you lay your hand on his head and drag a resisting, wild animal that can see the blood of the sacrifice before him down to the altar and slay him there. Leviticus 14:12-13 repeats the wrestle with the lamb. The animal does not want to die. That is why Paul's word is *living*: God is not asking you to die — Jesus did the dying; greater love hath no man — he is asking you to live right, and nobody can make you. The preacher can't pull you out of your pew; Mama can't make you live for God; God himself will not force you to love him.

Isaac is the proof. In Genesis 22 the story belongs as much to the son as to the father: a young man strong enough to throw his hundred-year-old father down the mountain instead lay still on the altar under the shadow of the knife — "Daddy, you're not taking my life; I'm laying it down willingly" — a type of Christ, who said, "No man taketh my life from me, but I lay it down of myself" (John 10:18). The altar call is built on that willingness: there is a fire that falls on an altar when your heart is willing, and nobody has to drag you to it. Carnality is what hinders the move of God; the remedy is an altar you climb onto yourself — and a church that relearns prayer together, because if you cannot pray in the house of God, you do not have a private prayer life.