Real Worship

00:00 - Speaker 1 Real Life presents the Jack Hibbs Podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture. 00:09 - Speaker 2 Listen, with all due respect to the Red Cross or to whoever, United Way, all that stuff, hey, bring all the help you can, but only you have the gospel, Only you have the cross, Only you have the empty tomb. It's only you that can say here is nourishment for your body and here's nourishment for your soul. 00:32 - Speaker 1 You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackhibbscom slash podcast Today. If this podcast lifts you up and encourages you to live a more fulfilled life in Christ, then make sure you leave us one of those five-star ratings. To us that's like saying amen or yes. Then that rating will encourage others to listen Now open your hearts to what God's word has to say to you. Here is Jack Hibbs. 01:00 - Speaker 2 Paul says to them I beseech you, I urge you, I am begging you, the believers in Rome, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service, and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. And all of God's people said amen, number one, jot it down if you would. It is this. Last week we saw that if we have one life to live, for now, as a believer and I remember I stressed for now, we have one life to live. Remember I used that acronym from our youth YOLO. You only live once, false doctrine. Remember I told you that's from Satan. We do not only live once. There's an eternity. When you die. You don't listen. Your body dies. You say I don't believe in God. 01:59 Your body's still going to die. Here's the shocker for you is that when you die as a non-believer, your body dies but you are still very much alive. You just won't like the destination. Everybody lives forever. The Bible says there's either an eternal hell or there's an eternal heaven, and the choice is yours. And God bought the ticket on the cross and he rose again from the dead to empower that purchase price. And God extends the invitation on the cross. And he rose again from the dead to empower that purchase price. And God extends the invitation Choose me and live, Reject me and die. The choice is yours. 02:33 We claim to be a culture. We love choices. We might even say in some way we're pro-choice. Listen, when I say pro-choice, we immediately think of abortion. But let me put it to you this way God's pro-choice, pro-choice. This way God wants you to use your will and your mind and decide from your own self who you will worship. Joshua said choose today whom you'll serve. The choices we make. 03:03 Church matters in a very important way. I want to give you this quote. I forgot who it's from, but it's great. Right relationships mean right living. You ponder that for a moment? Right relationships mean equate to produce right living Many times in our lives we can say, boy, I wish I wouldn't have hung out with them, because look where I'm at now. Or, I'm sure, glad I bumped into this group of people, because everything's turned since for the good. Are you hearing me? It matters. Your mom told us don't hang out with bad people. Why? Because you become like those you hang out with. 03:45 And Paul the Apostle is saying to the church and to the believers at Rome here's what I want you to do. I want you to worship God by presenting your bodies as living sacrifices to God. God doesn't want you dead, he wants you alive, because he can't do anything through a dead person. He needs your body, he wants to use your body. And so the first thing we saw last time is this that we are called by God to give him our attention. And secondly, now we look at this, and it is in fact our bodies. Point number two one life to live means this give God your body, your body. So wait a minute, pastor Jack, like my body, body, your body, body, your body. You say wait a minute, pastor Jack, like my body, body, your body, body Like what parts of my body? All the body, like the private parts. Those are his. I thought those were like mine. Nope, on loan from God. God, what you do with them reflects upon God in the end. He's your creator. He made you the way that you and I are in his image. We know what's right, we know what's wrong, we know what's good, we know what's bad. We got that from God. And now that you know the word of God, god says now that you know me, I want you to walk with me. And oh, by the way, I walk in a way listen everybody, I walk in a way of sacrifice. 05:11 We touched on this last week a little bit. It is the God of the Bible who was the first one to offer up a sacrifice, not man, you say. Are you sure about that? Yeah, let me put it to you this way. You remember, adam and Eve sinned. So what did God do? God responded by taking an innocent animal and offering that animal up. And clearly, god skinned it, because it said that he placed the skin of the animal to cover Adam and Eve's nakedness. The very first one to produce a sacrifice was God. We therefore, as children of God in his family, we're invited now by God to offer up sacrifice. 05:55 That sacrifice is not you dedicating your wife to the ministry? Did you hear? I didn't say your life, I said your wife. Did you hear I didn't say your life, I said your wife. Pastor Jack, we're all in. I am dedicating my husband. That's cute, but that's not how it works. You got to dedicate yourself. Nobody can do it for you and you cannot do it for somebody else. 06:22 Paul is speaking strong words and he says right here, regarding our bodies, look at it with me. He says present yourself as living sacrifices. Watch. He says that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. So the first thing is this, if you jot it down, is faith. How do I do this? You do it by faith, church faith. Listen, this is going to be. You say I can't see faith, I can't feel faith, I don't know if I believe that you will in a moment. Watch this. Faith does not exist in a vacuum. Faith explodes. You can't contain faith. 07:01 Do you guys remember? Maybe you don't, maybe it was a SoCal thing growing up, but somebody had, there was this thing. It was kind of like silly putty but it was like really gooey, it was like wet Slime, but somebody had. There was this thing. It was kind of like silly putty but it was like really gooey. It was like wet Slime. You do remember you bunch of oldies? 07:19 Do you remember when you had slime? You would buy slime. See, people would pay money for this. You would pay money for it. You would open it up and you would, and it was horrible. After a moment it's everywhere. You try to squeeze it. What did it do, remember? It's kind of therapeutic. You'd squeeze it and it would go between your fingers. But what would happen if you tried to nail it to the wall, so to speak? It would just run. It could not be contained. That is a gross picture of what faith is. You can listen, try to hang on to it. It's on the move. You can't pin it down. It goes, it sticks to stuff, but then it spreads. 07:55 Faith is an active verb and it is native to the Christian life. There's no such thing as spectator Christianity. It doesn't exist. It's a lie. To be a spectator and a Christian it's impossible. Everywhere you found Jesus. What was he doing? He was loving on people. What a wild way. Also, he loved huh. A woman was caught in the act of adultery. She was busted. They wanted to kill the woman and Jesus sees her repentant heart and he forgives her and sends her on her way with a new life. Jesus comes across a little 12-year-old girl who's dead. He raises her from the dead. Jesus sees all of the followers that are listening to his messages and the day is now late and he feeds them with food, bread and fish miraculously. 08:49 The ministry of Jesus. It's the same ministry that he conducts today in your life, if you're willing, and the number one thing regarding this text here is that you present your body to God. Now, don't think of any excuses like, well, my body's little, or my body's big, or my body's thin, or my body's fat, or my body's ill, or my body what? He doesn't matter to him, don't you know? Your body belongs to him. Look in your health. He wants to use your body. In your sickness, he wants to use your body. If your body belongs to him and the Bible says it does what if you are sick? Does he not know? He may not cause the sickness, because we live in a fallen world, but he'll use it. Are you not a follower of Jesus? Yes, then listen. You're not somehow set aside because of some ailment that has come to your life. 09:46 God is setting you up for a ministry. I'm not going to give you details. I would never give you details on this. I went to my doctor that I have to see every six months. I went to my doctor and this last time, on Monday, he walks in the room and I've been sharing with him for a long time, but he walks in the room. 10:10 What doctor does this? He walks in the room. What doctor does this? He walks in the room and he goes, come here and he scoops me up and holds me and I'm thinking you know, man, this is so Jesus-like. Jesus is the doctor. He wants to hold you, but your body, we're to present it to God. 10:38 The word present means to have it come forth. The word present, as you can imagine it means to bring it forth, bring it out and to lay it down or to make it available. God is saying to you and I, today, I want to have your body be available to what I want to do, and this is very timely. God's timing is awesome. So, with all that's going on in Southern California right now, right, some of the biggest churches in the world, or at least in America, are in Southern California. So, listen, I would predict that the biggest magnitude of love response would be coming from the churches of Southern California. That's what I'm expecting to happen. This is our golden moment, so I'm hoping to see right, don't you, all of these Christians bumping elbows together, knocking each other down to help? 11:30 Love does that? Why? Because, and how do we do it? We do it with our bodies. See, we've kind of written off our bodies. Well, I'm going to heaven, hallelujah, and we think about heaven, and that's great. But listen, you don't sit around and just dream about your retirement all day long while all the work is being passed by. No, you got to do your work by. No, you've got to do your work. Same thing about the believer in heaven. Heaven is, that's there. We're going to it at the right time. In the meantime, we are to present our bodies as living sacrifices to God. And holy meaning this usable. 12:05 I loved Pastor Chuck Smith would always say this. Always to the pastor's conferences, chuck would say make sure, men, you keep yourselves usable. What a great word, because we can become so quickly disqualified from ministry. Keep yourself usable, present yourself to God. So we would say Lord, here I am, use me. 12:32 And I think God is saying that to every Christian today that takes faith. Because here's what's fun about faith. You thought it was invisible. You thought wrong, because faith is so active. God will get a hold of you and those hands that you held up a moment ago, that's exactly how Jesus is going to be touching people. With your hands, it's your feet that are going to be taking Jesus to people who would otherwise never cross the threshold of a church. That is awesome. This horrible crisis in our Southland is an open door of ministry. 13:05 And listen with all due respect to the Red Cross or to whoever. United Way, all that stuff. Hey, bring all the help you can, but only you have the gospel, only you have the cross, only you have the empty tomb. It's only you that can say here is nourishment for your body and here's nourishment for your soul. We will do, we will go and we will be in the name of Jesus. How do we do that With our bodies? But we move in that arena by faith. We've got to say I'm going, I'm going to do, I'm going to contribute, I'm going to speak up, I'm going to. 13:43 Whatever we do that with our bodies, the Bible tells us in 1 John 5, verse 4, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. I love it. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God says the Bible. Do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God? Then listen. If that's true, there would be a natural, incumbent faith active in our lives. 14:18 I know this is a strong message, but let's be honest. Can you not sense the late hour of our time? I do not want to have a church packed with spectators. You want to do that? Go to the circus. God wants people who are saying I want to see this book live in my life. I want to see the words on these pages live through our mouth and our skin. I don't want some theoretical Christianity. The world has seen enough of that trash. We need to love and we need to get out there, and it begins with loving each other. 15:12 Faith, say Jack. I don't know how to do that. None of us know how to do that. It's a sheer act of obedience. There's no doubt about it. But you can't be obedient to God if you don't exercise your faith. But it's not like I'm asking you to jump into a black hole. That's not Christian faith. Our faith is founded upon fact. Check it out this way. This is quite revealing. I'm going to give you two passages. They'll dovetail together, are you guys? Okay? All right, I wasn't very convincing, but I'll keep going. 15:43 Mark, chapter 8, verse 35, says Jesus speaks and he says for whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospels will save it. Wow, wait, what does that say? If I desire to lose my life, I'm supposed to desire that. Oh, yeah, if you understand what Jesus is talking about, because, listen, he says, if you give it up. In fact, look at Luke, chapter 9, verse 23. This is epic, luke 9, 23. Then Jesus said to them, to all of them If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, follow me, for whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. So what does this mean? Faith in action. 16:37 As a Christian, this means that you take your life, all the things you're interested in, whatever is you, and you say to Jesus Jesus, I give it all to you. It's all yours. I give it. And if there's things in my life that's not acceptable to you, jesus, slay it, take it out. You say what if you're not willing to have some of these idols removed? Ask him, lord, make me willing. God caused me to hate the idols in my life. God caused me to hate the idols in my life. I don't want anything between you and I. I want to be used by you, god. And so here's my life. 17:20 You know what Jesus does. He takes your life from you, puts it in the shop. He starts stripping it down and polishing and scraping. Then he starts rebuilding and then he puts on your life all the things that he intended for you to have in the first place, that you could never, ever accept, because you wouldn't accept until God got your attention. And then, guess what he does? He hands it back to you. You get your life back If you give it to him. You get it back If you hang on to it. Oh, that's pathetic If you hang on to it. 18:03 I was looking for some sort of a prop. So here's my wallet. It's thin because there's not much in there except plastic. If I say to this you can't have it, it's mine, it's my precious and God, over and over again in life, gives me opportunity to help somebody with this and I say no way Worked hard for this, it's mine. This is the kingdom I've built. You know you're going to die. The end is death. Some people choose this for some decades and they make the choice and lose in eternity. You give Jesus your life. He'll repackage it and give it back to you. 19:10 - Speaker 1 This Jack Hibbs podcast, as well as all the broadcast outreach opportunities, are listener supported. Will you consider partnering with us through a special gift? Go to jackhibbs.com to learn more and stay connected.