2026 08 23 - Being Transformed as Living Sacrifices - Popp

Grace, peace and mercy from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

I want to talk about acts of mercy. I was thinking about stories where we saw unbelievable acts of mercy. You know, did the Google search show me acts of mercy? You know, talked about John Pope, John Paul II forgiving the person trying to assassinate him, Nelson Mandela, 27 years in prison, not wanting revenge or seeking revenge. Talked about Corey Ten Boom and Louis Zamperini, who both were after spending time in prisoner war camp, concentration camp, didn't forgave the people that had him there.

But of course, Google's getting smarter. Talk about even better, stronger examples in Scripture. Joseph forgiving his brothers for selling them into slavery. David sparing Saul who was trying to kill him. The good Samaritan, the Father receiving the prodigal son home after what he did.

Of course, we always remember the ultimate Jesus on the cross, struggling to breathe, using his words to forgive a lot of mercy. And really that is what we're going to see here in Romans 1, right? It starts by the mercies of God. It's such a great connection. Paul just spends 11 chapters explaining God's mercy before those words.

Of course, it points to the greatest act of mercy in history on that cross. So we're going to jump in. He is risen indeed. That's the act of mercy we always want to remember. We have been in Romans and up to this point, Paul is focused on why should everyone?

Thank you, Teresa. I forgot I even had this in my hand. Why everyone should believe in God. Again, these first 11 chapters, he's sharing why they should believe, why they should follow God. Chapter 12, Paul's talking to Christians with a foundation on God's mercy and how they should live.

Now he's going to get personal with him. He's going to tell the Romans what they need to do about it. And the same goes for us today. Are you ready to be challenged? I didn't realize how.

It's really just two different books. And this is the beginning of the second book. In Romans 12, we're going to start with what is the will of God? Right? People think, oh, that's what we need to be.

Prayer. We need to be watching. We need to allow the Holy Spirit. We need to discern the will of God. Well, he makes a very clear scripture.

He wants to spend eternity with all his creation. That is his desire. He sent Jesus to die for all people. That part the Bible makes very clear to us. But what does that mean for us?

Well, I think every day we face two paths. Every single day when we wake up, there are two paths. There's one, that sin leads us away from God. And I'm sure we've all seen that where something happens, we lie about why we're late to work or what we have to do that day or don't do what we need to, whatever that sin that can separate us, that the devil can use get in our head and certainly the Holy Spirit that helps us resist sin. The fact is, can we resist and go all day perfect without sinning?

No, we certainly can't. That's why this has to be based on God's mercy. Everything flows from and through God's mercy. Mercy.

Without God's mercy, we would always be in bondage, right? We are set free by it. Jesus paid the price for us.

We continue to be forgiven by it. We knelt, we bare in our soul. We asked God to forgive us. We were reminded because of what Jesus did for us, we are forgiven. Do not let any of that sin hold any space over your heart, over your connection, over your relationship with the Lord.

We're heaven bound by it. So many people try to put so many obstacles between us and heaven that aren't there. That is not scriptural. We have to start calling that out this week. I got a great reminder.

How are we to offer our bodies and sacrifices? Sometimes Holy Spirit saves me and just gives me the right words. It's great. Thursday, 6th grade. Health.

I send them over here somewhere ahead of me. I'm holding the door out there and I hear some of them running down this like it was a track.

I may have raised my voice a little bit in this church who was running. And right away they call out one of the kids. One of the new boys is a new boy. Come, Horace, come here. Let me explain something to you about this church.

And I don't know why, I don't know where it went. I think it's because I was prepping for Romans 12 all week for this sermon. But I said, do you see that up there? You know what that is? That's an altar.

Do you know what they do use altars for bloodshed?

They sacrificed animals for bloodshed. They had to have blood for forgiveness of sins until Jesus came. The reason it all looks so nice and neat here and we put a white cloth on it is we no longer have to shed blood for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus came. So we show reverence when we come in.

We bow before entering. Next, we remember it's the cross is great, he died for us. But look at this altar. It's so pretty. No blood.

Because Jesus forgives us. And so now that you know why we do not run and jump in God's house, I forgive you. Please don't do it again. Right? And what was so great is one of the new girls came up to me right after that, said I was running too.

So great, when they figure it out, we can ask for forgiveness. It's that mercy, that mercy that we have, right? This living sacrifice, our life as sacrifice, this newness of Christ, this newness of worship coming in here, that's what we desire. We get that opportunities to understand what that mercy looks like. These three sacrifices, verse one makes it very clear.

There's the living sacrifice, there's the holy sacrifice, set apart to serve.

I am glad that on the way to worship we're not looking for the right animal that corresponds to our sin to have to bring it. But we have to remember the price Jesus paid. He was the perfect sacrifice, the lamb without blemish, that bloodshed, this well pleasing sacrifice to live and walk by faith. Faith that says I don't have to be perfect.

I have to believe, I have to trust. I have to allow the blood of Jesus to pay that. Now again, we could get into Luther about sinning boldly. That's not the point here. But we are going to remember what that means by God's grace as people gather in faith in one body, in our body.

I should go back. Sorry. I should have put it in here so I didn't have to go back like this. But I want to make very clear, by the way, when you see this one body with all seven of the gifts, this is not one person.

It's the body of Christ, it's the church. Okay, I don't want any of you thinking, oh, I'm missing some parts, right? I'm putting together a 2000 piece puzzle right now and we're getting to the end. And I don't know if the cats knocks them off, I'm going to find some under the buffet or what. But you know, missing pieces is not good for a puzzle.

This is not about you. It's about one body, the church. We're going to get to that here in a second. Okay? So this idea, by God's grace, we gather together in faith.

This one body, what it's talking about is what is the measure of faith God has assigned. I always love sometimes looking at different commentaries and seeing how theologians over the years argue about how Scripture is read and about the Greek and about the breakdown. And one of my favorite parts of this is this trap they talk about. When it comes to the gifts God has assigned you, being very careful. We're looking at what he has given us versus what we are doing with it.

And using it is not about comparing ourselves to other people. If I was trying to compare myself to Pastor Rick each week, I would have failed and quit a long time ago.

He's got a lot of years and a lot of love and a lot of ministry. I can't be Pastor Rick. What has God given me? And am I using it to the fullest for his glory? Am I allowing that piece of the puzzle to work inside of our family at Grace Lutheran?

Am I allowing that piece of puzzle to work inside my family by doing what God has called me to do? Let's be very careful we don't jump into that comparison trap. When we look at God's mercy today and we look at what these verses say, and we're going to go over the seven gifts and you say, oh, yeah, I'm okay with that. No, I stink at that. This isn't about what you're good at and what you're not.

It's about, did you figure out what it is? And are you. Are you using it to the glory of God?

Are we using it as God intended? And of course, the second part is, then we must be careful to remain humble. That righteousness is an amazing thing. That righteousness of God can be such a powerful thing to help people understand why we sinners can stand in front of somebody and say, jesus loves me. He died for me.

I'm going to spend eternity with him. Now that same righteousness can make us look like we're better and divide us.

It takes us really to this last part. The church functioning as one body. Oh, prophecy. Where am I at? Oh, oh, I'm missing three.

Are we out of order? Sorry, let me go here. There we go. We'll go backwards, kids. All right.

Church functioning as one body. Christ. Right. We receive our gifts from faith.

I love teaching middle school because we're starting to get a glimpse of their gifts by middle school. They recognize in each other that we're different.

And middle schoolers usually have fun pointing out differences in a negative way sometimes, usually out of jealousy. I wish, you know, as a basketball coach, all the little guys wish they were big and all the big guys wish they were little. And, you know, everybody wants to do the opposite of what God has gifted them with. And I see that in our world today, we have that envy or the jealousy. We want so much to Be what?

Somebody else's. Instead of recognizing the blessing we are in our own body, what God has created us to be. A child of God. And that seven gracious gifts. This idea, right?

You're gonna see a lot of overlap. I think that's very important. Let's go over these gifts here. Prophecy, Right? Prophecy.

Sharing God's word. Certainly we just talked about that in a sermon. All of us can bring God's word. Certainly some are set apart to preach within a worship service. But every single one of you can take that word of God, that understanding of what he did, who he is, why it's so important.

In fact, I gotta be honest with you, I still feel like my job is to continue to encourage all of you to actually go do it out there. Because the people who need to hear it most rarely will step foot into our world here at Grace.

Once in a while, maybe once a while, you might get somebody to come. I was talking with somebody once who they were telling me how their roommate's dad died and they were struggling and they were trying to get him to go to church with them and they won't go to church. I said, why are you trying to get him to go to church? Well, they'll feel better. Or you can bring Jesus to them.

Quit trying to say, oh, you'll feel better if you come church me, tell them about Jesus and pray with them. Sometimes the best thing we do is bring Jesus to them, not try to bring them to where we think Jesus will talk to them or help them. This can be a very overwhelming place for somebody. Never been there. But you, one on one, can show them the love of God.

So simple. Their service, caring for the poor and needy. I'm going to warn you all right? Now, Dave met with Betty Mae. She's retired now and she's got a lot of time on her hands.

Guess what she's going to do? Put you all to work. She's planning a lot of activities for Grace. We're going to have lots of opportunities to be out in the world sharing and helping. Be in the hands and feet of Jesus.

Teaching, helping others learn.

I know it's not everybody's saying, but, boy, for the people that have it, the people that use it, the opportunity to help people understand it is so great. I love it. Exhorting, right? This. Encouraging and urging others.

Everybody certainly has a level or an ability to do that. How are we encouraging people in their faith and their walk with the Lord? Generosity, sharing by love and care, right? Being generous. I'll tell you What?

I'm at that point now where there's so many things I want to do, so many people I want to help, and yet guarding my time for my own health, for my family's health, I'm always conflicted. It's always a struggle. I remember when Pastor Jeff had to talk me into taking Mondays off. He's like, you gotta take a day off. No, I'm in the school.

I'm pastor's school. I'm gonna be in school. School's in, I'm in. Then he talked me into it. And if you only saw how much I enjoy sitting around folding laundry now on Mondays, God is good.

Leading this does not mean standing up in front of a group. Does not mean having to start and lead the charge.

Speaking for and sharing with others is a way you live. I was talking to somebody at Youth last night after our ice cream, right before they left, and I said, you know, so many times we talk about wanting to bring people to this bring people activity. If you just live a life of Christ in front of them, if you're encouraging them, when they have trouble, they're going to know who to turn to. And that might be far better than any youth activity we can try to put on to bring them to. And finally, acts of mercy.

We start, we end with God's mercy. I took you to God's mercy at the beginning, talked about acts of mercy, because everything we do better come on a foundation that stems from God's mercy. How can we talk to them? God's mercy again. I was put in my place when I was not wanting to share money with somebody once I thought, what are they gonna do with it?

Right? Somebody looked at me and said, does God give you based on how you're gonna handle it? No, thank you. Yes, here you go. You know what I mean?

It's that mercy that we desire, and then we have to share acts of mercy. Oops. No, see, where am I at? It's going fast. See?

Some in words, some in deed, but all to the glory of God.

I'm not here to compare your gifts. We need them all. I'm not here to say some are stronger than others. We need them all. Some will be using your mouth, some will be using your actions.

All will be to the glory of God. I'm excited. I'm excited for some of the goals Mr. Timmerman here put together for our council to go through and how you're going to start seeing show grace in a lot of ways.

And I want it to be on a foundation of love and mercy. What are our grace commandments? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind, and love your neighbor as yourselves. And through that basis of mercy, we're going to do just that. It is why we're stronger together as the body of Christ.

That is why your body doesn't need to have all the gifts. We need to compliment each other and work together.

If you didn't get an outline, all you have is the white coloring page. But I certainly can share this graph. I want you to keep track of and center. I want you to think about what gift are you continuing to use to share Christ with the people around you in your world? So what does it mean to be a living sacrifice?

It means we live every day remembering that everything begins with God's mercy. And by his mercy we're free, forgiven, and heaven bound. By the same mercy, he transforms us, gives us gifts and joins us together as one body in Christ. So Don, don't compare your gifts. Don't bear your gifts.

Use them in word and in deed. Offer your life back to the One who gave his life for you. One body, many gifts, all to the glory of God. Amen.