Torch, Fall 1994

j Condensed from a sermon delivered October 6, 1993 , in the James T. Jeremiah Chapel at Cedarville College. T he United States has 768 ships which comprise what is known as the "Mothball Navy." These vessels are anchored in various harbors around the country and receive regular maintenance. Their exteriors are repainted periodically. Their holds are continually bombarded by electrical impulses to retard the process of rust and corrosion. The humidity in the inner compartments is kept at a proper level. While these ships can be made ready for combat on very short notice, they just sit there doing absolutely nothing. Many of God 's children could be described as "Mothball Christians. " They sit harbored in the local church, or in their homes, or in Bible School, but they are doing absolutely nothing. They are not using their spiritual gifts, they are not growing, they look good on the outside, they use all the familiar Christian jargon, but inwardly, they are empty. Actually, it is not a lot different today than it was in Jesus' day. In Matthew 23 , Jesus denounced the Pharisees, saying that outwardly they were whitewashed and beautiful, but inwardly, they were full of dead men's bones. Why do so many Christians just keep working to look good on the outside? How we can move beyond mere conformity in our Christian lives to vibrant, Christ-like life? I think a missing element in our preaching, teaching, and counseling in modem Christianity is biblical value development. Values are the standards and principles upon which we base our choices and our actions . How important is their impact? They control everything that we do. Value programming begins at birth. Values are influenced by our parents, then by our heroes, and then by our peers. When we 're around 20 years old, our values become less receptive to change except when significant emotional events and crises occur. But God wants to work from the inside out and produce in us a new set of values based on His Word. All eternal value transformation begins at salvation. When we accept Jesus Christ, we are given a new nature. We are transformed! We receive the capacity to love and understand spiritual things, and are given the wherewithal to begin the process of changing our values from personal, cultural, as-we-were– brought-up-values to godly, biblical, spirit-controlled values. But, how do we do that? What is involved in the process? The process is explained in God 's Word. Romans 12: 1-2 (NAS) states : "I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect." Paul gives this exhortation based on the mercies of God. He reviewed those mercies in chapters one through 11 of his letter to the Romans. On the basis of those mercies, Paul exhorts us to present our bodies as a sacrifice to God. What Paul means by body is our life, all of it- our spirit, our soul, and our body- presented as a living sacrifice unto God. Now the problem with being a live sacrifice is that we wiggle around a lot upon the altar! We move around to avoid the crucifixion of total sacrifice. But in contrast to flame offerings, God wants us alive as a whole burnt offering. Our living sacrifice is to be holy– set apart. This certainly does not mean being sinless, but it does mean that we will sin less. Then he says, it ought to be acceptable to God. The word acceptable, eurestos in the Greek, means pleasing, an offering burned and totally consumed, the aroma wafting up before the nostrils of God. I think that is a picture of total commitment to Jesus Christ. The expectation of the exhortation is that this is our reasonable service, our spiritual service, as opposed to the Old Testament economy which dealt with outward kinds of service, with bulls and lambs and goats and rams. We're not involved with that external anymore. We're dealing with that spiritual kind of worship in which we use our minds and our spirits and all that is within us to center upon Christ. In verse two, Paul gives us two principles. First, we're to stop being conformed to the world. Put off. De-habituate. That is, break old habits. We stop patterning our lives after the world's values, which is inconsistent with the inner being as a regenerated child of God. When we accepted Jesus Christ, we received a new nature. That new nature is supposed to be living through us. Yet many of us are still a lot like the world. God wants us to stop following our old value system, shaped by the world. The word "world" includes all those former programming forces, like TV. A lot of Christians have been raised by TV! Torch 11