Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through Romans 12, emphasizing the church's core value of serving others. He highlights that serving is a duty for Christians, modeled by Jesus, and calls believers to present their bodies as living sacrifices. The sermon encourages practical applications of service in the community, stressing the importance of demonstrating Christ's love through action and the necessity of being willing to step out of comfort zones to reach those in need.
Welcome and Church Information
Thank you for listening to Pleasant Grove Baptist Church Sermon Audio. For more information, please visit our website, pgbcronda.com, or visit on all social media platforms. You have your Bibles. We're going to be in Romans chapter 12. Romans chapter 12 this morning. Just look at two verses this morning.
Sorry, I had something in my mind. I'm going to flip to it as well. Romans chapter 12. We're in our core values. We've discovered two of those core values and looked at them. Today, we're going to be looking at our third core value.
We looked at glorifying God and what that looks like in our life and how that looks to glorify God in everything we do, all of our words, actions, and deeds. And then the last couple of weeks, we've looked about growing together, how we can grow together, what it looks like to grow together.
And then today, we're going to be looking at another mission of the church, going and serving those that are around us.
So if you have your Bibles and you've turned there, Romans chapter 12, we're going to stand and read those first two verses this morning. The Bible says, Lord, we thank you for this day.
Thank you for your goodness. Thank you for your grace to us. I pray that you would help me, help my voice this morning as we look at your word and help us to worship you in whole spirit and truth. In your name we pray. Amen.
Top of your bulletin there in your handout, I wrote down a statement that I sort of want us to gnaw on a little bit and understand what it is. But I said that we believe as a church that we should go into our community and serve others.
Go into our community and serve others. And what does that look like? How does that look in our day-to-day life? What is the purpose of being a Christian? Consider that for a moment.
And we're going to examine it as we go through the message today about something so important of what is the purpose for me as being a Christian?
And maybe you're here and you're saying, I don't understand what the word Christian means and we're going to discuss that today. We're going to look at what it means to go and to serve. And ultimately, why should I serve?
Why should I serve others? And why should I put forth this simple duty? Why should I serve others?
And I can remember thinking, what's going on? What's about to happen? All the uncertainty. And I walked into my next class period and they turned on one of the TVs that was in the class, the old school tube TVs.
Personal Reflection on 9/11
Okay, it wasn't flat screens like this. It was old TVs. Okay, and they turned them on and I saw the second plane go into the tower. I remember seeing that so vividly. And school got dismissed early.
And for us, that was like, okay, cool. We get to go home and party and hang out because parents aren't home. They still have to work.
My brother broke his arm that day. Okay, there's a lot of fun things that happened. A lot of interesting things happened that day. But as I got older and I began to look back, I began to understand more and more about the men and women that served that day.
I got another picture here of a firefighter who was going up the stairs.
You've probably seen this picture before. And he was going into the flames. As you see, everyone else is going the opposite way.
They're getting away from danger. This firefighter and hundreds and thousands of other firefighters were going into harm's way to rescue those that were in trouble. This morning, church, they followed their duty. They followed what they were supposed to do in order to save some.
This morning, as we look at our duty, as we look at the purpose of being a Christian and the purpose of what God has called us to do, it says in Romans that we present our bodies a living sacrifice, something that is going to be transformed into God's glory.
We have to ask ourselves, why do I go out and serve? Why am I compelled to go out and serve?
And so the first thing we're going to look at is it's for duty's sake. Just as those firefighters saw the duty and went forward and those first responders, and I tried to get a couple of pictures but they wouldn't show up, as they were carrying bodies, as they were going out into this
disaster, you could say, they said, I'm doing it because it's my duty. I'm doing it because this is what God has given me the ability to do. And as we examine our lives and we examine what we have been called to do,
the Bible lays it out in Romans 12 that says this, present your bodies a living sacrifice. A sacrifice that you're saying, I don't care about what happens to this earthly body as long as I'm doing what God has called me to do.
And then he goes on a step further and he says, don't be conformed to this world, but allow what you're doing to transform the world that's around us.
And so as we think of this duty, I want us to give a couple of things here. The first one is this, the explanation of serving. The word duty is a definition that's put like this,
The Concept of Debt in Service
that which a person owes to another, that which a person is bound by any natural, moral, or legal obligation to pay or to perform.
So a question I want us to gnaw on for just a minute is this, why should you serve the Lord? What do you owe the Lord?
What is it in your life that you owe the Lord? Because when we begin to examine this thought, we begin to examine how much we owe God, the debt that we owe God, we begin to see that Jesus came and Jesus died for us.
He took on our debt, he took on our sin, he took on our ransom and sacrificed everything so that we can live.
And I know for certain that if someone was sitting here today and they saw maybe some event was about to happen and they stepped in and they saved my life and they took their life for my life,
I would feel like I had a debt to pay that family or that person for the rest of my life. And yet Jesus said, I'm going to step out of heaven and into creation that I created so that I can sacrifice for humanity, one of my own creation. So because Jesus sacrificed everything,
we are to present our bodies as a sacrifice to him.
You see, he was beaten and he was mocked and he was crucified and he presented his body as a physical, literal sacrifice. And Paul was saying here, for your duty,
it's to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, just as Christ presented his body for us.
So when we consider the duty that we have, we must consider that Christ said it is duty for him to come and to die for us, so it must be our duty to serve for him.
You see, if a man is a police officer, if a man is a firefighter, if a man serves in the military or a woman, I'm using man as a reference there, they are duty bound based on their oath of office that they swear in to perform their duty as is expected of them.
Right? When you pick up your phone and you call 911 because someone in your family is having an emergency,
you expect the people on the other line to take it serious and say, you know what, we're going to send an ambulance to your house. And you expect that ambulance or that fire truck or that police officer, whatever it is, to come because they are bound by duty to be there.
And you hope that that person that took that oath takes it seriously and says, I'm going to get there as quick as humanly possible.
Right? If your house is on fire, you don't want them to wait a couple of days and then show up. There's probably not going to be a lot of effectiveness there in their service. You want them to do as quickly and as best as they possibly can because they're duty bound. Right?
You call 911, you expect that to happen. And yet oftentimes in our Christian journey, we say, God, I'm duty bound to serve you,
but I'm going to do it in my own time. I'm going to serve you when it's convenient for me. I'm going to serve you when it's convenient for us. In church, we're not on our own. We've been born again.
You have been enlisted in the army of God and our debt is to the Lord. And we begin to see this, this serving is something that Jesus commanded his disciples.
Jesus as Our Model for Service
Jesus modeled for his disciples and we see it as a duty for us this morning to go out and to serve others. Ultimately, you ready? For the transforming of the world.
Not for us to be conformed to the world, not for us to go out and be like the world, but to go out and transform the world. But what is the extent of serving?
So we looked at how we explain how serving is, but what is the extent of serving? In other words, how much do you owe?
How much do you owe, right? Well, you go and you buy a house. We bought a house. We built a house. Okay, the mortgage company looked at me and said, okay, Mr.
Safer, this is how much you owe the bank back. If you don't owe it, we're gonna take your house from you. We're gonna take your land from you.
So the question is, how much do we owe God? How far am I going to go? As a Christian, we have to ask ourself, what portion of your life do you owe the Lord?
This is a great question to think about because we have to ask ourself, well, maybe it's just my religious side of my life.
Maybe it's just my Sundays or my Wednesdays or the days that I decided I'm gonna give to the Lord, but the other days, I'm gonna sort of give that to me. I'm gonna take care of myself on those days.
We have to begin to ask ourselves, what is it that God is requiring from us?
Some questions that you may write down or think about is this. Has he given life to you? Has he supplied your needs? Has God provided you salvation? Has he given you providence that you would have nothing if it weren't for him?
James 1 says this, do not ever, my beloved brethren, but every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the father of lights. In him is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Has God been good to his church? I would say all the time.
All the time, God has been good to me and as I begin to think through me serving and me loving and me pouring out my life and me doing what God has called me to do, we ask ourselves, what am I gonna give him today?
What am I gonna give in service of him today? Many firefighters on 9-11,
their extent of their duty was that they were there to put the fire out and most of them that went into that tower gave their all. They put the fire out but they also extinguished their life that day.
Four years ago, I had the opportunity of going to New York and I went down to the basement of the 9-11 museum and I began to see all of the carnage and all the wreck. I saw the fire truck that was smashed by one of the towers.
I saw all the things that happened because it's not just something that we think about right then and there, but we think about that affects us so often. I think about afterwards, after 9-11 happened, the soldiers that went to Desert Storm, the soldiers that went overseas,
some of my friends that I grew up with went overseas and have traumatic damage because of that now. And they were able to go and they were able to fight on our behalf until they were called home. In church this morning, the extent of our service should not be any less.
If a firefighter is going to say, I'm going to give my life to go into a burning building,
what is our extent of saying, I'm going to do everything I can to reach the person down the street from my house.
I'm going to do everything I can to see the person that's in need and say, I want to give them the life that Jesus has given me. Because our life is no less than their life.
And our journey toward reaching others should be a journey that we are going and we are serving and we are telling others about
this eternal home that we have, this life that we have, because the battle is not won until we're called home. Until we breathe our last breath here on earth, we are in this fight. And that is the extent of what we should do when we serve.
But not only do we see the explanation and the extent, we see the expectation of serving. You see, we've looked at these two things, but now what do we expect? What do we expect when people do their jobs right? We expect soldiers to go into their jobs.
We expect that if our house is burning down, our fireman's going to come. You expect when you go to McDonald's and you order your Happy Meal for your kids, for them to have given you the Happy Meal that's for your kid, not the order for the person that's behind you.
Okay, you expect that. Okay, you expect that when you go to the local restaurant or when you go to the gas station and you pump in the gas that's supposed to be in your car that the gas station put in the right gas in their tank and they didn't fill it with water.
Right, you have that expectation. We don't even think about it. We don't go in and we don't go to the clerk at the gas station and say, hey, can I see your manifest to make sure that there's gas in the tank and there's not something else? No, you expect it.
You just know that. You don't have to question it.
But oftentimes, in our life, in our service of God, we expect to reach others but we don't expect to do anything. We see the destruction around us.
We see the destruction of sin and God says, I'm asking you to give your bodies as a living sacrifice but we sort of look back and we just say, well, we hope someone else does it. And God says, no, no, no. I beseech you therefore, brethren. He doesn't say Pastor James.
He doesn't say Miss Allison. He doesn't say Brody and Jade.
Presenting Our Bodies to God
He says, brethren, this is to the entire church that by the mercies of God that you present your bodies,
not a singular body, not just the missionary that goes over seeds but every single person in the church to present your body and live in sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, that is your reasonable service. Every time I read that verse and I read that phrase, there's reasonable service.
I think this is not something that's above and beyond what any Christian is called to do. This is something that is reasonable.
Your boss comes to you and says, hey, I need you to give me 40 hours a week. I need you to do this job and this is gonna be your salary in return. It's your reasonable expectation for that job. And Jesus says,
we're gonna be a Christian for the duty of this sake. It's your reasonable service that you present your bodies a living sacrifice,
holy and acceptable unto God. Because this is what the expectation is of our service.
Not to be conformed to the world that's around us but transformed by the renewing of our mind that we can see the perfect and good and acceptable will of God. So the question still begs to differ. Why do we serve? For duty's sake but also to deliver the oppressed.
You see, as we look through Scripture and we look through people
all throughout Scripture, we see people were doing things to deliver the oppressed that was around them. In Exodus chapter three and four, I'm not gonna put any verses up because there's a lot of verses that talks about Moses and it talks about Moses going through different things.
And so I'm gonna summarize that for us a little bit but Moses was 80 years old. And God came to Moses at 80 years old.
He was tending to his father-in-law's sheep on the backside of the desert and God appeared to him in a burning bush and said, Moses, I need you to serve me.
If I were God, I probably wouldn't have went to an 80-year-old man. Just saying, if this were me and I'm writing the story,
I'm gonna say, who's the young, vibrant man that's gonna be able to lead millions of people through the desert, that's gonna be able to handle criticism, that's gonna be able to handle these things, probably not gonna choose an 80-year-old man. It just thinks about it.
But God said, no, no, no, I'm gonna go to Moses for a specific reason because my people are in bondage and they need someone to lead them out. But what qualified Moses?
Moses was an Israelite. He was raised in the king's house. But all throughout Moses' life,
after he gave excuses and he said, I can't do it and God took away all those objections, Moses surrendered to God's will.
Think about this before I even get this next thought. Think about this. What if Moses wouldn't have surrendered?
What if Moses would have said, God, there's a hundred other people out here that's better than me. Man, I'm old, I'm feeble, I've got a family, I've got kids, I've got grandkids, I just wanna experience the rest of my life.
Where would the children of Israel be today? Would they have still been in bondage? We don't know the story, we don't know how it would have went, we just know God called Moses and after continually turning over Moses' heart, he continued to give and left and went out and served.
You see, because in 1 Corinthians 2.14 it says, the natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit
but those that are foolish unto him neither can they know them because they are not spiritually discerned. We have to ask ourselves why are we here and what are we doing to serve others?
You see, what I was getting at in my mind, I'm a little off track in my notes but just sort of following what the Lord said this morning but as we think through Moses' life, all of Moses' life he did because he had love for the brothers.
He had love for his family, had love for those that were around him.
You see, when Moses was a younger man, when Moses was in the king's house, he saw one of his brothers being beat and one of his brothers been oppressed and so what did he do? He went over and he began to fight the Egyptian and he killed him
because he loved his brothers so much
and then he was exiled and he was kicked out of the kingdom and he went into the backside of the desert and for 40 years he served his father-in-law, he raised his family, he did these things and then God called him to come and lead his brothers out of bondage
and he argued with God. He said, God, I'm not going to do this, I'm not going to go and do these things and God began to tell him, hey, this is your family,
these are your neighbors, these are the people that are in bondage and I'm asking you to go, I'm telling you that you need to go and deliver them and ultimately, Moses loved his brothers so much that he said, I can't see them
in oppression anymore and I'm going to go deliver them. I mean, you look through the life of Moses, Moses loved his brothers so much that even when they complained and caused him to sin and hit the rock instead of speak to the rock because he did it out
of anger, he did it because he loved his neighbors, he loved his brothers and he said, I just want to make them happy, I just want to do what I can to help serve them
and because he sinned, he wasn't able to go into the promised land but he was able to see the promised land
but ultimately, Moses did all these things to do one thing and that was to submit to God's will in Exodus 4, 19 and 20, the Lord said unto Moses,
go and return to Egypt for all the men were dead which sought after your life and Moses took his wife and his sons and he put them up on a donkey and they returned to the land of Egypt and Moses took the rod of God in his hand.
Moses had a willingness to go. It wasn't an easy thing, it wasn't something that everyone was signing up to do.
God only called Moses to do it. He left what was familiar to go into the unknown.
As someone who has done this and went into the unknown multiple different times, I was talking to Salem last night, Owen's girlfriend and was talking about Owen going to Montana and experiencing life that's a little different and I said, Salem, I said, you know, Montana, it's only just a couple hours away.
You know, you can go and enroll in Montana University and you can make new friends and she said, I'm not even making friends here.
She said, I'm going to Wilkes Community College or I don't know which one she's at and she said,
like, I used to have all these friends and now I just go to school and I come home and I just don't even make friends anymore because of the unknown we sometimes reserve and we pull back
and God is saying that when we surrender to the unknown we surrender to the things that are unfamiliar to us we accept to be used by God and we say, God, I want to be used on your terms not my terms.
Moses didn't say, okay, God, I'm going to surrender but you've got to do these lists of things for me first. He said that at the beginning. I need Aaron,
I need all these other things, I can't talk in public and God said, no, no, no, I'm going to use you and ultimately he said, okay, I'll do what you want me to do, God.
And God, whatever you want me to do, I'm going to do just as long, oftentimes, this is how it is, just as long as you don't send me to Africa.
God, don't send me to Africa but if you send me down the street then I'll go.
And oftentimes we'll say that and then God will say, okay, I won't send you to Africa but here's someone that needs your help and as I said this morning at Sunday school, we're too busy to even stop and talk to them
because life is busy and we won't even go next door, we won't even go to the person next to us and they're crying, they're saying, I need someone to come help me and we are just too busy. We're just too busy to do what God wants us to do.
You see, if we want to serve the Lord and be used to deliver lost souls then we must be willing to be sent wherever that may be.
As uncomfortable as it may make us, we must be willing to step out by faith and say, God, I'm going to trust you which leads us to our next point, we must be willing to be sent.
Love and Care for Others
As I mentioned earlier, Moses had a love for his brothers and got him in trouble oftentimes because he loved people so much and church, if we're going to serve people we must have a desire, a care for the souls that are around us.
Again, imagine 23, 24 years ago those towers are on fire, they're coming down,
people are covering their mouth, they're covering their face to leave that and all of a sudden as they're coming down that stairwell could you imagine going down, leaving the danger, leaving the fire and seeing someone else come up and going up to serve.
Church, that's a picture of what the church should be. People are escaping the fire and we're going into the danger, we're going into those that are dying and going to hell because it's our duty,
because we care for them, because they're trapped and because as Jesus said in Matthew chapter 10, we have the gospel of peace and we have come to give the peace to those that are hurting, the peace to those
who are in need because that's what the gospel does. The gospel goes because the Christians are caring and loving and willing to lay their lives down to reach the next generation.
Understand this, as important as it is for those firefighters to do their duty to rescue these people, it is no more less important,
I would even argue, more so important for us as a church to do our duty to rescue the perishing, to do everything we can to save the lives of those who are dying and going to hell.
And church, our mission and our goal should be to save the lost and to reach out into our community to do that.
As I was sitting over there, the song Rescue the Perishing came to my mind, had to look it up, I didn't know it was our song book, it says, rescue the perishing,
care for the dying, snatch them from the pits of sin and the grave. You get this, weep over the erring one, lift up the fallen, tell them of Jesus, the mighty to save, rescue the perishing, duty demands it,
strength for your labor and the Lord will provide. Back to the narrow way, patiently win them, tell the poor wandering, a Savior has died.
Why? We must rescue the perishing, care for the dying. Jesus is merciful, church, Jesus will save.
There must be a desire in our life that's overwhelming above all else desire to see souls come to know Jesus.
You see, when our focus is on Jesus and our focus is on dying and lost souls, it doesn't matter what our preferences are, it doesn't matter what we desire because it's all about Jesus.
Church, I've said this over the last couple weeks and I'm going to continue to say it because everything we do is about Jesus.
The Importance of Community Service
It's not about what Pastor James wants, it's not about what Terry likes, it's not about what Tommy likes, it's about what Jesus wants and it's about Jesus changing the lives of the people that are in our community that
are dying and going to hell every day and we have the opportunity to reach out and to tell them of the Savior that's there to reach them, that came to die for them, that came to give his life
for them so they can live forever for him and church when we get this in our mind and we get this in our heart it doesn't matter the type of person, it doesn't matter the age or stage of the person because it's all about telling them about Jesus
and telling them about someone who loves them so much that they can come to know him as well. You see, when we love someone that much we'll go wherever the world calls us to go.
It doesn't matter if it's across the street or around the world when our desire is to see souls come to know Jesus
we'll go everywhere the Lord wants us to go. I'm going to close with our last thought here, number three. This demonstrates who we are.
This demonstrates who we are. Not only is it duty's sake or deliver the press but this demonstrates who we are as disciples of Christ. John 13 says it like this. John 13 12 through 17.
You can turn there I'm going to read it very quickly. It says this. So after Jesus had washed his disciples feet and he put on his garments and he sat down he said to them do you know what I have done to you? You call me teacher Lord and you speak accurately
and if the Lord and the teacher have washed your feet so you ought to also wash another's feet.
For I have given you an example that you should do as I have done. Truly, truly I say unto you a servant is no greater than his master nor is he who sent greater than he who is to be sent. And if you know these things blessed are you if you do them.
If we are to serve the Lord we must demonstrate to the world that we are his disciples. As Terry comes and plays I'm going to give one defining statement for us today to conclude this. This is it. You ready church?
People should be able to tell that you are a Christian without you telling them that you're a Christian.
That should be our goal in aiming life is for people to know that I'm a born again believer of Christ that my life is different because I serve Christ not because I've told them I'm a Christian but because
they see the things I do and they say there's no other explanation for what you've done than the reason other than Christ.
See the world will see many people today that will claim to be Christians they'll claim just as everybody else that they've been changed and ultimately they just serve themselves. and Christ through Jesus' teaching here says that the only way we're going to make a difference in the world is if we serve those
that are around us. He said I knelt down and I took on the job of a servant because I wanted to demonstrate to you how you should serve others.
Church it should be our desire to make a difference for Christ and ultimately it must start with each and every person in here to say is it my desire to make a difference? Is it my desire to demonstrate to the world
this thought that Jesus is greater than everything else in my life and I'm going to do everything I can to serve Jesus?
Nowhere in scripture do I see a disciple that made a difference for Jesus that was a part-time Christian.
Nowhere do I see as I study scripture where the apostle Paul said hey just come and come when it's convenient to you or come and serve Jesus when you think it's okay with you. No he says give your whole life serve your whole life do everything you can with your whole life
because that's when people are going to tell that you are different because you're serving for a greater cause. I'll close with one last thing Jesus didn't halfway go through the cross
he didn't halfway get up on that cross he didn't get up and say you know what God this is too tough for me I went almost all the way
but at this point I can't take it anymore and just go ahead and send down the angels go ahead and obliterate everyone that's around me and I'm just done.
no he said I'm going to go all the way to the cross I'm going to go all the way to the grave and I'm going to suffer and capture death hell and the grave
all the way so that we can look and we can say Jesus was 100% human
and he did everything he possibly could and he went all the way so far as to die for me and so I'm going to do everything I can to live for him
and church I fully believe if we can understand that and we can get that in our mind it will change the way we go and it will change the way we serve others
I'm excited about next week because I'm going to present some things that we can do and ways we can serve but church ask yourself this question how am I demonstrating Christ to the world around me how am I
Invitation to Take a Step of Faith
showing the world around me that I love Jesus more than I love everything else in my life and maybe it's you're sitting here today and you're saying Pastor James I've never experienced Christianity the way you're talking
my life has never been changed the way you're talking you say I'm not up here and I'm not excited because I'm just an excited person I'm excited because God changed my life when I was five years old and I haven't been able to get over that since
and so I'm going to continue to be excited I'm going to continue to tell people about Jesus I'm going to do everything I can to as the hymn said rescue the perishing and I'm just going to
encourage people to come along the journey with me maybe you're here and you're saying I've struggled in some of those areas I don't know Jesus come talk to me today I'll talk to you about how you can know him
maybe you're just saying Pastor James I need to take a step of faith as we did a couple weeks ago with baptism I just need to be baptized I need to take a next step of faith whatever it may be in your life
surrender this morning let's pray Lord we love you we thank you for what you've done I pray that your will and way be done in our service today in your name we pray thank you again for taking your
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