Sacrificial Living

A Short Series on Sacrificial Living for Life Church, part of our SERVE ethos.

We outlined earlier this year the idea of S.E.R.V.E. along with a mission statement of “Serving God in Our World.”

S.E.R.V.E. stands for:

• Sacrifice: to live sacrificially before Father, church and world.
• Extend: to extend by reaching out with evangelistic initiatives
•                 locally and internationally.
• Relationships: first with Father then with each other.
• Vibrant: in praise and worship, Pentecostal.
• Empower: develop disciples and ministers of the Gospel.

What does it mean to Sacrifice: to live sacrificially before Father, church and world?  We’re going to begin to unpack this concept over the next few times I preach.

As we do we’re going to form the foundation of our thinking on John 13:

Message One: the Intimacy of Sacrifice

Living sacrificially is built upon certain things that are known to the one sacrificing themselves for the sake of others.

Knowledge is wonderful but there are different kinds of knowledge.

• Knowledge of the classroom – theoretical.
• Knowledge of the heart – emotional, how I feel.
• Knowledge of practice – experiential.

To live sacrificially, consistently, we will need knowledge of all three types to maintain sacrificial living.

Theoretical knowledge means things are done because they are understood to be right even if we have no experience of them. 

However, on its own, this will not keep people living sacrificially consistently.  If our knowledge remains theoretical we end up in religious duty and not truly sacrificing anything.

We my fool ourselves that we are living sacrificially, out of an abundance we give up something, but we’re left with a lot!  If it costs us a little, it is not a sacrifice for us.

Sacrifices give their all.  It has been said that a chicken contributes an egg for breakfast but the pig gives its all for breakfast.

Emotional knowledge will spur us into action.  We need to tug on our heart to begin to move us beyond theoretical knowledge.

An emotional response though is not enough to continue in living sacrificially.  Most people who fall in love, which implies an unexpected accident, find that the romantic love of emotion lasts 1-2 years.  After this they ‘fall out of love,’ implying they lost their love accidentally.

It is very hard to maintain a commitment to a cause or a person based on an emotional response because this will be built on feelings alone.

I like altar calls.  I think they are a good thing to focus the mind and to help us make a response to God.  But after the initial response we need a way to carry out the commitment we are making. 

I can recall years ago hearing Reinhardt Bonnke preach at the Royal Albert Hall Easter Monday Celebration that Elim used to have.  Some of you would recall these and may have even been at the same meeting. 

He gave this tremendous altar call for young men and women to apply to Bible College and go and serve God in missions.  Literary hundreds and hundreds responded.  I can recall the talk of some people about how the Elim Bible College would now be swamped with applications because it could not accommodate so many students.  People were saying that it would sustain the college for a number of years. 

But the altar call never translated to numbers training in the way expected.  The college struggled on at the time, but there was no spike in applicants. 

Why? 

Well people may well have gone and served and trained at other places, but what became apparent was that the emotional tug people felt to obey God was not fulfilled in the long run through training to be a missionary.

We need more than theoretical and emotional knowledge.  We need an experiential knowledge too.

Experiential Knowledge: Some will immediately put up a barrier to this type of thinking!  We shun experiences!  But this was all that the early church had – and experience of the baptism of the Holy Spirit to propel them forwards.

We need a knowledge that is theoretical – intellectually sound and that fulfils the need of the minds God has given us.  This is where we form our theology.

We need a knowledge that is emotionally in touch with our need for love and fulfilment that God has placed within us.

We need a knowledge that is experiential too, that explains to us that God is still in control when facts and emotions tell us otherwise!

So when I talk about ‘knowing’ certain things today we need to understand that we’re looking for theoretical, emotional and experiential knowledge of something!

Definition: Sacrificial living is when we surrender our advantage for the benefit of others. 

This is easier said than done.

Romans 12:1

John 13:1-16

We’re going to stick around John 13 for a few weeks as we unpack some truths for our lives.  Today we’re going to launch from one verse:

3: Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God

The first thing to living sacrificially is:

1. Knowing Our Father

Jesus knew that the Father…

All sacrifice is based in a relationship.  The word for God used here is father, a relational word, not just and authoritative word. 

For many of us here we will struggle with the idea of Father God, because of our own earthly father, or lack thereof, experience. 

Why has the devil so undermined Fatherhood in our society?  Because he wants to alienate the children of God from their Father.

You see this is where knowledge comes into play. 

We need understand that there is a heavenly Father with an intellectual (theoretical) knowledge.  It’s important that our minds are engaged with this.  But if all we have is a theoretical knowledge of Father God we will soon discover that any service done for Him will became a duty at best or a means to try and earn His love at worst.

We need an emotional knowledge of the Father, for this brings security!

1 John 4: 7-8: Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

To love and to be loved are two of the most fundamental needs that a person has.  But note the verses speak of knowing and loving God.  We might struggle with this because we talk of loving Jesus (which we should) but God is seen as the big, scary bearded figure in the back ground. 

The truth is Jesus gives us access to Father God once more; we can freely enter His presence because of Jesus.  This brings an emotional security that then compels us to become living sacrifices for Him, not to earn His love, but to express His love to others.

But we also need an experiential knowledge of father God’s love towards us.  This love has to become a daily reality within our experience of Him – to know that He will never let us go!

1 John 4: 9-12: This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.  This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. 

So we will also need an emotional knowledge that Father God loves us.  How does this happen?

Note that God loves us first; we then love Him and because of this, love others.

John 13:3: Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God.

Jesus’ knowledge was not just built upon an intellectually understanding of who God is, but an emotional security and a daily experience of this too.  That is why there is such confidence within this verse. 

He knew that He knew that He knew!

He knew that the Father had put all things under his power

He knew that he had come from God

He knew He was returning to God.

More to follow next week - God was moving and we held over the rest of the message until next week.