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Begin by reading Genesis 4:1-16
The great composer Johann Sabastian Bach wrote over 1100 compositions in his 65 years of life. It’s quite remarkable. These aren’t just simple three minute songs that we’re used to hearing on the radio; some are quite lengthy cantatas, chorales, and some are written for a number of instruments. Bach didn’t have Garage Band, recording devices, or some of the other fancy programs we might use to record and make musical notation. Living in the 1700s, he did this all by hand. Bach was commissioned by a number of various courts and churches to practice his art. However, no matter who he worked for, at the end of many of Bach’s compositions, he wrote three initials – S.D.G. They stand for the Latin words Soli Deo Gloria – To God alone be the glory.
As we’ve been talking about worship and Romans 12:1, we are now at the place where we are discussing what constitutes something as worship. Paul gives us two criteria. We discussed the first one yesterday – that the activity must be set apart. Today, we are talking about the second criteria – that the activity must be pleasing to God.
If you will recall, in the very first challenge I gave, I said that the beginning point to becoming a living sacrifice is to know God. If you don’t know God, you don’t know what pleases Him. This is extremely important. Today’s reading about Cain and Abel’s sacrifice gives us insight into this lesson. Abel knew what type of sacrifice God wanted and offered the first of his flock. Cain, a worker in the field, offered God some of his fruits and vegetables. God looked with favor on Abel’s offering but rejected Cain’s.
Let’s step back for a moment and ask, “why did God reject Cain’s offering?” In a sense, Cain’s offering was personal. He worked the field, so naturally he offered something that he worked to produce. While that seems reasonable, that isn’t how God saw it. God wanted them to bring an animal sacrifice – most likely to begin the understanding of what it meant to sacrifice and the cleansing of sin through the shedding of blood. Instead of rising up to give what God wanted, Cain offered what he wanted.
While we have said that we can offer any activity at any time to be worship, the truth is, not every activity can be worshipful. The criteria that Paul states is that it must be pleasing to the Lord. Let me issue a strong warning here. There is a lot of teaching and activity mulling around the church today – teaching that it’s okay to divulge in the carnal, sinful pleasures, and those that teach these heresies are framing it as something that’s pleasing to God. People are cheating on their spouses, engaging in promiscuous and shameful behavior, ignoring their families, and mistreating others and labeling it as pleasing to the Lord. This is nonsense. Do not confuse what’s pleasing to yourself as pleasing to God. In the same sense that we can’t rob a bank and legitimately call that worship, not everything is pleasing to the Lord.
At the beginning of each day, each activity, each thought, the discipline of being a living sacrifice compels us to determine to set it apart to the Lord. At the end of the day, we should look over our day, our activities, and our thoughts and give the stamp that says, “Soli Deo Gloria – to God alone be all the glory.” If we can’t, in good conscience, put that stamp of approval on something we did, then we should work hard to eliminate that thought or activity from our day tomorrow. The purpose of everything we do is to glorify and honor the Lord. That’s what it means to be a living sacrifice.
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