Tony Evans - Surrendering Ourselves to God (12/30/2025)
Summary
In this sermon, the preacher urges believers to resist the world’s pressure to conform to its godless values and instead present themselves as living sacrifices—fully surrendered to God in holiness. Drawing from Romans 12:1-2, he explains that true worship is total surrender, not mere religious activity, and that holiness means being set apart as unique for God, not common or profane. The key takeaway is to reject the conforming squeeze of culture and let God transform our minds so we live distinctly for Him, just as a living statue stays committed to its paymaster (Macy’s) and ignores the distracting crowd.
You and I live in a world that is trying to pressure us to conform to its values. It is trying to squeeze us to accept its worldview. He says do not be conformed, pressed, or pressured to adopt the value system that leaves me and my worldview out. He says present yourself as a living sacrifice. Now that’s a contradictory phrase; that phrase is a contradiction. Present yourself alive, living, but present yourself as a sacrifice—dead.
Sacrifices were killed; you put sacrifices on the altar. When Christ is a sacrifice, he died on the cross. Sacrifices are killed. He said present your body as a living dead thing, as a living sacrifice.
Living and Dead at the Same Time
How can you be living and dead at the same time? Perhaps Paul can help us here with the great scripture where he says in Galatians 2:20, «I am crucified with Christ; I am dead, nevertheless I live.» I’m alive, yet not I, because I’m dead—it’s Christ who lives in me. So I’m alive. Well, how are you doing both, Paul? Well, he says in Galatians 2:20, «The life which I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.»
So if Paul were standing here today and you asked him, «Paul, what are your plans?» Paul would say, «I don’t have any until God gives them to me.»
If Paul were here, you might say, «What are your goals?» Well, he would say, «I’m waiting to get instructions from the Lord so that I know what my goals are.»
To put it another way, it means dying to self and living for Him, choosing Him over you. It is saying no to you when you contradict Him. He wants you to be a walking dead thing, alive to Him, dead to you when it contradicts Him.
He says present your body as a living sacrifice. He also says present it holy. Now the word holy is a little different from the word righteous. Righteous has to do with the standard of right and wrong, so it’s sin versus that which is not sinful—that’s righteousness.
Holy is a unique term; it is a defining term of God. God is never called love, love, love; truth, truth, truth; righteous, righteous, righteous. But He is called holy, holy, holy—three times. It is a comprehensive statement about the uniqueness of God.
What Does Holy Mean?
The word holy means to be set apart as unique. There’s one whole book in the Bible that deals with the holiness of God. It doesn’t get a lot of attention because of its ceremonial emphasis, and that’s the Book of Leviticus where the holiness of God is emphasized. God puts up a no-trespassing sign to not trample on His holiness.
Three concepts are there that help us understand holiness: one concept is profane, the other concept is common, and the other concept is holy.
Perhaps we can explain it this way: your dishes in the sink are profane; they’re dirty. That’s why they’re in the sink. You’ve eaten off of them, and you put them in the sink because they have gotten dirt on them. We’ll call those the profane dishes.
The dishes in your kitchen cupboard are common because they’re the ones you regularly use. They’re in the cupboard; they’re not profane, they’re not dirty, but they’re regular.
In this other room, the dining room, is a whole other set of dishes—those are holy dishes. The holy plates, cups, and saucers are not used commonly. You don’t use those every day. Those are for special guests, special occasions. They have been set apart as special or unique—not as common and certainly not as profane.
When the Bible uses the word holy about God, it refers to His uniqueness and set apart as not being profane. He doesn’t even want to be treated as regular; He wants to be super unleaded. He wants to be given the glory due to His name. He wants His uniqueness to be noted and reverenced; He wants to be treated for the God that He is.
Okay, so the holiness of God, while it includes the righteous standards of God, refers to the uniqueness of God for which He is to be held.
True Worship Is Total Surrender
He says, «I beg you, brethren, to give all of you to all of Him—to surrender yourself to God.» Then he says, «This is your spiritual service of worship.» That’s how the New American Standard says it. If you have a King James version, it says, «Which is your reasonable service,» but the Greek word there is a worship term.
He says your spiritual service of worship is in your total surrender, not your church attendance. So you could be in church but not worshiping because you aren’t surrendered. Without that surrender, there is no worship.
Unless there is a willingness of yielding all of me to all of Him, then you can wave your hand in the air like you just don’t care, but you’re not worshiping. You can shout, you can sing, you can speak the word, you can say amen, but it is not worship if it doesn’t include surrender. He calls that your spiritual service of worship.
Do Not Be Conformed to This World
He then comes in verse 2 and says, «And be not conformed to this world.» Now we did a whole sermon on the world, the world, and worldliness. We won’t go over all of that today, but let me summarize: when the Bible speaks of «the cosmos,» the world is referring to that system headed by Satan that leaves God out. Whenever God is excluded, you have become worldly.
The world speaks of a system—an organized system of values. I talked about the world of fashion, the world of sports, the world of finance. You know those are worlds, meaning they’re systems around a subject. Well, worldliness is a system around the exclusion of God—not only the exclusion of God’s name but the exclusion of God’s values.
He says do not be conformed to this world. We explained that this is referring to what a potter does with clay; he conforms it into an image, squeezes it, makes a plate, squeezes it, makes a cup, squeezes it, makes a saucer. In other words, he shapes it and conforms it, and what he does to do that is apply pressure to conform it into the shape he wants it.
You and I live in a world that is trying to pressure us to conform to its values. It is trying to squeeze us to accept its worldviews. It is trying to press us to walk away from what God says and operate on what society says. It is trying to force us to jettison the truth of God for the lies of culture, and you hear it all the time.
You hear Christians caving into the pressure because they don’t want to be canceled. You hear people—Christians who name the name of God—caving into the pressure because they don’t want to be rejected; they want to be accepted by this world system, not knowing that God says if you accept the world, you lose Me.
He says do not be conformed, pressed, or pressured to adopt the value system that leaves me and my worldview out. Don’t allow the system to kick Me to the curb in your value system.
The Pressure Is Real and Growing
You see it all around us today where the rules have changed at warp speed, and they want to make you accept it. They’ve changed in education; they’ve changed in media; they’ve changed in corporations; they’ve changed in Disneyland. They want to force it in.
Your children and your youth are in this conforming thing, and you know how you feel when your child comes home, and you say one thing, and then they say, «But my friends say,» and you have to set them straight. You have to get them straight. You say, «I don’t care what your friends said; I’m your mother.» Well, when God hears what the world is doing to us, He says, «I don’t care what your friends say; I don’t care what they say out there; I’m your God.»
We are being squeezed, pressured, and pressed to adopt the value systems. I want you to know, in this postmodern age, the pressure is going to keep coming, and that’s why you have to fight spiritually. They’re going to press you to adopt a system of values that leaves God’s value system out.
The Living Statue Illustration
I was in New York a number of years ago, and I was walking on 34th Street. I passed Macy’s, and there was a crowd outside the window at Macy’s—a pretty big crowd. So, inquiring minds want to know; I was curious: why are all these people outside of Macy’s?
When I walked around and looked, everybody was looking at this statue in the window. It was a living statue, and the only reason you knew it was because the eyes were blinking. But apart from that, this lady didn’t budge; she was just stoic and didn’t move except for the blinking eyes.
It was impressive, but the reason that the crowd gave it was that a lot of the kids who were in the front were trying to get her to move, making faces. They were trying to get her to budge, so they were just crying, trying to get this lady to move, or trying to disturb her, trying to distract her. But she, aside from the blinking eyes, didn’t budge.
It was amazing to see how, for an extended period of time, she did not move in spite of the distractions on the other side of the glass. But I know why she didn’t budge; I can tell you why she didn’t budge. Because the people on the other side of the glass weren’t paying her; Macy’s was paying her.
Because Macy’s was paying her to be a living statue, she committed herself to Macy’s, not to the crowd on the other side of the glass.
Well, you have a world that’s trying to distract you from the Father that you need to take care of you, so you better stick with the Father and not with the crowd. He says be not conformed to this world; don’t let this world system determine your value system, but let that value system be determined differently and distinctly.
Prayer
Lord, thank You for calling us to be living sacrifices—fully alive to You and dead to ourselves. Help us resist the world’s pressure to conform and instead surrender everything to You in true worship. Set us apart as holy, unique for Your glory, and give us strength to stand firm in Your truth no matter how much the culture squeezes. In Jesus’ name, Amen.