Should we turn our hearts to the Lord again?
Lord, we thank You for Your very presence with us this morning. We are very much aware that Your life is within us today. Lord, give us a desire to be found acceptable in Your sight.
We give You all the praise and all the glory, because You are with us and You are in us. We give You all the praise and all the glory. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.
Let us turn to 1 Peter 2. We will read verse 5:
Ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
Now turn to Ephesians 1:
Even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before Him in love:
having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will,
to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
And turn to Ephesians 5. We will begin with the last part of verse 8:
Walk as children of light.
Then verse 10:
Proving what is well-pleasing unto the Lord.
That is all the Scripture we will read for now. First of all, I feel that I need to go over a few things that we shared last Tuesday evening, just to reinforce the importance of them.
Our understanding of scriptural truth is absolutely foundational, because our true spiritual experience is based on the truth that we apprehend in God’s Word. Experience that is based on God’s truth is the only real experience we can have from the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit will not depart from God’s Word or from God’s revelation to us. The Holy Spirit makes Christ real to us, and He makes God’s Word real to us as life and as light.
There are several important things that we need to settle before we can properly enter into the experience of them. For example, this is very important: man was created for God Himself.
God created man with the intention that man should be acceptable to Him. God does not create without purpose. He created man with the desire that He might fully receive man unto Himself.
Before man was created, God had this thought in His mind. We find this in the book of Ephesians. Before the creation of man, God had already determined that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love.
Therefore, we can be sure that man was created with God’s purpose in view: that man would eventually and fully participate in all that God had prepared for him.
To enjoy all that is of God, man must be God-like. In a sense, we are created for glory. Before creation, God’s thought was that man should be holy, without blame, and before Him in love.
We know that there is only One who is holy: God is holy. Man was created to partake of His holiness. Without that holiness, man would not be found acceptable to Him.
How does God achieve this purpose? He puts us in Christ Jesus.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:30 that it is of God that we are in Christ Jesus. It is not that we sought God; He found us. All God’s work must find its origin in God Himself.
God has His thought, and He acts upon it. He wants us to be acceptable in His sight, and His way to achieve this is through His beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
By God’s doing, He put us in Christ Jesus. It is only Christ, and Christ alone, who has the power to make us acceptable before God.
Jesus Christ is the only Person in this whole creation who is truly the delight of the Father, the One who is acceptable to Him. For us to be acceptable before God, He put us in the Beloved—the One who is always acceptable to Him.
All the sacrifices that we can present are through Jesus Christ. Apart from Christ, God will not accept anything. God accepts all that is of Christ.
I shared last Tuesday evening that the offerer is more important than the offering. Throughout both the Old Testament and the New Testament, the heart of the gospel is to make us acceptable before God.
We shared concerning the offerings. In those offerings, the animal was mentioned, the fat was mentioned, and the blood was mentioned. If you read through all the sacrifices in Leviticus and Numbers, the majority of the sacrifices conclude with the thought that they ascend as a sweet aroma to God the Father.
It is for acceptance. Even though there is mention of sins and of sin offerings, they seem to occupy a less prominent place than the offerings of acceptance.
God’s heart is not merely for your forgiveness. Forgiveness is not the end; acceptance is the end.
The reason the Lord Jesus can save us is that He is a Savior. Before we were saved, He was already a Savior.
Here was the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. The provision was already there. The right sacrifice was already provided even before the foundation of the world.
God knew what man would do. He knew that one day we would turn our backs on Him, but He will never turn His eyes away from us.
We are created for His pleasure. We may give Him up, but He will never give us up. That is how loving our heavenly Father is.
He is our Savior; therefore, He can deliver us because He is our Deliverer. He is our refuge; we can hide in Him. He is our fortress; we find our security in Him.
It is not what He does that proves who He is. It is who He is; therefore, He does what He does.
The Scripture says that we must believe that He is. When we believe that He is, then we enjoy what He has done for us.
This morning, I want to share a little more, because sometimes we need further clarification. When a brother shares from the platform, it is difficult to cover every aspect of a subject.
When we speak of our acceptability to God, we may have the impression that once we are in Christ Jesus, we are instantly mature and instantly acceptable to Him in every respect.
But when I look at myself, I do not find what I think I ought to be, and I become discouraged.
God’s standard of acceptability is unchanged. Christ is the standard of our acceptance, and He is also the way to our acceptance.
From one end to the other, it is Christ. Christ is the beginning; Christ is the end. In between, there is progression.
Thank God that we all have a good beginning, but we are not yet at the end. We are in the process, and we are moving toward the end. Because the good work that He has begun, He will surely carry us all the way through.
At the beginning, it is all His doing. But in the process, we need to learn to allow Him to do a work in us.
Even at the very beginning, there is a small measure of Christ in our lives. That measure is very precious to God. Anything that reflects His Son is precious to the Father.
Even that little bit is acceptable to Him. But we do not remain there. We want our acceptability before Him to be always increasing, because we are moving forward and increasingly satisfying His heart.
Whatever the measure of Christ—whether small, medium, or great—that measure belongs to God. Christ is in God, and we belong to Christ; therefore, in Christ, we belong to God.
Do not despise even the little measure of Christ that is already in you. Yet do not remain there.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:11 that when we were children, we spoke as children, thought as children, and acted as children. As long as you are a child, that is normal.
When you are a child, you can play with little toys and nobody can blame you. But if you have grown spiritually and still remain occupied with those little things, it does not look right.
What is acceptable at one stage of your life may not be acceptable at another stage. Unfortunately, many Christian believers remain where they were many years ago.
What was once acceptable before God in them may now be unacceptable. You have grown; you should change your thinking and the way you act. What was good a few years ago may not be good now—not good for yourself and not good for other people.
I want to give a story, because I think it is very important for us to know that we can never simply assume that what we think is acceptable is acceptable to God.
That is why, in Ephesians 5:10, we are told to find out what is pleasing to the Lord—always seeking that which is pleasing in His sight.
This is a continuous matter. We need continually to search and find out what is acceptable in His sight.
What was acceptable at one stage of your life may not be acceptable now. Sometimes the Lord has to do a very drastic work in us so that we discover that what we have been doing is totally unacceptable to Him.
That discovery is God’s grace. When we discover that something is not acceptable to God, it creates in us a real longing for that which is acceptable to Him.
If, from time to time, you discover that what you do is not acceptable to God, thank God for it. He is showing you what is acceptable in His sight.
This is the story of a brother known by quite a few brothers at this conference. He was, and still is, a very gifted brother.
In the 1950s, he was very active in the Youth for Christ movement. For some reason, he left the Youth for Christ organization and began his own work.
Apparently, it was quite successful, and the Lord really blessed that work. We know one particular brother who was saved under this brother’s ministry. He was very active in what people would call the Lord’s work.
Most Christians do not understand the universality of the believers’ priesthood. Even though it is in Scripture, God’s people do not always grasp it.
In their understanding, to serve God you have to be clergy, an ordained pastor, or a missionary in a foreign country. If you are simply a lay Christian, an ordinary Christian, you are not called to serve. You are called to sit and come on Sunday to listen to a good message. If you come regularly, then you are considered a good Christian.
This brother had a training camp with many cottages. People came and stayed there to receive Christian training.
One day, while the brother was away from the camp, he received a call with bad news: a fire had swept through the camp, and all the buildings had been destroyed except one.
That news was very difficult for him to receive. But that evening, or sometime after that event, he had a dream.
The dream was something like what we find in 1 Corinthians 3. Let us look at verse 11:
For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
That is our foundation. That is our common foundation. That is our ground of faith, and that is our ground of acceptance. We all have the same ground upon which to stand.
But we must beware what we build upon it. What we build upon it may be acceptable, or it may not be acceptable. The day will come when the fire will test it.
What can go through the fire will endure. What cannot go through the fire will disappear.
This brother said that he had a very vivid dream. There was a crowd of believers standing before the judgment seat of Christ. They were all standing there to give account of what they had done in this life.
As he stood there, he looked around at all those who were present. He saw some carrying very heavy loads upon their backs—huge bundles. Others carried smaller packages.
But he noticed that some people appeared to carry almost nothing. They had only small things which they could hold in their two hands.
Those who carried very heavy loads came before the Lord to show Him what they had done. But to their disappointment, God did not accept the things they brought.
Those who had only small things in their hands—the things that no one could see—were the ones in whom the Lord delighted. Those were treasures: gold, silver, and precious stones.
This brother awoke from his dream, and it changed the whole direction of his ministry.
No doubt, what he did once upon a time was acceptable. But now it was no longer acceptable. The Lord had something more for him. Do not remain where you are. We have to move on.
Remember, I shared about the leaders of the tribes who offered six covered carts. Let us look at Numbers 7.
The carts, or wagons, were on wheels. What are wheels for? Wheels are not for remaining stationary. Wheels are for movement, for motion, for moving on.
Our spiritual service can never be fixed in one spot for too long. The carts were on wheels; therefore, we have to move on.
But there is another matter: they were covered carts. Ministry that is acceptable to God should not be seen by men; it should be seen only by God.
Only God knows what is acceptable. We do not serve God for men to approve us. We serve God to be acceptable in His sight, and in His sight alone.
I hope the testimony of this brother will impress our hearts. What was good at one time may not be good today. God is always looking for the increase of Christ in all of us. Without His increase, He will not be satisfied.
This morning, I want to say a little about how we can live a life that is acceptable to Him.
We may still have the conception that if we try hard enough, God will accept us. But I ask the question: is there anything in us, no matter how hard we try, that God will find acceptable to Him?
Consider the significance of Christ’s death and resurrection. Of course, He died for sin. But, brothers and sisters, in His death He concluded a race that was impossible to be acceptable to God. He concluded it, and He finished it.
There is no possibility for the old race to be acceptable in His sight. He put it out of sight. But on the other side of resurrection, He is the Head of a new race.
That new race is totally acceptable to God because of who He is. The old race, which can never satisfy God or be acceptable to Him, is finished. In resurrection, God began something entirely new.
In Christ, there is a new race that is totally acceptable to God.
The choruses we sang this morning said, “For me to live is Christ.” Only Christ is acceptable. No other life is worth living for.
The apostle Paul found the secret of the life that is acceptable and pleasing to God: it is Christ—Christ in us.
Let me quickly refer to three offerings found in the book of Leviticus:
Let us turn to Leviticus 1 and read verses 5 through 9:
And he shall kill the bullock before the Lord; and Aaron’s sons, the priests, shall present the blood, and sprinkle the blood round about against the altar that is at the door of the tent of meeting.
And he shall flay the burnt-offering, and cut it into its pieces.
And the sons of Aaron the priest shall put fire upon the altar, and lay wood in order upon the fire;
and Aaron’s sons, the priests, shall lay the pieces, the head, and the fat, in order upon the wood that is on the fire which is upon the altar:
but its inwards and its legs shall he wash with water. And the priest shall burn the whole on the altar, for a burnt-offering, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savor unto the Lord.
In this offering, every part of the animal was offered up. Everything was consumed.
The burnt offering has the thought of that which ascends to God. That is why it says that it is an offering made by fire, a sweet aroma to the Lord.
All the sacrifices in the Old Testament are types of Christ. This particular offering speaks of Christ as having totally surrendered Himself to God. He withheld nothing; there was a total surrender of Himself.
In the New Testament, particularly in the Gospel of John, the Lord declares many times:
I came not to do mine own will, but the will of Him that sent me.
He was not thinking of doing His own things. His whole concern was to give Himself wholly to God, His Father. That total giving over was the secret of His life and the power of His ministry.
He was afraid to act out of Himself. He wanted to please His Father completely. If the Father said something, then He said something. If He saw the Father doing something, then He did the same thing.
He would not do anything out of Himself. He was totally given over to His Father and at His Father’s disposal.
That is the secret of a life that is acceptable in His sight. God is not so much after what you can do for Him; He is after you.
He wants you to enjoy Him, and He wants to enjoy you, because you were created to satisfy Him. His heart is for you, and He wants your heart for Him.
The Lord Jesus declared:
I came not to do mine own will, but the will of Him that sent me.
At the age of twelve, when He went to Jerusalem and entered the temple, that was God’s earthly house. What were His words on that occasion?
He said:
I must be in My Father’s house.
He came for one thing and one thing alone: to be occupied with His Father’s business.
At His baptism, He declared, in effect: “His will is My will. His work is My work. His end is My end. I am totally committed to the Father’s will.”
Heaven could not hold back. There was a breakthrough from heaven, and God declared:
This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
God is looking for that kind of people among His people today.
The second offering is the meal offering. It speaks of Christ’s perfect humanity: fine flour mingled with oil.
It speaks of His perfect humanity. He was filled with the Holy Spirit at His birth, and He was filled with the Holy Spirit before He launched out into His public ministry.
There was no leaven, because there was no sin in Him. The flour was very fine, and this speaks of His sensitivity to God the Father.
He was always conscious of the presence of His Father. He had this consciousness in His heart: “I want to do all things that please Him.” He had a sensitivity to what the Father wanted.
Let me give a couple of illustrations. In John 4, we read that the Lord went to Samaria.
For a Jew traveling from the south to Galilee, the usual practice was to go another way and bypass Samaria. Jews and Samaritans had nothing to do with one another.
But on that occasion, the Father’s will was for Him to go through Samaria. That was against Jewish tradition. The Jews considered the Samaritans to be a mixed people and regarded themselves as maintaining racial purity.
Yet the Lord listened to the Father’s leading, and that day He went to Samaria. That is a practical way of living a consecrated life, a life acceptable to God: not my will, but His will.
That day He met the Samaritan woman. As we read through the Gospels, we find that some non-Jewish people received greater light and revelation than God’s chosen Jewish people.
The Lord told the Samaritan woman:
If thou knewest the gift of God, and Who it is that saith to thee, Give Me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water.
That day was very hot, and apparently they had not brought food with them. The disciples went into the village to buy food.
When they came back, they saw that the Lord Jesus did not seem hungry. He seemed already satisfied, and they wondered whether someone had brought Him food.
The Lord said:
I have meat to eat that ye know not of.
Then He explained:
My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to accomplish His work.
This is the Lord’s life: a life of living sacrifice. He always did those things that were pleasing in the Father’s sight. They may not have pleased men, and they may have seemed to go against the tradition of the day.
But in John 4 we see the principle of the meal offering. When you give yourself to do His will, you minister to Him first, and He ministers back to you.
When God is satisfied, we also are satisfied. The Lord said, “I have meat to eat that ye know not of.” His food was to do the will of Him who sent Him.
As He is in the world, so are we in the world. How did He live His life in this world? He was always a burnt offering—a continuous burnt offering.
His life was also like the meal offering: always sensitive to the leading of the Father. He wanted everything to be acceptable to Him.
He was not afraid of man’s criticism. Man’s opinion did not get in the way. He went against the position and tradition of the Jews.
But that day there was fruit for the kingdom. Not only was the Samaritan woman wonderfully saved; the Lord remained there two days, and many others believed.
That is the secret of a life of sacrifice. It is a life that is acceptable to Him. It is a life of offering.
In our thinking, we often think of consecration as something we do occasionally. At the beginning of the year, perhaps, we try to rededicate ourselves.
We do it occasionally. If we are more spiritual, we may do it more often. But the life of Jesus was itself an offering.
His life was a burnt offering. His life was a meal offering. His life was a fellowship offering, or peace offering.
I appreciate that some translations call it a fellowship offering, while others call it a peace offering. Both are good.
In Ephesians 2, Christ is our peace. Without Him, there is no peace between God and man. Without peace with God, there is no way that we can have peace with one another.
He is not merely One who gives peace. He is our peace. He is the Peacemaker, the One who brings men into peace with God and brings God’s peace to men.
Because we are at peace with God, we can be at peace with one another.
In the peace offering, three parties shared the sacrifice:
In the Old Testament, the offerer and the priest were two distinct persons. But in the New Testament, the offerer and the sacrifice are joined together. We do not merely offer things; we offer ourselves.
If you offer yourself, all that belongs to you goes with you. In this peace offering, God has His part, those who serve Him have their share, and what we receive from Him we share with our family.
Individually, we are all living sacrifices. Why is it called a living sacrifice? Because as long as you are alive, as long as you are living, you are a sacrifice.
As long as you are in Christ, and as long as you have life in Christ, whether you know it or not, you are a sacrifice. The life in us is a life of sacrifice, and that life can satisfy God’s heart and is always acceptable to Him.
I want to share a few thoughts that will help us in our local fellowship.
I do not know about your fellowship, but I know something about ours, and I know a few fellowships that I have visited occasionally.
You can tell whether a local fellowship is really blessed or not blessed. The key is how the brothers and sisters live before God.
If they live their own Christian lives, the blessing is very limited. But if they learn to live as Christ lived—as a burnt offering—that fellowship is a blessed fellowship.
Where there is a life of total surrender to God, there are those who give themselves wholly to Him. When you go to such a fellowship, you sense that they know God’s way for them and that God has a way in them.
That is because they are those who live lives acceptable and pleasing to Him.
The secret is this: when we give ourselves totally to Him, we discover that He does not simply come to us to share His mind. He wants us to go to Him so that He may share His mind with us.
The call is always, “Come unto Me.” As we come to Him, we learn of Him and learn from Him.
That is the secret of any local fellowship that is truly blessed by the Lord.
There are those who are willing to give themselves like a peace offering. First, they want to satisfy God. Then they discover that they themselves are also satisfied.
Not only are they satisfied, but the whole family is fed spiritually. Our heart is to satisfy Him, and our heart is also to bring spiritual supply and nourishment to our brothers and sisters.
When we do this, we find ourselves fed spiritually.
Let me share a couple of thoughts before we conclude. Turn to Hebrews 13, the portion our brother used last evening.
Let us read Hebrews 13:15-16:
Through Him then let us offer up a sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of lips which make confession to His name.
But to do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.
There is continuous praise. It is a sacrifice through Christ, and it is all of life. It is continuous.
This is not something produced merely by outward circumstances. It is the outflow of something inward.
Often our praise is affected by external things. When things are good, we have high praise; when things are not so good, there is no praise. Our praise becomes conditional upon what is outside.
But no matter what the outward condition may be, the inward reality does not change. He is always in us. The reality is within.
The more you praise, the more you discover what is within. That is the secret of truly rejoicing in the Lord. We praise continually.
Our brother shared last evening, particularly regarding the Lord’s table. Those are special occasions.
If you look at Numbers 28, there were regular daily offerings. There were also additional offerings for the Sabbath, the beginning of every month, and special occasions such as the feasts.
Throughout that chapter, there are many references to offerings that were to be made besides the regular offering.
During the week, we thank Him and praise Him. But when we come to the Lord’s table, that is a special time, because we want a fuller praise and a more satisfying praise to be offered to our heavenly Father.
In Scripture, worship and service are closely related, because the object of true service and true worship is God, and God alone.
I want to share a practical experience from my life. I have attended many conferences.
A sister once asked me, “How do you know that you should go to those conferences?” I said, “Unless the Lord prevents me from going, I know that I should go.”
All these years, the Lord has not prevented me from attending such conferences. I can tell you that I have been greatly helped by brothers and sisters gathering in this way.
There is spiritual help that you cannot always receive locally, but which you may receive in this kind of gathering. Somehow, in such a gathering, you touch a fuller measure of Christ.
Locally, you know that He is great. But when you come together in this way, you see more clearly how great He is.
Particularly in the final meeting of a conference, when we gather together and hear prayers in different languages—Chinese, Portuguese, and many others—we see something wonderful.
All these different people, whom the world would consider impossible to make one, are made one through Christ.
Why? It is all because of that one sacrifice that was offered. Because of that sacrifice, we are one.
When you listen to some of the prayers, they minister to you. Some of the prayers heard at the breaking of bread remain with us for a long time.
They bring you close to God. Through the prayer, you touch heaven. Through the prayer, you touch the living Christ.
Thank God for what spiritual sacrifices can do for brothers and sisters. A few words can touch many hearts, and how we are blessed.
When we break bread together, let us look to the Lord that there may be a touch of heaven on earth, that we may offer all our love back to Him.
As you offer your part to Him, you minister to your brothers and sisters.
Let us turn to Romans 15 and consider the result of ministry. We will read verse 16:
That I should be a minister of Christ Jesus unto the Gentiles, ministering the gospel of God, that the offering up of the Gentiles might be made acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Spirit.
Paul labored not to gain people for his own hand or for his own possession. In our service, we must not keep anything for ourselves. If it is from Him, we give it back to Him.
This is especially important for Christian workers. There is always a tendency to gather a following around ourselves.
Paul said:
Be ye imitators of me, even as I also am of Christ.
I do not want to hear the expression, “My church.” If the church is your church, then it is not His. It is His; it is not yours. Do not say, “My church.” We are nobody.
Everything must be offered to Him. If we labor for the Lord, we all have that tendency to retain something for ourselves, but all that comes from Him must be offered back to Him.
Let me read a rendering from the New Living Translation. Paul says that he is a special messenger from Christ Jesus to the Gentiles. He was God-sent, not man-sent.
He brought the good news in order to offer the Gentiles up as a fragrant sacrifice to God—pure and pleasing to Him by the Holy Spirit.
Paul did not gather Gentile converts for his own pleasure. He gave them as a sacrifice acceptable to God.
May the Lord help us. What is from Him may come through us, but it must all return unto Him.
Let us pray.
Father, we thank You for Your presence with us. We have to confess that our human words are so inadequate.
Do not allow us to limit You. Break through every obstacle, and manifest Your greatness among Your people.
Because You are great, and You desire to do great things, help us that our consecration to You may be complete.
Your will be done. Your will be done.
Whatever we do, we pray that we may have one desire: to please You and to be acceptable in Your sight.
Be glorified. Amen.