Stones and Sacrifices: Peter's Mixed Metaphor for the Church (1 Peter 2:5)

Well, good morning. Almost forgot to turn my microphone on. Before we get started, you can start turning in your Bibles. 1 Peter 2 will be in verses 4 through 10. But while you're finding your place, just a couple of quick announcements.

Jim's not here today. So if this is your first Sunday, please give us at least one more chance. I like that. And Jim today is celebrating a very important day. Deidre's dad, Fred, is having his 90th birthday.

So that's what they're doing. So I don't know if you guys are watching, but happy birthday, Fred. While we're talking about Jim and you're finding your place, one more announcement. October 3rd through 5th at First Baptist Church of Mustang, Oklahoma, G3 is going to have a regional conference on cessationism.

Featured speakers are Josh Bice, Tom Pennington, Conrad Mbewe, Mike Riccardi, Scott Anuel, our friend Virgil Walker, our longtime close friend Justin Peters, and one other speaker that you may know, international author James Clancy Osmond.

So he did not want to announce that himself, so I'm doing it for him. In light of this, I'm sure that you would all like to have all of his books autographed. And he's willing, he said he will stay as long as you need him to the next several Sundays.

So make sure you do that. 1 Peter 2, verses 4 through 10. And coming to him as to a living stone which has been rejected by men, but is choice and precious in the sight of God, you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

For this is contained in Scripture. Behold, I lay in Zion a choice stone, a precious cornerstone, and he who believes upon him will not be put to shame. This precious value, then, is for you who believe, but for those who disbelieve, the stone which the builders rejected, this became the chief cornerstone, and a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.

They stumble because they are disobedient to the word, and to this stumbling they were also appointed. But you are a chosen family, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

For you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God. You had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Let's pray together. Father, indeed, we are the people of God, a people that have received your mercy, a people that wish to proclaim your excellencies.

And so, Lord, I pray today that I would preach as one who has the very oracles of God, and I pray that I would pray only the great oracles of God, the word that is in front of us today, and I pray that we would all listen as those who are listening to the oracles of God, only insofar as your word is preached well and consistently, that your word is preached accurately.

And, Lord, I pray that these, your people, would remember what it is that you'd have for them, that they would apply your word. These are your people, and your spirit, and your word. So I pray, Lord, that you would have your way with them, Lord, in Jesus' name.

Amen. In his best-selling book, Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind, atheist Yuval Noah Harari writes this. As far as we can tell from a purely scientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no meaning.

Humans are the outcome of blind evolutionary processes that operate without goal or purpose. Our actions are not part of some divine cosmic plan. And if planet Earth were to blow up tomorrow morning, the universe would probably keep going about its business as usual.

As far as we can tell at this point, human subjectivity would not be missed. Hence, any meaning that people ascribe to their lives is just an illusion. That's a happy way to start a Christian message, right?

Well, if his assumption's correct, then his assertion's correct. He assumes there's no God, and therefore no divine cosmic plan. For the atheist, all the universe is just an accident, just a series of coincidences.

There can't be any objective actual purpose for all that's happened and is happening,.

That will happen.

All humanity has is a delusion. That's the only meaning. It's just a subjective story that we tell ourselves about meaning. Without God, without his divine cosmic plan, there is no real meaning. There is no purpose to life.

There's no purpose to anything. There's no reason to do anything. There's no reason to go on living at all. Harari, of course, is dead wrong in his assumption that there is no God and no divine plan. As an atheist, he is utterly without wisdom.

He's without the fear of God. That is the beginning of that wisdom. He doesn't know anything about it. There is, in fact, a purpose for everything that happens, and we know what it is. You know what it is.

It's the glory of God.

The purpose for everything is God's glory. All of it exists so that God will be glorified. All of history, everything that happens and has happened and will happen is for God's glory. Romans 11, 36. For from him and through him and to him are all things.

To him be the glory forever. Amen. We can go a little further than that. We can connect this overarching purpose of God's glory to the creation, to human history in that creation, all the way down to the events of our individual lives, to whatever happened to you this morning, this very day, and into eternity future.

God has chosen to glorify himself, and he's done it by certain means, certain methods, certain acts. He's chosen to demonstrate his power and goodness in creation. He's chosen to express his perfection in the creation of a race of image bearers to whom he does good.

He shows to us and through us his worthiness to be glorified and so receives glory. He's chosen to reveal himself progressively to men so that we can worship him and learn truth about him. We exist to glorify him ourselves and to cause other people to glorify him.

As they observe his life in us, they learn his truth from us, but they also observe what would otherwise be impossible from us were it not for the work that he does in us and through us. So all of history exists for the glory of God.

That's its purpose. There's also a motif in the story, a repeated pattern in the story. God's reaching out to create for himself a family, a kingdom, a people, people with whom he can share a nearness of fellowship, union, communion.

That's the primary means by which he will accomplish the good end of his glory. So we can say that history is the story of God and man, God relating to man. Human history is that. It's God's story. God's its author.

He's the main character in it. Man's a character in it, a supporting character, a player through whom God glorifies himself. So we can say that the relationship between God and man is the focus or the theme or the thread of all of history that unifies history.

We can see it in biblical history. From the beginning of time, God has used various expressions of his nearness to man, his relationship to man. It's a fascinating study, one worth going into in great detail, but that would be the entire story of the Bible.

So I'm going to hit some highlights of this relationship of God to man as how he expresses his nearness to man. And the purpose of that, I want to make sure that we all understand and have in mind the historical reference that animates the metaphor that we see in 1 Peter 2.

So God begins his communion with man in the creation, in the Garden of Eden, with Adam and Eve, in the garden before the fall. He continues, and here I jump through history. He continues to bless Abraham and the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, with his nearness, the special kind of near presence, all the way down to the sons of Jacob in Egypt.

He presents himself then to Moses at the burning bush. He shares his covenant name with Moses. He presents himself in a special way on Mount Sinai, and in what Moses refers to as the Tent of Meeting, where Yahweh would speak to Moses face-to-face, just as a man speaks to his friend.

He was then present with the people of Israel in the pillar of cloud and fire. That culminated in the building of the Tabernacle in about 1400 B .C. God had a special symbolic presence with his people.

His presence was among them in the form of a created glory cloud, the Shekinah Glory, a symbol of God's purity and power. That cloud moved into Solomon's Temple when it was built in about 1000 B .C. That temple was intended by Solomon to be a permanent dwelling for God's glory, a permanent symbol of his near presence to his people.

But over time, you know that due to the horrible sins of his people, the worst of sins, God's glory departed from the temple. His nearness, his union with the people was broken, and that temple was destroyed in 586 B .C.

There was a second temple known as the Riverbelts Temple. It was built after the exile in 516 B .C. The promise there was that God's glory would return to it. Haggai 2 .9, the latter glory of this house will be greater than the former.

That seems to indicate that God's glory would fill this second temple in an even greater way than it filled the first temple in the tabernacle. But there's no record of the visible return.

Of that glory cloud.

Instead, some of you know where I'm going here, that second temple, even though it was renovated and expanded a couple times, it became known as Herod's Temple, it ultimately did see the return of God's glory.

And in its most visible, for its truest, most actual form, the reality of God in human flesh, that temple saw the actual presence of God in the form of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. That second temple was destroyed in 70 A .D.

Now, here's where we get close to our passage. The dead stones of that building, they were taken down and scattered. It was disassembled, disorganized, unbuilt. We call the Wailing Wall or the Western Wall as actually part of a retaining wall, not actually part of the temple structure.

Those stones were torn down, just as Jesus said they would be. Emmanuel, God with us, Jesus Christ, fully represents the nearness of God to man. He is the means by which we relate to him. God to man, in and through a divine human person.

The Gospel of Matthew begins with a declaration of God with us. This is Matthew 1, 23. Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which translated means God with us.

Matthew's Gospel ends with the words of Jesus. Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. God with us. John's Gospel begins with the revelation of Jesus Christ as the word who became flesh and dwelt or tabernacled among us.

We beheld his glory, glories of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. Jesus referred to himself as something greater than the temple, and so he is. He is the actual presence of God with man, one divine person in two natures, fully God and fully man, uniting God and man as no other manifestation of the presence of God with man could ever do.

Man may now come to Christ, to God himself, without reference to geography. We draw near to him. We glorify him as we declare his excellencies, the truths of God's word, the truth about God. We are fulfilling our purpose, being made back into his image and fulfilling our purpose from creation as his image bearers, his purpose for everything,.

His glory.

That brings us to our passage. We're going to be focused on verse 5. But we got to back up to verse 4 so that you can kind of get the full context of it. So this is 1 Peter 2, 4, and 5. And coming to him as to a living stone, which has been rejected by men, but is choice and precious in the sight of God.

You also as living stones are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. So in verse 4, coming to him, it's not a command, it's an assertion that Peter asserts that his readers whom he has identified as believers throughout the book have been and are in fact coming to Christ.

Another translation of that verb is drawing near, drawing near to Christ. So Peter asserts that we have come near to Christ. Having tasted the goodness of the Lord, we have drawn near to Christ and we continue to draw near to him.

And then he begins an extended stone metaphor for Christ. He begins it with the words, as to a living stone, which has been rejected by men, but is choice and precious in the sight of God. And it's that dichotomy of views right there in that verse that divides humanity into its two camps and actually provides some unity within those two camps from time to time.

There are those who agree, Christians are those who agree with God that Jesus Christ is that living stone, he is precious, he is choice. Unbelievers are those who reject Christ, deem the stone to be unworthy of their devotion.

That's the contrast that continues all the way to verse 10. Peter repeatedly emphasizes the implications of esteeming Christ in one way or the other, rightly or wrongly. That was the emphasis last time I preached, which I'm sure you all boned up on yesterday.

Listen to that recording. It's okay. I actually was thinking about doing a potpourri thing today too, but I didn't. But today we're gonna look at the privilege that we have as those who have esteemed Christ as he is, as God says he is, choice and precious.

So we're focused on that one side, the privilege associated with having drawn near to him. So verse says, having come near to Christ, verse four says, having come near to Christ, having believed on him then, having esteemed him correctly, as God the Father does, as choice and precious, then Peter tells us in verse five that you also as living stones are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

You also, you also continues the thought, extends it from verse four. You also are those who are coming near to Christ, those who have esteemed the living stone rightly. You also as living stones, as living stones, and we have to think about that.

We believers are living stones, but Christ is the living stone. Peter refers to Christ as a living stone and to us as living stones. Other than the number of the noun, the plural, the stone and the stones are the same words.

So what's the significance of this double use of the same metaphor? Once to mean Christ and once to mean those who are his. And I think there's two levels of significance to the connection. One is simply to reflect our identification with Christ.

As Christ is a living stone, so may Christians be called living stones to reflect their union with Christ. We are as he is. Just as the name Christian, that's one we all gladly accept. That's a label that we adopt without shame.

It identifies us with Christ. So Peter refers to both Christians and his disciples as living stones. Interestingly, side note, the word Christian appears in the Bible three times. Once in Peter in a kind of similar vein to say it's a label that we accept without shame.

But I think more than just the idea, the kind of raw notion of identity, Peter is emphasizing a result of that identity, a result of that union. Both Christ and his people are living stones. We live because he lives.

We have the life that Peter describes in this epistle, eternal spiritual life, because of our connection with Christ. We're living stones because we've drawn near to the living stone. It's our union with him that has resulted in new life.

That's our life, that life of ongoing sanctification that Peter talks about throughout this book, growing ever nearer to Christ, growing ever more into the image of Christ. So we are regenerated living stones because we've drawn nearer to the eternal resurrected living stone.

Then we living stones are being built up as a spiritual house. Having become living stones, we don't just remain scattered about, disorganized, uncoordinated, unassembled. Without any other use or purpose, like the stones of the temples that no longer exist.

We're not scattered around like that. God continues to work in us and through us for his glory. He builds us up together into something identifiable, unified, something designed, something created with purpose, with specific uses and activities, roles.

So God, this is, I wrote this sentence and I thought, do I want to say this sentence? But it's true. God's purpose for redeeming each of us is more than our redemption. It's more than the glory he receives in that redemption.

As great as it is, he continues to do more. He does more in us and through us for his glory. Individually and corporately, we're being built up as a spiritual house. We're being built up and the builder is God.

Peter refers to the group of human builders in verse 7. Foolish builders who reject the living stone. But here the builder is God for whom the living stone is chosen and precious. God is the wise builder of the building, the spiritual house with Christ as its cornerstone on which it's built.

If the stones in the building are individual believers and the builder of the building is God, that's good. Then what is the building? What is God building from these admittedly rough and meager materials?

What's the structure? He says he's building a spiritual house. It's a strange term. Start with the word house. It's oikos. It's just a standard word for a house. It could mean your house, my house. It's also sometimes refers to the people in the house.

It's sometimes translated as household or family. It can even refer to a nation, the house of Israel.

It's used that way.

Oikos sometimes refers to God's house, meaning the temple or the tabernacle, those places, remember, where God's presence was especially near to those devoted to worship. It's used that way in that sense in connection now to the church.

Peter uses that way in chapter 4. I didn't write down the verse, but it's in chapter 4. You have to read all of chapter 4. For it is time for judgment to begin with the house of God, the house of God.

And if it begins with us first, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? So you see there the house of God refers corporately to the believers to whom the letter is written, us.

This is also the meaning here. God is building up a house. That house is composed of living stones, those who, by their having tasted of the kindness of the Lord and having drawn near to the living stone, now become part of this spiritual edifice, a recognizable, functional building, a house.

So the historical reference of the metaphor is to the tabernacle and the temple, the house of God, a place wherein God once dwelt in that kind of special nearness to his people. That's the essence of the church.

It's the presence of God on earth with men, regenerate sinners, people now indwelt with the life of Christ, now living the life of Christ, an eternal life, a new life, a changed life. We serve a valuable purpose now, each of you in your spot in the dwelling place of God on earth today, his tabernacle, his temple, his body, his bride, his church, his house.

And it's a spiritual house. Spiritual is from pneuma, a common word for breath and spirit. The adjective is used 26 times in the New Testament. It's always translated spiritual in any of the translations that any of you would hopefully read.

There's a few out there where, you know, who knows how they came up with the words that will use something else. But any translation that's out there, NASB, ESV, NIV, King James, any of those that you guys might possibly be reading, LSB, of course, spiritual.

That adjective is used only twice by Peter, and I think at all in either 1 Peter or 2 Peter, only twice, both of them in this one verse, first the spiritual house and to the sacrifices that we'll get to later.

The kids are thinking the word of the day is sacrifice, and he's hardly said it at all.

Don't worry.

You'll catch up. It's coming. So spiritual, what does it mean here? I think it has two levels of meaning. It generally does, and here I think it does. It can mean regenerate, like spiritually minded, like opposed to earthly or worldly minded, of the Holy Spirit, akin to words like holy and godly, morally superior, more like God.

And we have become in that sense spiritual people. We are people that have the Holy Spirit. We are focused on spiritual matters. We are focused on eternal matters. We worship a God who is spirit and is eternal.

We don't love the world's system and the things of the world that are passing away, sinful things. We have moved on from there. We are a spiritual house, and a spiritual house requires spiritual stones, and so you are if you've been regenerated by the Holy Spirit.

If you've been made alive to respond to the gospel of Jesus Christ, you're spiritual in that sense. But I think it's also in the sense of just more basically not physical. He's making that point. This is a spiritual house as opposed to the physical tabernacle and the physical temple.

It's a spiritual edifice, an invisible structure, which is a reference to the invisible church. But we obviously have physical, visible church buildings, and you guys are both spiritual and visible, physical beings.

What you see here is not the church. This is not the spiritual house of God as you look around. You see a part of it, perhaps, but neither the structure nor this particular group of people is the house of God.

The church has always made the biblical distinction between the visible and invisible church. Peter refers to the invisible church, the spiritual house of God. It's all believers of the church age. Now, we do have to be careful on this.

We do gather physically, visibly, as we are commanded, and it's best for us to read your newsletter. Virtual church, streaming church is not church. It doesn't count. There's a physical component to us, and we are commanded to gather together physically.

But we understand that all visible church congregations are mixed sheep, goat, herds. They're a mixed gathering of living stones and dead rocks. So this spiritual house is the invisible church. Now, Peter mixes the metaphor.

Makes the metaphor actually impossible. This is not uncommon for biblical metaphors. We are living stones, part of a spiritual house. That metaphor makes sense. Houses can be made of stones. But we're also a holy priesthood.

It doesn't fit anymore. So now we have to let the reality take hold of our minds more than the metaphor. The metaphor is we're said to be the spiritual house of God, but also priests of God offering sacrifices to God.

We're the building, but also those who occupy it and serve God within it. The metaphor is impossible, but the reality is true. We do comprise a unity in plurality, one holy Catholic church, one church comprised of many individuals, one building of many stones, and we are also individually priests of God and comprise together a holy priesthood.

So priesthood refers here to the total body of priests, the group of all priests, all those who are priests, and equates them with the church in general, with the house and the stones that are in it. We don't attain some special office of priesthood.

There's nothing. You see that here. There's nothing in the priesthood that is distinct from our condition as Christians as being part of the church. There are distinctions in the church and in local churches and role, but not in access, not in priestly access.

We all have the same access through the same high priest and savior. So that's what the concept of priesthood is centered around, is access. The priest is an intermediary between God and man. He has access to God to offer sacrifices on behalf of himself and other people.

The Old Testament model was a man of a particular set of qualifications, ancestral, physical. You know, a little person couldn't be a priest. There were physical requirements. There were moral qualifications.

For the man who would serve as a mediator between God and his people, and he would offer prayer and sacrifice to God on their behalf. He would also give instruction from God to the people. He served as an intermediary.

But believers have unfettered and direct access to God the Father because of the work of our high priest, Jesus Christ. We've been justified by grace through faith in Christ, so we may approach the Father justified and share our hearts with Him directly.

We're at peace with Him. We're in union with Him. So we're priests, and we're said to be holy. This is a little bit confusing. A holy priesthood. In chapter one, here's why. In chapter one, we get a command to be holy.

This is, if you look back at chapter one, verses 14 through 16. As obedient children, not being conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the holy one who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your conduct.

Because it is written, you shall be holy, for I am holy. There's a command to be holy. But now here, Peter tells us a few verses later that we are holy. A holy priesthood.

So what gives?

Well, we know that there are kind of phases to holiness. We are made positionally, judicially, forensically holy. We are declared perfectly holy before God because we've obtained an alien righteousness, the righteousness of Christ.

That's our justification. But in addition to that, at our conversion, when we are regenerated, we are set apart and actually made practically more holy. We are morally better as converted people. No longer totally depraved.

We are stronger over sin. We're freed from the overwhelming power of sin. It still has power, but it's not overwhelming anymore. We are not its slaves. If we subject ourselves to sin, we are its willing subjects as regenerated believers.

We are not slaves. We love Christ now. Our love for sin has been replaced. Replaced by a greater love. Love that we were made for. And in that sense, we're holy. We have that initial sanctification at conversion.

That love for Christ grows. It further overwhelms our love for sin because it crowds it out of our life as we grow. That is progressive sanctification. Our love for Christ continues to just crowd out that love for sin.

We draw near to Christ and further and further away from sin. It's ongoing repentance. So we are completely holy positionally. That's our justification. We are made practically more holy at our conversion.

That is our initial sanctification. And we are being made more and more holy and into the image of God through our lives. And that is our progressive sanctification. Fulfilling the command to be holy.

So we are a holy priesthood and a holy nation while in the process of being made holy. And you always have to talk about sanctification in 1 Peter. That is what the book is all about. It is what life is all about.

That's what we learn from Peter. But he can refer to his readers and to us by extension as a holy priesthood because of what Christ has done. The regenerating work of Christ. Whatever sanctification he has done so far in you.

So if you are a Christian, you are practically actually holy to one degree or another. Not perfectly. You are set apart though and being set apart to God. A holy priesthood.

Okay.

Well, what do priests do? What do we do as priests of God in the new covenant? Kids, get your pencils ready. We offer up sacrifices. As did the Old Testament priests. A little bit different. You see immediately these are not dead sheep and bulls and goats.

We don't lay those on an altar. They are spiritual sacrifices. Same word spiritual. Here meaning really emphasizing immaterial. Not physical. They are not the same as the physical bloody sacrifices of the Old Covenant.

Spiritual sacrifices. Well, what exactly are those? One thing I have learned in years of teaching is that people love lists. And I hardly ever give a list in preaching or teaching. So here is your day.

You get a list.

There are seven things in the list. I am going to list out what the Bible refers to as spiritual sacrifices. And I am not going to comment on them except one, maybe one or two of them.

We will see how it goes.

Seven of them. The first one is the sacrifice of your whole self, body and mind.

Sacrifice of yourself.

Romans 12, 1 and 2. Therefore I exhort you brothers by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a sacrifice, living, holy, and pleasing to God which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may approve what the will of God is, that which is good and pleasing and perfect.

Number two is the sacrifice of love. This is Ephesians 5, 1 and 2. Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love, just as Christ also loved us and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.

The third is the sacrifice of giving. Philippians 4, 18. This is Paul speaking. But I have received everything in full and have an abundance. I have been filled. Having received from Epaphroditus what you have sent, a fragrant aroma, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God.

And what Paul received from Epaphroditus was a material gift, financial gift. Number four is the sacrifice of praise. Hebrews 13, 15. Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is the fruit of lips that confess his name.

And this one deserves a little bit of comment because of the context of our passage. Peter refers to this in verse 9. If you look down to verse 9 of 1 Peter 2, proclaiming the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness to his marvelous light.

That's what we do. That's why we're here. That's why we're priests. That's the point of it all. We are to proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. That's what we're to do.

Offer him the praise he deserves for his ways and his works and his attributes and his acts. That's what we're doing here. That's what we do on Sunday mornings. We come all the way out here. That's what we do.

We do it loudly in song. I like to be a part of a small church.

I'm not going to lie. I knew everybody.

It was nice.

It was nice because now I don't know everybody's name. I love also having, like we talk about this, who do we kick out? We don't want to kick anybody out. So one thing I love about a large church is we sing so much loud.

It's beautiful.

When it's small, you can hear individual voices. And sometimes I used to sit in front of Lanny or Lanny sat in front of me and we would criticize each other. It's beautiful. Loud praise to God.

I love it.

There's nothing, there's not anything much better than that. I used to love to go to the Awana conference when we were doing Awana. You have 1 ,000 people singing God's praise. It was great. Think what heaven's going to be like.

Loudly singing the praises of God. And then we also do it quietly as we pray together and as we listen to the word preached. And we think about God and we think about his greatness. We give him glory.

But we're supposed to do that continually according to Hebrews 13, 15. Let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God. So not just on Sunday. Our praise must always be ready. We always be thinking about him and his glory and the things that he's done for us and just how he is and who he is and what he's done.

Let his praise always be on the tip of your tongue and even let it spill out. When you're at work and you're talking to your friends and family, that's a spiritual sacrifice offered by a spiritual priesthood to your God.

Number five, the sacrifice of service. This is the next verse in Hebrews, Hebrews 13, 16. And do not neglect doing good and sharing, for with such sacrifices God is pleased. The sacrifice of gospel proclamation.

Romans 15, 15 and 16. But I've written, this is Paul again, but I've written very boldly to you on some points so as to remind you again because of the grace that was given me by God for me to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, ministering as a priest the gospel of God so that my offering of the Gentiles may become acceptable having been sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

That's a pretty beautiful passage. I hadn't planned to do any comment on that, but it kind of struck me as I'm reading that. Sharing the gospel, he's presenting to God Gentile converts, Paul's work of the gospel, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

Very similar to this language. Number seven, the last one, the sacrifice of prayer. Revelation 8, 3 and 4. And another angel came and stood at the altar having a golden censer and much incense was given to him so that you might add it to the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar which was before the throne.

And the smoke of the incense went up with the prayers of the saints out of the angel's hand before God. So there are some sacrifices that are part of these spiritual sacrifices and they're said to be acceptable to God.

The Old Testament sacrifices generally were not. Sometimes they were. But if you look up sacrifice in the Old Testament and you read through what God has to say about the Old Testament sacrifices, you'll see a lot of references to God's displeasure.

They either didn't offer them at all. They offered them to idols. They offered them wrong, the wrong way, or for the wrong reasons. They didn't understand or think about what they were doing. They did it without repentant hearts.

These were sinful, inconsistent, hypocritical, unacceptable offerings. Read Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Malachi. Unacceptable. And in contrast, these sacrifices are acceptable to God. God is pleased with the sacrifice, wholly pleased with it, with the effort and with its fruit.

He's pleased with the motivation, with the thought and the act. So what pleases Him? What makes these acceptable? Well, you can see that they are offered through Jesus Christ. It's Christ that gives us life.

It's Christ that makes us living stones and not dead rocks. It's His gospel that frees us from total depravity, that absolute slavery to sin that makes it impossible for us to do anything truly good. It's Christ that makes our sacrifices acceptable to God.

And I'm thinking of this in three ways. Three ways you can understand this. First, the offering is acceptable because the offerer is made acceptable through Jesus Christ. The priest is made holy, made acceptable through Jesus Christ.