Being Accepted by God (09/28/2003)

Amen, that's why the babes were crying hallelujah this morning in the

Baptist Church. Alright turn with me to 1 Peter chapter 2 and verse 2 and I'll tell you where we're headed this morning while you're turning there.

We've been talking about the marvelous things that Jesus accomplished on the cross for the

Father, but we are the beneficiaries as well. And we've talked about how it made us to partake in the eternal plan of God.

Secondly, we've talked about how it brought forth our redemption and our reconciliation and how we benefited from the propitiation of God the

Father and how we have been forgiven and how we have been joined with Christ in a co -death, a co -burial, and a co -resurrection.

And we talked about how his death on the cross freed us from the law. And we talked about how his death on the cross has made us to be sons of God through regeneration.

And last Sunday we talked about how his death on the cross made it possible for us to be adopted as sons.

And today I want to talk to you about an amazing fact, and that is that Jesus' finished work has made it possible for us to be accepted by God.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the beautiful music, the lyrics about our

Lord Jesus Christ, about our awesome God. And Father, we thank you that we can sing from our hearts these songs because you have saved us, you have changed our nature and given us a nature that loves the things of you.

And we ask that you would bless our Bible study time this morning, that you would use it in our lives to make us to be more like the

Lord Jesus Christ until he comes, and then on from there. And we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.

You know, Jesus told them once that unless their righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the

Pharisees, that they could not be saved. Can you think about that for a minute?

Do you remember how the Pharisees tried to be, but they failed? Russell, would you give me just a little bit of light?

It helps my aging eyes see these notes a little bit better.

Not a full -blown suntan, but just, there's a little mark there. Do you see the mark on the deal that'll work?

If you think about your righteousness exceeding the righteousness of the Pharisees, if you didn't know the gospel, you would shake.

You would shake at that. You would tremble before God, because you would know that you were not going to go to heaven.

And so when we think about the fact that a holy God can only accept his own holiness, that there is nothing lower that he can accept or be in the presence of, than to make the statement that we are made acceptable to God is an amazing statement.

We are acceptable to God, to a holy God, who will not come into the presence of sin.

The fact that we're acceptable to him is amazing. Our generation has spent far too much time preaching that we have to accept

Jesus Christ. The amazing thing is that that would never have happened if it weren't for the fact that God has accepted us.

How can this be? Well, let's start in 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 2, and we'll get our first hint at how this can be possible.

As newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word that you may grow thereby.

The verse starts off with what we would call experiential truth. Experiential means it's something that we live out in life on this earth in time.

We live this out. When you talk about us growing, this is something we do. This is something we're living out, and it comes by the milk of the word.

As we study the word privately, as we study the word together, as we study the word in Bible studies, or in our devotion times, or as we think about it going down the road, or as we sing scripture songs that have part of the word in the songs, we grow.

And that is a part of the Christian life, is the end time experiential walk.

The word experiential coming from the word experience. It's something we experience. But the

Bible doesn't only teach experiential truth. It teaches positional truth.

Positional truth is interesting because it cannot be changed by us. It is a position that God, who is greater than all, places us in, and no one can change it, not even we ourselves.

When we get past verse 2 here in 1 Peter chapter 2, we begin to leave experiential truth, the world of our experience, and we begin to move into positional truth, those things which we cannot change because God has made them to be so.

So let's look at verse 3. If so be you have tasted that the Lord, he is gracious.

If you have not tasted that, you are not saved. If you are saved, you have tasted

God's grace. Verse 4, to whom coming as into a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God and precious.

Verse 4 is speaking of none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. It calls him a living or a lively stone.

The Lord Jesus Christ is the cornerstone. And it speaks of Jesus Christ.

He was disallowed by men, but he was chosen of God. And then verse 5 begins to speak of us, those who are

Jesus' sheep. And it says ye also. Now this word also, we cannot just read past it like we might in English, because in the

Greek language, the word also is kahi, which is defined in this fashion, a particle having a copulative or connective effect.

So in this Greek language, when it says Jesus is a lively stone and comes back in verse 5 and says ye also as lively stones, the word also connects us with him.

It doesn't mean us along with Jesus. It means us connected to Jesus.

So Jesus is a lively stone and you connected to Jesus are lively stones.

You are built up a spiritual house being connected to Jesus.

You are a holy priesthood because you are connected to the high priest.

And your purpose by God is given to offer up spiritual sacrifices.

Now look at the next word, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.

Now the word dia, the word by is the word dia, which makes these words more powerful than they are in English.

The word also in the Greek is a connective word, but this word by Jesus, the word dia means the channel through which an act occurs.

Jesus is the channel through which our offerings are made acceptable.

Our spiritual offerings are made through the channel dia by Jesus Christ.

They are acceptable. So we begin when we talked about this topic of being made acceptable in the sight of God or to God, the first thing we see is that our offerings are acceptable.

Now that's just as amazing because God will not receive an offering from the hand of sin.

He will not receive an offering done in any other way, but in his way.

We have many stories in the Old Testament of people offering up strange fire to the

Lord and being destroyed by fire. Our people trying to usurp the priesthood and being swallowed up by the earth, by whole families because they weren't the called priests.

You can only worship God God's way. So it is an amazing thing that we stand here and you sit here this morning being told that the offerings that you offer up to God are in fact acceptable to him.

Many offer up offerings thinking they are doing so and God never sees them, never receives them because they are totally unacceptable.

But verse 6 says, wherefore also it is contained in the scriptures.

Behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone reference to Jesus Christ again elect precious.

And then it begins to speak of us the also ones the ones connected to him and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded.

This word confounded is a word that comes from two little Greek words.

It sounds like Katahi Shkono, sound like four

Greek words. The only reason I made an attempt at that one is because I wanted you to hear that the first part of the word is

Kata, which is a familiar word in the Greek. It means down. And the rest of that mess that I tried to say means to shame.

So when you put it together, it means to shame down or to disgrace or by implication to put to the blush.

And the Bible says that those who are connected to the cornerstone and who are also lively stones by faith in him shall never be shamed down, shall never be put to the blush, shall face the very holy

God and be able to look at the Lord Jesus Christ face to face and not be ashamed.

How is this possible? Have we not all done things that as we think about them, we would seem to be ashamed in his presence?

Well, those are experiential things. And this morning, we're not talking about experience.

We're talking about position. The first point we saw from this passage is that you have been connected to the rock.

You have been made part of by connection to the living stone.

And you have therefore been made to be living stones whose offerings are in fact acceptable unto

God via through the channel of that connection through Jesus Christ whom you are connected to.

And because of that, you shall never stand before him ashamed.

That's the negative to the topic we have this morning. The positive is you are accepted.

Turn to Colossians chapter 1 verse 11. I noticed that my favorite systematic theology work is by Louis Barry Schaeffer.

And it's an eight -volume set. It's just huge. But as I study through these things that we've preached on in recent days, and I read what he has to say about some of these, including this one this morning, where he says, you've been made accepted.

It's as if he has forgotten the topic he spoke of just before in the previous chapter in his book.

Because every time he says, this of all truths is the most astounding and remarkable and unbelievable and high truth that we can contemplate, that we have been made acceptable in the sight of a holy

God who can only accept himself. He can only accept his own holiness. That's the standard.

That is remarkable. Of course, Schaeffer said that in the chapter before when he talked about redemption, the chapter before that when he talked about reconciliation.

It's all remarkable to him, and it is to us as well as we study these things.

Colossians 1 .11, strengthened with all might according to his glorious power.

Now when we think of being strong, whose power do we normally think of? Our own power.

When we want to be strong for the Lord, a brand new Christian is thinking, what when he says that?

He says, I'm going to try not to sin again. Isn't that what he means? He means

I'm going to turn over a new leaf the best I can and be strong for the

Lord. He will grow to learn that that's not possible in the flesh. But it is possible if we understand that it is

God who strengthens us according to his glorious power.

Now how does he strengthen us? Unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness.

Now can we get that with our own power? Or how many of you experience this very week that you can't get patience and longsuffering and joy yourselves?

First thing that has to happen to prove that is a little tribulation. How about a little economic difficulty?

How about that fear that we can have, that entrepreneurial fear of it all falling in on us financially, on our whole family?

All you have to get, gentlemen, is a little taste of that, and you begin to see you don't walk by your own strength, you don't walk by your own power.

There was a little verse that popped up in my mind, and Brother Otis was teaching on it, out of James, two,

I think it was two Sunday schools ago. It was not even the verse he was emphasizing in the lesson, he went fairly quickly on to the next verse, but this verse spoke to me and I shared it with our

Wednesday night group. And it had to do with this thought, and I can't quote the verse because it's one of those kind of verses you never really thought much of before, probably, but the thought of it is this, that when tribulation comes, well actually it starts with the positive, that if you can get your act together, where everything's working right, and you finally get out there, and you get the victory, and financially you have everything you ever thought you needed, and then you rejoice, that this rejoicing is evil.

Now why is that? Because the fact is, before that happened, you had the same

God. You had the God who has everything, and has promised to meet your needs, before that happened.

Now if you can rejoice, as this verse says, have patience and long -suffering, all patience and long -suffering, with joyfulness, when you are in dire straits, then when

God brings the blessings, and the money that you need, and the economy that you need, you can also be happy, as long as you were happy before it happened, it's not evil.

But if you can only be happy after that event takes place, then

God says that's evil, that was in your lesson a couple of weeks ago. And we see that only by the power of God, the glorious power of God, can we be strengthened with enough might to live that way.

But He's the one who makes it happen. Verse 12, giving thanks unto the

Father. Why do we give thanks to the Father if we did it in our own strength?

Lord, thank you for making me greater than that poor Republican. Remember that guy?

Remember that character in the Bible, Lord, thank you that you've made me greater than this poor sinner, and the sinner's over there going, beating his breast saying,

God be merciful to me, a sinner. And which one went home justified that day? That's right.

Giving thanks to the Father. All the thanks has to go to the Father if we have any strength.

Any strength that we sense in our own walk that we didn't have before we were saved that we have now, that thanks has to go to the

Father because it came from His glorious power. So we give thanks unto the Father. Now look at this next phrase.

Which or who hath, who is the who there? Or in the old

King James it says which, but it means who. Who is that? The Father.

The Father hath made us to be meet.

That means fit, if you want to put a modern word there. Fit to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.

Fit, the Father has made us to be fit.

This word meet in the English comes from the

Greek word ekano, which means to enable. To enable.

And it comes from a little Greek word heiko, which means to arrive.

But in the grammar that's in this particular verse, it says that God has made us to arrive.

Remember how Paul said we have not arrived yet? That's experiential.

Paul is saying in my walk I am not like Jesus fully yet, but I shall be.

I have not yet arrived. This word says God the Father has already made us to have arrived.

That's positional. That's from God's viewpoint. As God the

Father looks at you, dia, through Jesus Christ, He sees you as having arrived already.

He has made us fit. He has made us meet. He has made us to arrive to the place where we are partakers already of the inheritance of the saints in light.

And how did this take place? Look at verse 13. Who hath delivered us?

You see, we did not deliver ourselves. Who does who refer to in verse 13?

You got to go quite a ways back, quite a few words back. Who does it refer to?

The Father in verse 12, giving thanks unto the Father who hath delivered us.

Do you see all the rest? That's a parenthetical. If you want to put it that way, giving thanks unto the

Father who hath delivered us from the power of darkness and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear son.

That means transformed us like a caterpillar transformed into a butterfly.

It comes from the word metamorphosis. So he delivered us from the power of darkness.

He metamorphosized us and changed us into the kingdom of his dear son in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins, who is the image of the invisible

God, the firstborn of every creature. When you study that passage carefully word by word, you find out that the way, the first point in the message that we see that God has made us to be acceptable is by enabling us, by making us meet, making us able, making us to have arrived.

How does he enable us? He gives us his strength. He delivers us.

He translates us or changes us into beings that have the divine image and the divine nature.

And he redeems us. He sets us free by paying a price, which was his own blood.

And he forgives us. The word forgive in the Greek New Testament means to remove the sin from the sinner.

And all this was done by the one who is said to be the image of the invisible

God and the one who is said to be the firstborn.

That means the risen one. The resurrection is what proved he was who he claimed to be.

The resurrection is why he now sits at the right hand of the father. The resurrection on the earth proved that he deserved that.

This is the one who has enabled us and made us to be acceptable. Now turn with me to Ephesians chapter one.

Our sacrifices, our spiritual sacrifices are acceptable to God because God has made us acceptable to himself.

First, we see that he's done this by making us to be fit. And he did this through his own strength, his own power, his own delivery, his own changing of us, translating of us, his redeeming of us, which results in his forgiveness.

But in this verse, we take it further Ephesians one and verse two, grace be to you and peace from God our father, from the

Lord Jesus Christ. Grace and peace comes to you, that means the

Christian. Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ.

One reason that our offerings are accepted is because they came from him. He gave us these blessings.

He blessed us with all these spiritual blessings in the heavenly places because of our union with Christ.

Remember the word also because we are also we are connected with Christ.

Verse four says, according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.

Having predestinated us into the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, that's what we discussed last

Sunday, the adoption we've been adopted. According to the good pleasure of his will to the praise of the glory of his grace.

Now look at this phrase, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved, that's

Jesus. Kind of interesting when you look at verse six and you look at this word made, he has made us.

That's not something we can do ourselves. This is not experiential. This is positional.

This is what God has done. He has placed us in this state and no one can change it.

God truly translated us from the power of darkness into the kingdom of his son.

God translated us. God changed us. God gave us a new nature that we never could have had before.

The old man, the flesh that we live in still doesn't have that nature. Paul said in that flesh dwelleth no good thing.

But when we were born again, a new man arose, one who is born or gened from above with the genes of God.

A regenerated new being, which is the real you now. And you are a spirit being which lives in this tent that we see.

And it is God himself who made all of that to happen. This being made fit could not have happened without the adoption that we discussed last

Sunday. You remember the adoption does not mean like adoption that we use in human terms.

Because in human terms, if you're adopted, that proves that you're not a natural child. But we already know we've been regene.

That's what regenerated means. We've been born from above and given God's own nature. We are natural children, so to speak, of God.

But we are also adopted. But the word adopted in the sense of the New Testament Bible means it has to do with the sovereignty of God and the fact that God made a sovereign choice to adopt us as children.

In other words, to make us to be his children. It is all done by God himself.

And therefore, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.

This word made is interesting. If you look it up, it is

Kari Toho. Comes from a smaller Greek word,

Karis, which is the word grace. It is the word always translated grace.

And it's amazing if you understand the root meaning of this word that's been translated into the word made in the

English. It's not a real powerful word, although it is when you stop to think about the fact that the only way you could be accepted by God is if he made you acceptable unto himself.

But the word made in the Greek reads this way. To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath graced us.

Accepted in the beloved. It is all even the word made comes from the same word as the word grace in the

Greek language. It is only by his grace. It is truly undeserved favor of God upon us.

Nothing we deserve, nothing we did in and of ourselves, nothing experiential at all.

Doesn't matter what you do or don't do. It has nothing to do with that. It is all graced by God.

God has graced you acceptable in his own sight. The Bible says in verse six, literally, it says that wherein he hath graced us.

Accepted in the beloved. He has graced us, accepted in the beloved is aorist tense.

It's active and it's indicative. Aorist means it is done without regard to time.

It is an eternal word. He has made this to be from the now, the present tense, the

I am. In God's mind, it has always been this way. And I understand that's why

Otis sometimes teaches it's a choice that God never made when he chose you. You don't have to choose your own children.

I've said this before, but if I find my children, if I find, let's just take my little two,

Ben and Matt, and I find them in a group of other children. If I could have been at the birthday party.

And find them in the midst of many other children. And all of a sudden the building begins to burn down and I have to choose who

I'm going to save first. It ain't going to be Miss Anne. Better hope

Brother Russell's there. Is that a choice

I really have to think about or make? No, because they're my boys. They're part of their mind.

They've always been part of me. They always will be. This is how it was with God. Only we can't even approach the true reality of it.

But God in the airiest tense, without regard to punctual time, without regard to this timeline at all, has graced you and made you to be accepted in his own sight in the beloved.

Active means it's God that did it. It is the subject of the sentence who did it. And God is the subject.

God did this. We did not do this ourselves. That's why we call it positional. Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his own will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, that's his grace, wherein he hath caressed us, made us accepted in the beloved.

We see then that our acceptance is based upon what we studied last week, and that is our adoption.

The word adoption means the placing as a son. This is something only God can do.

Only the parent can do this. The placing as a son. We have been predestinated unto this adoption.

Therefore, we have been predestinated unto the acceptance. We have been predestinated to be accepted in God's own holy eyes, and it is according to the good pleasure of God's own will, and it is to the praise of the glory of God's grace, because we see that this acceptance comes from his grace.

We are made acceptable, literally. It comes out of his grace. We are graced acceptable, the Bible says.

Therefore, the glory of his grace may be praised. We are made accepted in Christ.

Verse seven says, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace.

So we're accepted because of the adoption. We're accepted because it's been predestinated by God that we would be before he made anything.

We are accepted because it's according to the good pleasure of his own will. It is simply what he wanted to do.

We are accepted because it brings praise to the glory of his grace, and we're accepted because of the redemptive act of Jesus dying on the cross through the blood, and according to having received forgiveness, which means the sending forth of our sins.

That's why we're accepted. Our sins have been sent forth from us. We have no sin in God's eyes.

Positionally, before the father. Now, experientially, we can still sin. We ought not.

But positionally before God, the father's eyes, our sins have been sent forth.

Therefore, we may be accepted by a holy God. All of this is according to the riches of God's grace.

Verse nine, having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in himself doesn't come from you or me or what we do or don't do, doesn't come for us, doesn't come because of us, it comes according to his own good pleasure, which he purposed in only himself.

Purposed in himself, in whom also, verse 11, we have obtained an inheritance.

Remember the verse we started out with this morning said we've been made meet or fit to have this inheritance.

This passage speaks of it as well. In whom, that's Christ. In Christ also, we have obtained an inheritance being predestinated according to the purpose of him which worketh all things after the counsel of his own will, that we should be to the praise of his glory who first trusted in Christ.

It is for his own glory. It's all about God. It is all about him.

It is all by God. It is all for God. And we cannot change it.

Close with this thought. There are two great themes that we find in the New Testament dealing with the gospel.

One we think of as imparted life and the other we call imputed righteousness.

Imparted life and imputed righteousness. It is because of these two great themes, one found in the book of John primarily, the imparted life, the other found in the book of Romans and Paul's other writings, the imputed righteousness.

So those themes bring us to the why behind why we're accepted and the how behind how we're accepted.

Colossians 1 .27 says it's Christ in you the hope of glory. That's the imparted life.

We have God's life. Imparted means we didn't do it.

It means one greater than us imparted it to us. The election, the effectual calling, the spiritual birth born from above, born from the first, the regening, the imparting of the divine nature, all the result of adoption, which is the sovereign placing as a son.

This life has been imparted to us by one greater than us. We have the life of Christ, Christ in us the hope of glory.

And secondly, we have imputed righteousness. Second Corinthians 5 .21 says, for he hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

Ephesians 1 .6 to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he has made us accepted and the beloved is made us to have his life.

And he has made us to have his righteousness. Therefore, we are accepted by a perfectly righteous and holy

God. Is there anything that could amaze us more?

And like Schaefer, we will be saying the same thing next week when we study another topic,

I'm sure. But it is truly amazing. Let's stand and have prayer together.

Schaefer said he is accepted on the part of God who, because of his infinite holiness, can accept no one less perfect than himself.

And when you take it in the light of that, it's an amazing thing. But Schaefer also said if he is made something which he was not before, it is evidently the work of another on his behalf.

Without the slightest strain upon his holiness, God accepts those who are in union with his son,

Louis Barry Schaefer. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this great truth.

Of all the great truths that we've studied, this one is on our minds and hearts this morning.

The fact that you make us acceptable when we know ourselves, we remember who we were before salvation.

And only by revelation can we know who we are now. For we are truly lively stones connected to the rock.

For we are truly translated people out of the power of darkness into your marvelous light.

We are truly ones who have been regened and given the life of Christ.

And we have been given your very own righteousness because you imputed his righteousness to us and our sins to him that day on the cross.

We can only stand before you and thank you for these things. We cannot fully appreciate them or our minds are limited.

Our vocabulary is small, but with what little words we have, we thank you for making us to be fit to stand in your presence both today and when we meet you face to face and forever.

Lord, we thank you for the blood of Jesus, which is what has made this possible.

We thank you that you have given us the gift of faith, whereby this blood might be applied to our individual hearts and souls.

We thank you for the sacrifice of giving your son, and we thank the

Lord Jesus for the sacrifice of giving himself that we might have life.

Bless our fellowship time in a few moments. Bless our meal together. May these thoughts be in our hearts and minds this week, and we ask it in Jesus name.