February 20, 2023

Acceptable Worship

R.C. Sproul
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Acceptable Worship

If it weren’t for Jesus and His priestly work on our behalf, our worship would never be acceptable to God. Today, R.C. Sproul identifies the kind of worship that pleases the Lord.

Transcript

... and so the way in which in the first instance we function as spiritual priests, dear friends, is by offering the sacrifice of praise to God. That's what worship is. Worship is not entertainment, worship is when the people of God come and as priests lift up their praises, their adoration, their affection to God, just as the pries lifted up the blood offering in the Old Testament, we lift up our reverence and our adoration to God in praise. And we don't come to church and watch the minister do that, we all do that because we are all called as a community of living stones to be involved in this holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

If we just came in here and offered our sacrifices to God on the basis of our own merit, God's response to our sacrifices would be just like it was to Israel when Israel had violated the terms of their covenant, where God said, "I hate your feasts, I despise your solemn assemblies and your sacrifices have been loathsome in my nostrils." And if we today came in here and offered up our spiritual sacrifices to God on our own, they would be just as repugnant to him as those sacrifices were in the Old Testament. But what makes them precious to God and the sweet aroma to him is that our sacrifices are offered through Jesus Christ. Our sacrifice of praise, our spiritual sacrifice is carried to the father through our great high priest who sanctifies our worship. Do you hear what I'm saying? That if it weren't for Christ, our worship would not be acceptable to God at all. It's Christ who makes our worship acceptable and pleasing to God.