We're gonna be back in Hebrews
again. Hebrews chapter 10. One thing that everyone has wrong
by nature, and this hour's gonna go hand in hand with last hour,
but one thing everybody has wrong by nature is they think that
they can do something that's acceptable to God, whether it's
service or sacrifice, whether it's offering or time, whether
it's meditation, whether it's prayer, they believe they do
something, and God accepts that. This is what the writer is dealing
with here in this particular passage. And he's gonna tell
us that the Lord is not pleased with sacrifice and offering.
I've titled this message, What is Acceptable to God? That's
a question of life and death, isn't it? What is acceptable
to God? If I'm to be accepted of God,
that means I have his favor, that means I have his grace,
that means I have his mercy. So what's acceptable to God? Let's read our text here, Hebrews
10, five through 10. Wherefore, when he cometh into
the world, he saith, sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not,
but a body hast thou prepared me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices
for sin, thou hast no pleasure. Then said I, lo, I come in the
volume of the book, it is written of me, to do thy will, O God. Above, when he said, sacrifice
and offering, and burn offerings, and offering for sin, thou wouldest
not, neither had pleasure therein, which are offered by the law.
Then he said, then said he, lo, I come to do thy will, O God.
He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second.
By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body
of Jesus Christ once and for all, once for all. What is acceptable
to God? To find that out, it will be
either eternal life because it's revealed to you that you cannot
be accepted of God by what you do, or it'll be eternal death
thinking that you are acceptable unto God for what you do. What
is acceptable to God? That's not, now the question
I'm asking isn't what do you think is acceptable to God? You
can ask a lot of people that. I spoke to a man recently, I
think I told you this, but he said, do you consider yourself
a righteous man? And I said, what do you mean?
And he said, well, I consider myself a righteous man. And I'm
like, I'm not really sure how to move forward in the conversation
at that point. If he tells me he believes he's
a righteous man, he's telling me without, and he didn't preface
it by saying he believes he's a righteous man because the Lord
Jesus Christ, he said, I believe I'm a righteous man. And it came
down to the way he's treated people and the way that he's
done and the things that he hasn't done. And that made him righteous
before God. And I tried to say to him, you know, the Lord's
only pleased with one. He's only pleased with, oh yeah, yeah,
I know that. No, you don't. You just told me you were righteous.
And so it is with so many others. They think God will accept their
life. He'll accept their beliefs, their,
so I'm not asking us this morning, what do you think is acceptable
to God? I'm asking you, what does God
say God's accepted with? That's what I want to know. Isn't
that what you want to know? I'm not going to tell you what I
think. I'm not going to give you my opinion. I'm going to say,
here's what God says. Here's what God says. That's
what I want to know this morning. What does thus saith the Lord?
Am I acceptable to God? Is my sacrifice an offering? My sacrifice an offering? Is
it pleasing unto the Lord? Now, a sacrifice doesn't have
to mean that you offered up an animal, that you slaughtered
an animal. No, sacrifice could be, well, we don't, we, you've
seen religions. There's, we live in several Amish
people around the area. Some of them don't have electricity.
That's a sacrifice. That's what they're doing. They're
sacrificing. And I'm not just gonna pick on them. I mean, there's
so many others. It's the hair of some, the hair has to be a
certain way, or the clothing of some has to be a certain way.
You've seen these things before. You know what I'm talking about.
Those are sacrifices. Well, what about offerings? Well,
they offer what they do. They offer their services and,
well, we don't say that, or we don't go to those places, or
we don't eat that. And that is an offering unto
the Lord. That's what they think that they're
doing. But what did he just say in this verse? And this is so
clear, so clear. He just said, sacrifice an offering
thou wouldest not. Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest
not. Now that means, wouldest not
is to desire, to love, to take delight or pleasure in. He's
saying that sacrifice and offerings by our hand are unacceptable. They are 100% unacceptable. There's not a little bit of good
in them. There's not halfway good in them. They're unacceptable
before God because we are the ones doing it. We are the ones
doing it. That means the more we do for
our own righteousness, the worse we actually get, the worse we
actually are. Now you tell a Pharisee that,
and they'll hate you for it. They'll hate you for it, because
you just stepped on their righteousness. But you tell a sinner that, and
you tell them about the Savior, they'll love you for it. Only
the Lord's people love the truth, because it's the only thing that
set us free, that can set us free. We are not acceptable to God
in our flesh. Someone said to me recently,
Jesus loves you just the way you are, just the way you are. No, he doesn't. That's a lie. He doesn't love us in our flesh
just the way we are. That's not true. That's not true. Unless he makes us acceptable
in the beloved, we are unacceptable, utterly unacceptable in every
way. Was Adam's fix when he sinned
in the Garden of Eden acceptable to God? He hid himself. Think
about the three things Adam did. Was God accepted with this? Adam
was trying to fix the sin that he had done, okay? The Lord comes
down and calls out unto him, Adam, where art thou? And he's
hiding. First thing he did is he hid. Was God pleased with
that? No. He said, well, the first
thing they'd done is they made covering, didn't they? They made
a covering of figs. The second thing they'd done is they hid.
And the third thing he did was he blamed Eve, actually blamed God.
He said, well, the woman you gave me. Eve blamed the serpent,
and Adam blamed God. You gave me the woman to begin
with. The woman blamed the serpent. Was God pleased with that? Was
he pleased with the fig leaves they'd sowed together? I bet
it was, I mean, it's the first time they ever sowed anything.
It might've looked terrible, Was God's pleased with that? No.
No, it wasn't acceptable. Why? It was from their hands.
It was from their hands. What had to happen? Blood had
to be shed. They needed a covering of blood.
They needed a covering of the clothing of the lamb, didn't
they? They needed the wool to cover them. It's a picture of
our Savior, isn't it? That's who we have to be covered
with. We're not acceptable because we've sowed fig leaves together.
We're only acceptable by what the Lord provides. The Lord didn't
say... The Lord said He did that for them. He gave them that.
What about Cain? Was the Lord pleased with his
sacrifice, his work? And so many times we... Think
of Cain as bringing forth the fruits. But in my mind this last
week, I was thinking, I used the pumpkin as an example several
times from the fairs coming up here in Ole. So they have that,
they have pumpkins painted all over the place already. Big ones
just trying to, actually they're hay bales, but they're talking
about, we're gonna get the blue ribbon this year. We're gonna
get the blue ribbon this year. And that's what Cain offered up unto the
Lord. But think about this. It wasn't that he offered up
the minimal. It wasn't that he offered up
the least. It wasn't that he offered up
some that had bruises in it. You know, you've probably been
guilty of this, too. Whenever you have fruits and
vegetables, you take the fruits and vegetables, you put them
in your house. Now, you have good ones, you put them up on the counter.
With the other ones, you're like, well, these are going to go bad soon, so I need to
give these away. You don't give them the ones that are good,
and then you keep the ones that are bad. You know what I'm talking
about. That's what we do by nature. That's not what happened with
Cain. Cain brought the very best, the scripture says. The very,
very best. And he said, Lord, accept this
offering of my hand. The Lord said, I have no respect. I do not accept. I have no respect
to you or your sacrifice, your offering. See, he did it by his
hands, didn't he? Did something with his hands.
The second we do something with our hands is the second we mess
it up. We pollute it, don't we? We pollute
the sacrifice. Well, who was he pleased with?
He was pleased with Abel. Why? Because Abel brought a lamb. Abel recognized God demanded
blood. And where you meet God is where
he'll, or what you approach God with is where he'll meet you.
If you approach him with the works of your hands, he'll meet
you there in judgment unto eternal death. But if you come to him
pleading the blood alone, pleading the lamb alone, his finished
work, he's pleased with that plea. He accepts his son. He accepts his son. Well, what
about Saul? He was, Saul was, for Samuel
to come. The battle was at hand, and he
was wanting an answer from Samuel the prophet at the time in Israel.
And Saul was the king of Israel. And he waited and waited, and
after three days he said, that's fine, I'll just, I'm just going
to take matters into my own hands. I'm going to offer sacrifice.
I'm going to do this, and I'm going to do that, and that will
fix it. And what did Samuel tell him? The kingdom is rent from
you, Saul. You took the place of the high
priest, You thought in yourself that you were holy enough or
that you were good enough to offer that up to God, which only
a Levite can. Only one of the Lord's high priest.
It's a picture of us not needing the Lord Jesus Christ's priesthood.
It's a picture of us being our own intercessor, approaching
God without Christ. That's what that picture of.
And he said, no, the kingdom's rent from your hands because
of God wasn't pleased with that sacrifice. Here's one that we can relate
to, Abraham. Was God satisfied with the promise
being fulfilled when he decided to help God out by taking the
handmaiden of his wife, Sarah, and they had Ishmael? Is he like,
yeah, that's the chosen one right there. That's the promised child.
No. Why? Because he put his hand to it.
He put his hand to it. No, the Lord's promises must
be fulfilled by him doing, not by what we do. If the promise
is for us to do something, it's not gonna come to pass, is it?
The promise is, he will, if we will, we're in trouble. No, the
promise is, I have, so you shall. I have, you shall. I've determined
to give you a son, Abraham, and you're gonna bear a son in your
old age unto Sarah. And they laughed, just like we
would, but guess what happened? It happened because God was pleased
to do so. What about Ruth? Could Ruth have
done anything to redeem herself? She needed a kinsman redeemer,
someone that was near unto her. She needed a kinsman redeemer.
She was in a strange land with strange people. She would have
been considered an outcast, a dog. Her husband had died, but she
needed to be redeemed. Well, that's you and me right
there, isn't it? That's you and me right there.
And I love what the scripture says. She went out to glean in
a field, and it says, her hap fell upon the field of Boaz. I love that that doesn't mean
what it sounds like it means. It doesn't mean, well, it just
so happened. It means God purposed that to happen, so it happened.
God purposed it, and here she is, gleaning in the field of
the one that can redeem her. He's the only one that can do
that. He's the only one that can do that. Once she found out
he was the one, by going back to Naomi, he started dropping
handfuls of purpose for her. For one thing, you remember that?
She found favor. That's our Lord dropping things
that we don't deserve by grace and by mercy. But she approached
him and said, I want you to perform the work of the Redeemer. Redeem
me. Redeem me. And he said, well,
there's one closer than I. There's one more nigh than I
am. I must go to him tomorrow. and he did. That's a picture
of the law having a claim on God's people is what that's a
picture of. The law saying you're guilty and justice must be satisfied. So we must be redeemed but the
Lord cannot redeem us with sin upon us or he won't accept us.
He has to take the sin away in order for us to be redeemed.
And he went to the law, the picture of the law, Boaz did, and you
know what the law says? Well, I can't redeem them. I
would mar my inheritance. The only way I could redeem,
the only way the law could redeem someone is if it completely changed
justice to being minimalistic or lowered the standard or changed
the word of God. That's how the law could redeem.
That's the only way, but God won't change. God's not gonna
change. The only way we can be redeemed
is if our sin is put away. Because judgment is deservant,
justice is required. And Boaz says, well, I'll redeem
her since you cannot. And he did. And he did. Could she had redeemed herself? No. Could we have redeemed ourself? No. If we go to the law, it cannot
redeem us or make us acceptable. to God. So the question remains,
what is acceptable to God? The better question would be
who is acceptable to God? But what is God, what is acceptable
to God? Our Lord Jesus Christ is the
only one who is ever acceptable by God. He's the only one that
did everything right, everything perfect. I love what it says
here in our text. It says that a body hast thou
prepared for me. So he prepared a body, and he
prepared a body that he would be pleased with, that he knew
he was gonna have to die in. He prepared that body to redeem
us. That was the purpose of that
body. What is acceptable to God? Only
the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the near kinsman. He is
able to redeem. His body was acceptable to God. His body was acceptable to God
because of his sacrifice. Because of his sacrifice, his
people's been redeemed, but the sacrifice and offering of anyone
else is not acceptable to God. Second thing is his blood is
acceptable to God, isn't it? His blood's acceptable to God.
His body's acceptable. He prepared it. Second thing
is his blood is acceptable to God. He said when he had by himself
purged our sins, he sat down. Purged means they're gone. If
they, God wouldn't have been pleased, the sin would have remained.
But it's gone. He put them away. He put them
away. How did he put them away? His
blood. His blood. Your blood and mine
is unacceptable, isn't it? Our blood's unacceptable, but
his blood's not. His blood was acceptable. What
about all those Old Testament sacrifices that happened? Were
their blood acceptable to God enough to put away sin? No. It was an acceptable time of
worship for them to look forward to the cross. That's what that
represented. But they looked to Christ forward. We're looking
back. Never put away a single sin.
Think about all those animals that died. Not one sin was put
away. But when he died, the veil in
the temple was rent entwined from top to bottom. When he entered
in once, by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption for
us all, he sprinkled the blood upon the mercy seat. And the
father was satisfied. The father accepted his offer,
his offering. Third thing that God was satisfied
with, God's that's acceptable to God is the life of Christ.
The life of Christ. Everything that he, you know
that we've never had a pure thought. Never had a pure thought. We
can't, we're in the flesh. Can't have a pure thought. Did you
know he never didn't? That's all he had was pure thoughts. Everything he did was perfect. He never made a mistake. He never
made a mistake, he's God. I think about him being a carpenter,
and as he's learning how to be a carpenter, I've done some carpentry,
and if you're off an eighth of an inch, it can really cause
you problems in some circumstances. He never made a mistake. Every
piece of furniture was perfect. Why? Because he made it. He made
it. If he could fail, he wouldn't
have been God in every way, in every way. Every thought was
on the Lord, his heavenly father, devotion to him to save his people
for the Lord's glory. The Lord was pleased with his
life, pleased with his thoughts, pleased with his actions. I love it as our surety as our
substitute in that body. He took our sins. He nailed them
to his cross perfectly. Perfectly. Gave us his righteousness. What a. What a thought he takes our sin
and gives us his righteousness. I mean, that is a. We didn't
have anything else to offer. We didn't offer it to him. He
took it. But I'm saying that's all that we could have offered
is just sin. Do we see that? That's the whole point. What's
acceptable to God? We're not. Everything we would offer would
have been sin. And he says, I'm going to take all of your sin.
I'm going to take them out of the way by my own blood. And
I'm going to give you my righteousness. I'm going to give you my holiness.
I'm going to give you my grace and mercy. I'm going to sanctify
you. I'm going to redeem you. I'm going to buy you. You're
mine. There's now therefore no condemnation
to them which are in Christ Jesus. What a gospel, what a gospel. He said not only am I gonna do
that, he said I'm gonna birth you into the family by my spirit,
breathe life into you, give you faith to believe. Therefore,
what is acceptable unto God? His people are acceptable because
of what he has done. because of what he has done.
We don't come to the law looking for sacrifice and offering to
offer up to God. We come to Christ, who offered
up one time unto the Father and he was pleased and God is, God
accepts that. God accepts his son. Lord Jesus
Christ has made us accepted in the beloved, in Christ. Now God
is not pleased. with my works, God is not pleased
with my offerings or with my sacrifice, not my service, not
my devotion, not my dedication. I read Bible apps and one of
them's on the computer and it popped up and said, this app
was designed for you to be able to hear or read the scripture
so that you can get a closer walk with God. And I've processed
that for a little bit, and it's good to read scripture. I'm not
saying it's not. But what they mean by that is
the more that they do, the more spiritual they'll become. That's
contrary to the scripture. The only way that we become more
spiritually minded is to be seated hearing the gospel being preached.
That's whenever the Lord calls his people, that's when the Lord
grows his people, and the way is down, not up. You won't see
a believer that says, well, I'm a lot more spiritually minded
now than I used to be. You might think on things more
now. Think of how precious, the Lord's
become more precious to you and things like that. But no, not
in the sense of look what I know. Look what I know, I'm more spiritually
minded now. Look what I know. No, that's not what a believer
does. We know more of Christ and less of ourself. I had the
other app pop up and it said this and I knew I wasn't gonna
get this one. Advertise it said, And it had a gravid image of
a man, supposed to be the Lord, and it said, God wants you to
download this app. Do you accept, yes or no? And
I clicked no, and it went away. And I said, God didn't want me
to do that, because I got to say no. If I had the choice, if it
was God that wanted me to do that, I would have had the app.
Ain't that right? It wasn't. God wanted me to.
No, that's people's mentality. I can choose to do this and it
would please God. He wants you to do this. He wants
you to be, he'll accept you if you do this. No, no. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
Someone says, well, that's doing something. No, it's not. He gave
you the faith to believe. Believing is passive. If you
can believe, you will. And if you can't, that's because
he hasn't given you faith to believe. It's all him. Believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. Anything else you and I do, God is not, God does not accept
it. But he is eternally satisfied
with Christ's offering, with the Lord Jesus Christ. He's satisfied,
he accepts his offering. Lastly, the last thing that God
accepts, what's acceptable to God is blood, is death, His life,
his body. Lastly, God accepts. God accepts his death. I think
I just said that, but God accepts his death. That's the last one.
His death. In so much that he justified
all of his elect when he died. You know what he said when he
died? We say this all the time. Why do we say this all the time?
Because it's the greatest comfort to the believer to know we can't
mess it up because God spoke and said, it is finished. The entire work is done. Everything
given to me of my father is successful right now. It is finished. You
and I can't take that takes us center completely out of the
equation. You and I can't mess it up. We can't add to it. And
we love that gospel. We love that gospel. It is finished. God accepted his death. Nothing
else would do. Sacrifice had to die. There's
no other way to be saved. But to be found in the Lord Jesus
Christ, there's no other name given. There's no other way.
It's him alone. Nothing else will do because
he's all that God accepts. Now go back, we're still in Hebrews
10. Let's read our text one more
time here. Verse five through 10. Wherein, wherefore, when
he cometh into the world, he saith, sacrifice an offering
thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me and burn
offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast no pleasure. Then
said I, lo, I come in the volume of the book. It is written of
me to do thy will, O God. Above, when he said sacrifice
and offerings and burn offerings and offerings for sin, thou wouldest
not, neither has pleasure therein, which are offered by the law.
Then said he, lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away
the first, that he may establish the second, by the which will
we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus
Christ once for all. He says that God takes no pleasure
in sacrifice, In offering, in burnt offering for sin, he has
no pleasure in anything we could offer by the law. But because
Christ came to do the will of God and was successful in doing
so, Christ successfully redeemed his people. The father, he accepts
his son. Because Christ is acceptable
to the father, According to His own grace and mercy, He has predestinated
us to be conformed to the image of His Son. He sanctified His
people. That's what He said in verse
10. We're sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus
Christ. And to offer anything else up is to offer up something
instead of the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, we can't offer
the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. That was done once on the cross
of Calvary. But we don't offer ourself up in any way. If we
do, that is, we're substituting that something for the body of
the Lord Jesus Christ unto God. And do you think he's gonna accept
that? No. God only accepts his son, only
accept his son. No one else could've done what
he did. He's the only one that's acceptable unto God. That's not
confusing, is it? That's not confusing. It's not
hard to understand. It's impossible to believe. You
have to have faith to believe it. But it's not hard to understand. God is only pleased with God. God only accepts what he does. God is only pleased with God,
and God only accepts what he does by his own hand. His choice
to elect, to redeem, to call, He gets all the glory. All the
glory. And the comfort to His people
is that all that He provided for our salvation, He provided
in His Son. He didn't look to us to provide anything. He provided
it all in the Lord Jesus Christ. If He didn't, if He didn't provide
that which is acceptable unto Him, no one is saved. But He
did. What is God pleased with? What does God accept? He accepts
the Lord Jesus Christ. And because of the substitutionary
work on the cross of Calvary, we've been predestinated to be
conformed to the image of his son. Do you know what that means?
He's made us accepted in the beloved. God accepts his people
on behalf of Christ. That's the gospel. In closing, I'll tell us this.
I kind of touched on this earlier, but most believe that as long
as, as long as I believe something, as long as I try to do good,
as long as I give it my best effort, as long as I'm nice to
people, not rude, as long as I try to go to church when I
can and I tithe, as long as I, somebody told me this and they
said, I need to start living God's way. And I'm not sure exactly
what they meant by that, but I'm assuming get in church and
do better and try harder and things like that. You know what
living in God's way is? Look to Christ. Look to Christ,
it's that simple. Because he's the only one that
God's pleased with. If you wanna live God's way, look to Christ.
Look to Christ. No, God's not gonna accept us
if we do really good and try really hard and treat others,
we need to treat others kindly, there's nothing wrong with that.
But that's not our acceptance before God. Our acceptance for
God is found in one person, the Lord Jesus Christ. You can work harder than anyone
has ever worked, you can do more than anybody has ever done, and
God still will not accept it. You will never be good enough
to be accepted by God. He said, this is my beloved son
in whom I am well pleased. Hear ye him. Hear ye him. Have you been made to see your
inability this hour to, you know, we don't have a desire to bring
anything to the Lord, do we? We desire Christ. Have you seen
your impotency in not being able to offer anything up truly? You've
seen your leprosy. Oh yeah, I see my leprosy, I'm
covered from head to foot. You see that you're blind and
you're miserable? You see that you're lame and you can't get
to the king? You can't, but he won't accept you the way that
you are. If you have seen that and you
know who he is accepted, that who is accepted of God, the Lord
Jesus Christ, believe on him. Believe on him. Look to him.
Look to him. Do you need a substitute? I started
out this message, I was going to title it, Do You Need a Substitute?
But it didn't happen. But do you need a substitute?
Because if I can't sacrifice anything, if I can't offer anything,
if I can't do anything, I need a substitute. Well, he just said,
you can't sacrifice anything that I'm going to accept. You
can't offer anything that I'm pleased with. Anything that you
try to do is called iniquity, and I hate the workers of iniquity.
I need a substitute. You need a substitute. Come to
the substitute, the one that God has accepted. God accepted
on behalf of his people. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
He pleases God. He's the only one. What is acceptable
to God? Nothing more or less than the
Lord Jesus Christ alone. Nothing more, nothing less. Him
alone. Come to Christ, the substitute
surety of his people. The one who makes us acceptable
to God in him. Let's pray. Father, we pray that
you'll bless this to our understanding. Thank you for the glorious work
of making us acceptable in Christ. Be with us as we depart, cause
us to rejoice on these things. And ponder them in Christ's name,
amen. In closing, let's turn to number
187.