God is great. God is mighty. God is the King of kings and the Lord of lords. He is the Creator and Ruler of all. Naturally for anyone who believes, it is easy to proclaim that God is all of these things, and just as naturally we want to give Him all honor and praise which is rightfully His. The question then must be asked, how exactly do we honor God? What is the measuring line by which an offering is measured? By what standards do we judge what is offered to Almighty God?
I have found in my time that many people who like to tout the perfect holiness and awesomeness of God, really don’t give much thought to what they offer Him. It’s an amazing double-standard that a perfect holy God seems to have no trouble accepting flawed offerings. They say “Oh well, just do your best, that’s all God requires.” Really?? Is that what the Bible truly says? In reality my friends, (and if you have glanced up at the title), there is only one truly acceptable offering to God – only one which meets His perfect standard; Jesus. This is what we will be studying today.
A long time ago, there was a popular praise song that we always used to sing; the lyrics in-part were “we bring a sacrifice of praise into the house of the LORD.” This is a reference to Hebrews 13:15, saying that we should continually offer such a sacrifice to God. This phrasing has always puzzled me. Because in my human mind, the word “sacrifice” always implied cost, or some kind of a victim. Often times we hear preachers say that in order for our praise and worship to mean anything to God, it has to “cost us something”, and this left me even more confused because it really wasn’t costing me anything to praise God – as a matter-of-fact I enjoyed praising Him! So did this then mean that my praise was worthless?
I struggled with this thought for many years, and it led me into a performance-driven, merit-centered mentality where I was trying to give something of value back to God, which I naturally assumed was my own works and efforts; my performance and law-keeping. However, this idea is not actually supported in scripture. In-fact the Bible is very descriptive regarding what the real sacrifice of praise is which we are to offer, and this is precisely what we will be studying today.
Last week we studied how Jesus Christ has ushered us into a new covenant with better promises. However even though this is absolutely true and a wonderful reality for us in Christ, there are still many believers who have an inward unrest within themselves – a doubt and a seed of confusion regarding whether they should still keep the Law of Moses. They know the scriptures, they know what we studied last week about not mixing the two covenants, but they still have some questions.
In the past when I have taught on the covenants, I always had questions arise about the Law, and indeed the same questions still come up today. So we will be addressing these same questions today in this study. Questions such as: Jesus said He didn’t abolish the Law, so does it still apply to believers? And also: Even in the New Covenant God says that He will put His laws in our minds and write them on our hearts, is this the Ten Commandments?
These questions have stumbled many believers over the years and kept alive this uncertainty and fear regarding the Old Covenant, and therefore they have not been able to fully embrace grace. So if this describes you, then the truth of Jesus in this study will set you free today.
How would you define success? Is it the amount of money you have? The number of people who like or love you? Is it the height that you can climb in your job? Is it the titles or degrees that you have behind your name? The world often judges success by these standards, but is that what success truly is? Many of these things are the results, the fruits of success, but they themselves are not success itself from a Biblical standpoint.
The difference is this, if we are judging our success purely by our worldly status, then we can be deceived and misled. If we are judging our success purely by what we have, or what we have achieved, then it will not always portray an accurate picture according to the truth of God. It may seem as though we have nothing at the moment. However the reality is that you actually have everything. This is what we will be looking at today in scripture.