If it weren't for Christ, our worship would not be acceptable to God at all.

Our sacrifice of praise is carried to the Father through our great high priest.

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 priests lift it up, the blood offering in the Old Testament, we lift up our reverence

and our adoration to God in praise.

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.

You know, 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 a 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

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