Through Christ do we offer sacrifices acceptable to God?

And without Christ, nothing is acceptable to God.

So what does it mean to offer God's spiritual sacrifices through Christ.

That's the question John Piper answers

from 1st Peter 2, 4 to 8 in this episode of Light and Truth.

This sermon was originally preached at Bethlehem Baptist Church on February 20th,

1994.

Versus 4 and 5 and I'll walk you through six steps by which God is getting for himself

sacrifices that are spiritual that are acceptable to him through Jesus Christ.

Okay? Six steps that I see in verses four and five. You watch and see if you see them with me.

The first one is that God has put a stone in Zion called

Jesus a living stone. Come to him, coming to him to that living stone. Now the reason Peter calls Jesus a stone here is simply because he's

fulfilling an Old Testament prophecy. Several of them in fact. Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, Isaiah 2816, or the stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner.

Psalm 1822. So the Old Testament prophets foresaw that there would be a stone put in

Zion, a stone over which some people would stumble a stone which some people would

believe upon and never be ashamed. We'll talk about that next week this division

of the house because of the stone. But Jesus is the stone, he's raised from the dead, he's no longer rejected by men.

Merely he is affirmed by God out of the tomb, installed as the cornerstone and alive.

And so he is the living stone.

That's step number one in winning spiritual sacrifices

from a people.

Step number two is that we come to the stone right there at the beginning of

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