Do I Ever Please God?

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I received a flyer in the mail this week from the large seeker sensitive church here in our community. The pastor of that church plans to begin a new series in a couple of weeks, and he promised in the flyer that if you would attend during that series, you'll receive a t-shirt and emblazoned on the t-shirt will be these words "I'm a big hypocrite". Now, that bothers me for several reasons, the chief reason being that why would you glory in something our Lord so roundly condemns in His words in the New Testament? But I get it. I understand where that comes from.

There is in today's Christian culture much written and much said about the importance of what is called brokenness or authenticity. In fact, brokenness, in this sense in certain segments of American Christianity has become the new holiness. If you are open about your sinful struggles, in some case even boast about your sinful struggles you are being authentic. On the other hand, if you don't openly talk about the struggles that you have with sin, then you are hiding something. You are being insincere; you are being hypocritical.

Now we ought to be people of integrity. We ought not to be presenting a façade that doesn't really picture who we are. On the other hand, nowhere will you find a requirement to sort of air all of you sins in front of everyone else and that that somehow is praiseworthy. In fact, you remember the psalmist in Psalm 73, it was only after he worked through an understanding of his sin that he told us about it, he said, "if I had spoken of this struggle that I was having in my heart (until I got it all worked out, if I had spoken of it), I would have betrayed the generation of my people." Sadly, the call for authenticity has gone beyond a legitimate call for integrity.

Authenticity has morphed into a deficient view of sin. Many who speak or especially who write about it on the internet seem to enjoy, they seem to relish, even take pride in their sinfulness or their brokenness. Frankly, authenticity for many has become a lazy substitute for righteousness. It's contrary to the spirit of the Scripture. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament refer to true believers as those who are not only were positionally righteous but personally and practically righteous as well.

Now, even when I say that, we have a hard time working that out. I mean you understand that the Scriptures say that believers are practically and personally righteous. At the same time, we all know the reality, and we feel the weight of personal sin. We know, I know, you know that never once in our lives have we ever obeyed God perfectly. Never have we loved our neighbor as our self. We know that (like Paul in Romans 7) we often do the very things we hate, and we don't do the things we desire to do. So how do you reconcile the obvious awareness of our own sinfulness with the Bible statements that we are, as believers, really personally, practically righteous? Or to ask the question differently. Can an unbeliever be righteous? Can an unbeliever ever do anything that pleases God? And the other half of that question is: can a believer be truly righteous in this world? Can a believer ever do anything that truly pleases God?

Now obviously, the moment of our conversion marked a seismic shift in our relationship to God. So, I want to consider this question about pleasing God sort of before and after that moment. Let's consider before Christ and after Christ. First of all, let's look just briefly, (this isn't where I want to focus most of our time), but let's look at pleasing God before Christ. Before regeneration nothing we did was good, righteous or pleasing to God. I'm going to quote this morning from both the Westminster and Baptist Confessions of the 1600's because I want you to see, first of all, I love the way they express it. I also want you to see that what I'm teaching this morning isn't new. This is the teachings of the church for hundreds, (in fact I'll go back to Augustine) thousands of years. This is how the Scriptures have been understood. Listen to both the Westminster and Baptist Confessions of the 1600's.

Works done by unregenerate men [so we're talking about works unbelievers do] although they may be things which God commands and of good use both to themselves and others, yet because they proceed not from a heart purified by faith, nor are done in a right manner according to the word, nor to a right end to the glory of God, they are therefore sinful and cannot please God.

The confessions and the understanding of Scripture that these men had say, listen because they're not done for the right reason, if everything's to be done for the glory of God, and unbelievers are not doing it for that reason, they're not doing it in faith in the true God, then even their best efforts cannot please God. This is what the Scriptures clearly teach. Of course, the classic text on this is Isaiah 64:6, "… all of us have become like one who is unclean, And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment;"

Our, not our sins not our not our worst actions, but our righteous deeds. In other words, our efforts, in the context of Isaiah, our efforts at obeying God, our offering sacrifices, our going to the temple when we're supposed to go to the temple, all of those things God demanded, those things are like filthy rags. They are like menstruous cloths is the idea in the Hebrew expression.

Look at Romans 8, in Romans 8 Paul makes this point unequivocally clear. Romans 8, Paul is contrasting in the early verse's here unregenerate men with regenerate men. I want you to notice how he contrasts and compares them. Look at verse 6, Romans 8:6,

For the mind set on the flesh [That is the fleshly mind, the unregenerate mind] is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh [The unregenerate mind] is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, it is not even able to do so, [Now notice verse 8, here's the key.] … those who are in the flesh … [That is those who are unbelievers, notice verse 9] … you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if the Spirit of God dwells in you, … [So clearly, he's talking here about unbelievers,] … those who are in the flesh … [Unbelievers] … cannot … [The Greek word is the word which means to have the ability to have the power, they do not have the ability, they do not have the power to] … please God.

Before Christ even when you appear to be doing what was good. Even when you appear to be obeying a Scriptural command, it was still sin, it was still unrighteous. Nothing you did pleased God, not even when you did what God commanded you to do. Why? Because everything that you did, everything I did before Christ, the entire compass of our lives was an act of rebellion against our rightful King. We did a lot of things that appear to us and to the people around us to be good, but they were really not good, they were bad because they were done while we were living in a state of rebellion against our King.

One of the old illustrations of this is imagine a ship full of pirates. Those pirates can occasionally do good things to one another. They can care for each other. They can even defend each other's lives, there are good things that they occasionally do. And to each other they appear good. But what view does the king of the country in which they are pillaging, what is his view of their goodness? It's not good at all. Why? Because they're doing all of it in a state of rebellion against his authority. That's exactly how it is with us. We were living in rebellion to God. In fact, in Romans 5:10, Paul says we were God's enemies. Before you came to Christ, you were God's enemy. You say, well I didn't feel that way. But that's God's perspective. You were His enemy. And everything you did was in a state of defiance against His rightful rule in your life.

The oldest illustration of this reality comes from the pen of Augustine. It's a great example actually. Augustine said, "Unregenerate people trying to pursue virtue is like a runner in a race who is running with all of his might but off the track." It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how much energy he's expending. He's not on the track. John Calvin writes,

All who are estranged from the religion of the one God, however admirable they may be regarded on account of their reputation for virtue, not only deserve no reward, but rather punishment because by the pollution of their hearts they defiled God's good works. For they are restrained from evil not by genuine zeal for good, but either by mere ambition or by self-love or some other perverse motive. [Now listen to this, this is key.] When we remember the constant end of that which is right, namely, to serve and glorify God, whatever strives to another end deservedly loses the name right.

In other words, if you're pursuing anything but the glory of God which we were made to do, no matter what you do that appears right, if your end isn't the glory of God, it's no longer right because the chief end is the glory of God. So, before Christ then, understand that every sin deserved God's wrath, and everything we did even when it appeared to be good, was sin because it was done in a state of rebellion against God and for reasons other than His glory. So absolutely nothing that you did before Christ ever pleased God. Not your finest shining moment, nothing.

Let me just say, if you're here this morning, and you're not in Christ, you've never repented of your sins and put your faith in Christ as Lord and Savior, you've never bowed your knee to Him, don't you for a moment imagine that somehow on the day of judgment your good is going to outweigh your bad. The Scripture has already said, you have nothing good. That's Gods assessment today. Nothing has ever pleased Him.

But what about now? What about, in light of our salvation, how did all of this change now that we are His children? So, I want us to consider secondly and really the focus of our time, pleasing God after Christ. And I want to reduce this to two basic propositions.

Proposition number one: every believer can perform works that God considers to be good, righteous and pleasing to Him. Every believer can perform works that God considers to be good, righteous and pleasing to Him. Look in Ephesians 2. Here in Ephesians 2 Paul reminds us that one of the great purposes of God in saving us was that we would demonstrate works that he believes and knows to be good.

I love Ephesians 2:1 - 10, it's been a while since we've been there. I don't know if you still remember it as I do, but it's one of my favorite passages. The first 10 verses of chapter 2 is one sentence in the Greek text, one sentence. The subject of the sentence comes in verse 4, God. The verbs of the sentence (and there are three of them) come in verses 5 and 6. He made us alive, God, verse 6, raised us up with Christ, and God seated us with Christ in the heavenly places. In other words, God regenerated us. He gave us new life. He saved us. Now notice verse 7 begins, so that, Verses 7 - 10 mark the purpose God did those things in your life and mine. And there are three purposes, I wish we had time to enumerate each of them, but I just want you to notice the third one in verse 10, God saved us in order that we would produce good works. Look at verse 10, "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them."

You understand what Paul is saying? Part of the reason God saved you was so that in you and through you He would produce good works, things that He knew and knew to be good. So true Christians then are able to do and actually do good works that please God. That's part of the purpose of our salvation.

Now, before we go any farther, we need to make a definition here, what are good works? There's a lot of fuzzy thinking about good works. What are good works? Again, listen to the best theological understanding from the minds of the Reformation and the Westminster Baptist Confessions of Faith. Both of them say this. "Good works are only such as God has commanded in His holy word, and not such as without the warrant thereof or devised by men out of blind zeal or upon any pretense of good intention." In other words, good works solely and only obeying God's word, good works are not obeying human commandments. This is so foundational, so important to understand.

You remember in Matthew 15:9, Jesus was talking about the Pharisees and their additions to the Scripture. Their additions to the Scripture caused everyone around them to think they were more holy. But listen to what Jesus said, Matthew 15:9, "In vain do they worship Me," [Quoting from Isaiah], "In vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men."

In other words when you add commands to the Scripture and you keep those, that doesn't please God, that's vanity, that's worthless. When the Pharisees added commands to the Scripture, their obedience to those man-made commands was not a good work.

Folks, the same is true today, with every form of legalism that adds to what God has said. Recently there have been a couple of illustrations in the Christian community of the fact that legalism, that is adding human commands to the Scripture, doesn't produce true holiness regardless of how it might look to us. When, in the last few months, we have seen the tragic fall of two ministries, two ministry leaders who have made their careers out of adding man-made commands to the Scripture. Sad stories, the story of Doug Phillips at Vision Forum, and within the last week or two the story of Bill Gothard. The principles, these men created out of the Scripture passages and their application of those principles became as weighty and as important to them and to their followers as the statements of the Scripture itself.

The problem with legalism is that the flesh has no power to control the flesh; instead, when you make human rules, you just awaken the flesh. Genuine good works and true righteousness are not the product of man-made rules. Instead, they come only from obeying God's clear commands in the Scripture.

Listen to Deuteronomy 12:32, "Whatever I command you, you shall be careful to do; you shall not add to it nor take away from it."

That's a definition of good works, when you don't add to the Scripture, you don't take away from the Scripture, you stick with the Scripture, and you do what the Scripture says. That is a good work, and that is righteous if you're in Christ. So good works then, true righteousness are only found in obedience to God's commands in the Scripture.

But that raises another important question. How can God receive my obedience to the Scripture as good and righteous? How can He receive it when I am painfully aware that I have never perfectly obeyed Him? My service to Him has always been imperfect, and my motives (as your motives) have always been mixed. I have never one time in my life done anything with perfectly pure motives and neither have you. So, how can God accept my imperfect obedience with mixed motives as good and righteous and pleasing?

Here's the biblical answer, let me let me give it to you, and then we'll unfold it. Even though our good works are never without some taint of sin in this life, in grace the Father accepts our sincere efforts at obedience as good and righteous. It's all grace. In other words, you don't have to be perfect to be holy. You don't have to perfectly obey only with the purest motives for it to be real obedience.

Again, the best understanding of Scripture from the Reformation and the Westminster and Baptist Confessions explain why that's true, listen.

The persons of believers being accepted through Christ, their good works also are accepted in Him, not as though they were in this life wholly unblameable and unreprovable in God's sight, but that He, looking upon them in His Son, is pleased to accept and reward that which is sincere although accompanied with many weaknesses and imperfections.

Isn't that amazing? That's the gospel of grace. God looks upon our attempts at obedience from a sincere heart, and while our obedience is fraught with weaknesses and imperfections, He accepts it because of Jesus Christ.

Now, let's drill down into this explanation just a little farther. When you look at the components of that statement, we learn that God accepts our obedience to Scripture as good and righteous on the basis of two great realities.

Number one, our union with Jesus Christ, our union with Jesus Christ. We are in Him. In other words, He is our representative. Everything He does, we get the credit for. And we are connected to Him in the sense that His spiritual life flows into us. The biblical picture is that of a vine and its branches. Another picture of that is that of a sort of divine umbilical cord that runs from Christ into our spiritual lives giving us the nutrients and the strength and all that we need. Because we are united to Christ God accepts our less than perfect attempts at obedience.

Look at Ephesians 2:10 again, "for we are His workmanship created," [here it is,] ["in Christ Jesus for good works."] It's because of our union with Christ that what we do can be called good. Philippians 1:11 says, "having been filled with the fruit of righteousness," [where does that fruit of righteousness come from,] "which comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God."

There's a second great reality that allows God to accept our obedience as good, not only our union with Christ, but the intercession of Christ on our behalf. Christ intercedes for us even now, and as we even a moment ago offered our worship in music as we now are offering our worship as study in the word it is weak, it is imperfect, it is not worthy of God, but Christ appears in the presence of God right now making what we're doing here acceptable to God. First Peter 2:5, [I love this,] "as believers we," [he says,] "… offer up spiritual sacrifices…." He describes our life as that of a priest offering spiritual sacrifices to God and then he says this, "… [they are] acceptable to God…." [How can my spiritual sacrifices be acceptable to God when I am so short of His glory? Here's the answer, 1 Peter 2:5,] "… acceptable to God through Jesus Christ."

Kevin DeYoung writing in his excellent book that I would wholeheartedly recommend to you The Hole in Our Holiness, writes this, "God does not expect our works to be flawless in order for them to be good. If God only accepted perfect obedience from His children, the Bible would have nothing good to say about Job, or David, or Elizabeth, or anyone else except for Jesus." That's right. Why does God say anything good about anybody but Jesus if our obedience has to be perfect and our motives have to be perfect for Him to accept it? He wouldn't have. But we are united to Christ. Christ intercedes for us.

There's actually a third reason that that God accepts our obedience as good. It's that our good works are not ultimately our own, but they are the work of the Spirit of Christ in us. Isn't that what Christ said to His disciples in John 15:5 when He said, "I am the vine you are the branches…. [He said], "he who abides in Me and I in him …" [there's that union with Christ.] "… he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing." He said My Spirit lives within you, provides you the energy, and that's how you are able to bear fruit.

In Romans 15:6, believers [we're told], are sanctified by the Holy Spirit. So, listen carefully. Not a single thing you have ever done as a believer, apart from your relationship to Jesus Christ, because you are in Christ, because He intercedes for you, because the Spirit produces those things in you, apart from that, God would never accept anything you have ever done as good or righteous or pleasing to Him. I like the way Augustine puts it. He says,

I do not, [he's talking to God here, listen to what he says.] I do not commend the work of my hands, for I fear lest when You look upon them You may find more sins than merits. This only I say, this I ask, this I desire, despise not the works of Your hands, God, see in me Your work, not mine for if You see mine, You will condemn it, if You see Yours, You will crown it for whatever good works are mine are from You.

So, understand that you can perform good works that God considers to be good and righteous and pleasing to Him. You were made for this. You were created in Christ Jesus for this.

Now there's a second proposition that goes along with this that's important to understand. Although you are forever justified, your choices affect God's disposition and response toward you as His child. In other words, what you choose to do as His child, as a fully justified saint, can either please your Father or displease your Father. Let me put it, first of all, like this. If you choose to sin, the Father is displeased. He may choose to discipline you, and this is a shocker to most Christians, He may even become angry with you. Yes, God can become angry with a justified sinner. You see, at the moment of salvation, we were forever justified. I love justification.

We're about to get into Romans, we'll talk about being declared just before the law of God, in the courtroom of God's justice. After salvation God is no longer an offended angry judge, but He is our loving Father. Think of it this way. Before you became a Christian, you were accountable to God only as judge in the courtroom is justice. At the moment you repented and believed in Christ, God the judge declared you forever righteous. There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. You walked out of that courtroom, He locked and sealed the door for you, you will never have to go back into the courtroom of God's justice, you were forever declared right before God's law.

But you went home with the judge, and you now live in His house as your Father, and when you sin, you don't need to leave the house and go back to the courtroom and get that all worked out again. You are forever right before God's law. You will never stand before Him as your judge again. Now when you sin, you're in the Father's house, and you go your Father. You, Father, I've sinned against the family name, I've sinned against You, I've sinned against our relationship. Although our sin will never again offend God as our judge, it can offend Him. It can displease Him as our Father.

You understand this even at a human level. My children don't earn my love; they don't earn a place in my family because of their obedience to me. They are my children. They're my children by birth, I love them. And even their disobedience doesn't change those realities, but their choices can produce in me as their father either pleasure or displeasure. In other words, while their actions cannot change their relationship to me nor my love for them, their actions do change my temporary disposition toward them and my temporary response toward them. The same is true for God's relationship with us as Father.

Let me give you a couple of references, you can jot them down and think about them later. Deuteronomy 1:37, Moses says to Israel, "the Lord was angry with me" why, because of his sin in striking the rock. The Lord was angry with Moses even though he belonged to Him, even though he was justified. First Chronicles 21:7, God was displeased with David when he numbered the people. First Kings 11:9, now the Lord was angry with Solomon because his heart was turned away from the Lord God of Israel who had appeared to him twice. First Corinthians 11:30, Paul says because of the Corinthians abuse of the Lord's Table the Lord had made some of them weak, some of them sick and had even killed some of them. True believers. In Revelation 2:4, even though the Ephesian believers were justified, Christ said to them, I have something against you. Calvin reminds us that although God never stops loving His children, He can be, "wondrously angry with them."

Don't ever forget that your actions toward the Father, yes you don't need to be re-justified, you're out of the courtroom forever, you've been declared right before God, but your actions can cause your Father to be displeased. Again, the Confessions remind us that true believers "may, by their sins, come under God's Fatherly displeasure and not have a sense of His presence with them until they humble themselves, confess their sins, ask forgiveness and renew their faith and repentance." Don't you take your sin lightly. Yes, you've been justified, but when you choose to disobey the Father, He is not pleased. He is displeased. He may discipline you, and He may even become angry with you.

But here's the encouraging part, the opposite is also true. If, with the right motives, you choose to obey, the Father is pleased. He considers your obedience as good and righteous. Think about passages like Job, Job 1:8, "The LORD said to Satan, 'Have you considered My servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil.'"

You say, well yeah, but he was the most righteous man on earth. Yes, he was. But he was still a sinner. He wasn't perfect. And yet God speaks of him in those terms. A blameless and an upright man, who fears God and who turns away from evil. God was pleased with Job and his obedience. In Proverbs 16:7, we learn that a man's ways can be pleasing to the Lord. In Luke 1:6, Zacharias and Elizabeth the parents of John the Baptist (here's how God describes them), "they were both righteous in the sight of God walking blamelessly in all the commandments and the requirements of the Lord." And folks they were not perfect as the encounter with Zacharias makes per perfectly obvious. And yet God's perspective of them was that they pleased Him. They were good; they were righteous.

Let me show you this in several other passages. Look at 2 Corinthians 5, 2 Corinthians 5. Paul here is talking about the fact that the body is decaying and will one day die, but he says in 2 Corinthians 5:9, "therefore we have as our ambition." [This is this is what I'm always living for,] "whether I'm at home" [that is in the body] whether I'm still alive, "or absent" that is I've died, I'm with the Lord, regardless I want "to be pleasing to Him." Paul says listen, you can be pleasing to the Father, and that's what I live for is to be pleasing to the Father. Look at Ephesians 5, Ephesians 5 Paul is dealing with the issue of sexual purity and in the middle of a passage on sexual purity he says in verse 10, or look at verse 8, end of verse 8, "… walk as children of light …" that is in terms of your sexual purity. Verse 10, "… trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord." Listen when you keep your body pure, when you do what God has commanded of you with your body, it pleases God.

Philippians 4, Philippians 4:18, Paul's talking about the gift that the Philippians have given him to support his ministry, and he says the end of verse 18, "that is a fragrant aroma to God, it's an acceptable sacrifice, it is well-pleasing to God." Listen, when you give out of what God has given you to support the causes of Christ, the church and the advance of His kingdom, it pleases God. Look at Colossians 1:10. He says in verse 9, I am praying that you will get this deeper knowledge of God's will in Scripture, that you'll understand the Scripture better. [Verse 10], "so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects."

When you understand the Scripture, when you walk in obedience to the Scripture, it pleases Him. Chapter 3:20, "Children be obedient to your parents in all things, for this is well-pleasing to the Lord." Kids, when you obey your parents because God has put them over you, and you do it as unto the Lord, it pleases God.

First Thessalonians 4:1, "Finally then, brethren, we request and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that as you have received from us instruction as how you ought to walk …," [that's the Scripture. You've received the letters from us, the teaching from us as an apostle, how you ought to live. When you do that, you] … please God, [and he says to the Thessalonians: (just as you actually do walk), [you do obey the Scripture, and you do please God, and I want you to] … "excel still more." [When you and I live in obedience to the Scripture with a sincere heart (however imperfect our obedience may be, however mixed our motives may be), God is pleased.]

Look at Hebrews 13, Hebrews 13:16, "do not neglect doing good and sharing," [in other words be generous with what God has given you, help others,] "for with such sacrifices God is pleased." He's commanded us to be generous with others and their needs. And when we do that, it pleases Him. Look at verse 21, this is part of that great benediction that ends the book of Hebrews.

"Now the God of peace," [verse 20,] "who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, even Jesus our Lord," [may] the God of peace, …[verse 21,] "equip you in every good thing to do His will,' [that's obedience to His word, His will revealed in His word,] "working in us that which is pleasing in his sight…." [Listen God is producing in you as you seek to obey His word, He is producing that which is pleasing in His sight.]

Look at 1 John 3:22, "… whatever we ask we receive from Him, because …" [now understand this is one caveat put on answered prayer there are other caveats in other places, so it has to be according to God's will, and lots of other things that are included, and here's one of them.] "Whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments" [and when we keep His commandments], we "… do the things that are pleasing in His sight." Do you see it? When (out of love for Christ and a desire to bring glory to your Father), you try to obey the Scripture, you please your Father.

This morning, if you came to this service out of a genuine desire to worship your great God, God was pleased. If, as we sang, you sang from your heart to the Lord, He was pleased. If you sit here now studying the Scriptures, and you have a sincere desire to understand so you can live it out and please God, God is pleased with that desire. A. W. Tozer writes,

From a failure to properly understand God, comes a world of unhappiness among even good Christians today. The Christian life is thought to be a glum unrelieved cross carrying under the eye of a stern Father who expects much and excuses nothing. He is austere, peevish, highly temperamental and extremely hard to please.

Is that how God describes himself? Think about His own self-revelation, that great self-revelation in Exodus 34:7. He says,

[I am] … compassionate and … [full of grace], slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. [And He says, He goes on to say,] [I forgive] … iniquity, transgression and sin; yet … [for the one who won't repent I will by no means clear the guilty.]

We understand this as human parents. I remember when my kids were small. You know, they would make attempts to obey me and my wife because they wanted to please us, so we would give them simple commands like, okay sweetheart, I want you to go to your room, and I want you to pick up your room. And they would go, and for the next few minutes they would shuffle around, and they would put things away, and then they would call us to the room.

Dad, Mom, look I cleaned my room.

And you walk to the door of the room, and you open the door, and it's not exactly what you had in mind. But they're so proud. Look! Now as a human father, what's my response at that moment?

How dare you call me here before this is complete, this isn't what I had in mind, work another 15 minutes.

No, I respond to that child with, good job sweetheart, here let me help you, let's pick up a couple more things. Why? I was pleased with the sincere, if imperfect, attempt at obedience. We have a Father who is above all human fathers, who is the quintessential expression of a Father, and He, in His grace because of our connection to Christ, is pleased to accept our sincere albeit imperfect attempts at obeying Him. Kevin DeYoung writes,

It is a dangerous thing to ignore the Bible's assumption and expectation that righteousness is possible. Of course, our righteousness can never appease God's wrath. We need the imputed righteousness of Christ. More than that we cannot produce any righteousness in our own strength. But as born-again believers, it is possible to please God by His grace. For those who have been made right with God by grace alone, through faith alone, and therefore have been adopted into God's family," [listen to this] "many of our righteous deeds are not only not filthy in God's eyes, they are exceedingly sweet, precious and pleasing to Him.

Listen believer, if from a sincere heart, you seek to obey what the Scriptures say, God is pleased every day and every moment that that's true. And that's only true because of what Christ did for us at the cross that we celebrate in the Lord's Table.

Our Father, we thank You for the great exchange. Only in Your great wisdom, only in Your great grace could You ever have come up with such a plan to offer Your beloved Son in our place.

Lord, may we live our lives reflecting our love and our gratitude and our obedience.

And Father, thank You even as we are reminded this morning, that in grace, because of Christ, because of our union with Him, because of His intercession even now for us, that our obedience, when sincere, even though imperfect, in grace You accept as good and righteous, and we please You. You are so good. You are so gracious. You are so generous. We love You. We adore You. We praise You.

In the person of Your Son, in whose name we pray, Amen.