The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from the lifetime of works from the Prince of Preachers, Charles Haddon Spurgeon. The following excerpt is from the MTP, volume 35, sermon number 2,100, "Faith essential to pleasing God."
"To attempt a difficulty may be laudable, but to rush upon an impossibility is madness."
The way of acceptance described in Scripture is, first, the man is accepted, and then what that man does is accepted. It is written: “And he shall purify the sons of Levi, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.”
First, God is pleased with the person, and then with the gift, or the work. The unaccepted person offers of necessity an unacceptable sacrifice. If a man be your enemy, you will not value a present which he sends you. If you know that he has no confidence in you, but counts you a liar, his praises are lost upon you; they are empty, deceptive things which cannot possibly please you.
O my hearers, in your natural state you are so sinful that God cannot look upon you with complacency! Concerning our race it is written: “It repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.” Concerning many God has said, “My soul lothed them, and their soul also abhorred me.” Is this true of us?
“Ye must be born again,” or ye cannot be pleasing to the Lord. Ye must believe in Jesus; for only to as many as receive him does he give power to become the sons of God. When we believe in the Lord Jesus, the Lord God accepts us for his Beloved’s sake, and in him we are made kings and priests, and permitted to bring an offering which pleases God. As the man is, such is his work.
The stream is of the nature of the spring from which it flows. He who is a rebel, outlawed and proclaimed, cannot gratify his prince by any fashion of service; he must first submit himself to the law. All the actions of rebels are acts done in rebellion. We must first be reconciled to God, or it is a mockery to bring an offering to his altar.
Reconciliation can only be effected through the death of the Lord Jesus, and if we have no faith in that way of reconciliation we cannot please God. Faith in Christ makes a total change in our position
towards God—we who were enemies are reconciled; and from this comes towards God a distinct change in the nature of all our actions: imperfect though they be, they spring from a loyal heart, and they are pleasing to God.
