1. Last week as I introduced our current series, Living in Light of Easter, I asked you a question, “Who Are You?” It is a question about identity because when we make the decision to acknowledge the sin in our life and choose to accept and receive God’s forgiveness of our sin, those choices involve a change in our identity. We are no longer a sinner or a saint. We are no longer strangers to God we become children of God.
2. There are three parts to this new identity, three important I am’s as Neil T. Anderson writes; I am accepted in Christ, I am secure in Christ, and I am significant in Christ. We need to understand what each of these mean and how important they are for help us grow and mature as followers of Jesus Christ.
3. So, what does it mean to be accepted? It means to be acknowledged. All of us here have had the thrill of being acknowledged in some meaningful way. All of us here have also had the pain of being unacknowledged as well.
4. But there’s an additional question regarding acceptance How do we make ourselves acceptable to God? It is a question that people wrestle with and agonize over because we think that we have to do something to make ourselves acceptable to God.
5. Before we answer these questions I want to address this issue of trying to make ourselves acceptable to God because there are three barriers this issue raises.
a. Barrier number one – the barrier of faith. A Jewish Rabbi named Simlai once noted that in the Mosaic Law there were 365 prohibitions and 248 positive commands.
Let me stop here for a moment. Have you ever heard yourself or someone say, “There are so many do’s and don’ts in the Bible!” There are! But, do you know why there are do’s and don’ts? When God gave Moses the Law in the early part of the Old Testament there were two important reasons why there were more don’ts that do’s. Reason number 1 – God was creating His plan of redemption through the Israelites. He chose them to be the group through whom Jesus Christ would come and so God needed to guide them into a relationship with only Him. That is called monotheism or one God. The nations and people around the Israelites were polytheistic which means they worshipped many gods.
Reason number two – Because there were to be no other gods before God, a large part of what other people did as part of their worship became off limits to the Israelites. This nation would be different from the other nations. They would not have multiple gods and all sorts of other things. So there were a lot of “don’ts” on the list. And I would also remind us that a common statement in the Jewish tradition is this one, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord God, He is One.”
Rabbi Simlai goes on to say that David reduced these 365 prohibitions and 248 positive commands to eleven in Psalm 15. He begins this Psalm with a question, “Who may worship in your sanctuary, LORD? Who may enter your presence on your holy hill?” (These are questions of acceptance, by the way.) Then he answers these questions in the verses that follow: 1. Lead blameless lives 2. Do what is right. 3. Speak the truth from sincere hearts. 4. Refuse to slander others. 5. Harm their neighbors. 6. Speak evil of their friends. 7. Despise persistent sinners. 8. Honor the faithful followers of the Lord. 9. Keep their promises even when it hurts. 10. Do not charge interest on the money they lend. 11. Refuse to accept bribes to testify against the innocent.
The prophet Isaiah, Simlai continues, reduces them to five as we read in 33:15 that also is a response to a question in verse 14 of acceptance: 1. Are honest and fair. 2. Reject making a profit by fraud. 3. Stay far away from bribes. 4. Refuse to listen to those who plot murder. 5. Shut their eyes to all enticement to do wrong.
He then cites the prophet Micah in Micah 6:8 who binds them into three: 1. Do what is right. 2. Love mercy. 3 Walk humbly with your God. And finally indicates that the prophet Habakkuk reduces them all to one in the latter part of verse 4 of chapter 2: “The righteous will live by their faith.”
A challenge for many people is to live by faith and not by sight. Faith comes hard for many people. If we are honest, faith comes hard for us, too. And, given our current culture in which skepticism abounds, faith seems childish and simplistic. “Who believes that?” we hear so often these days.
b. The second barrier is the barrier of disbelief. W. Paul Jones tells the story of women who shared this story from her childhood as a polio victim: “When my mother left me in Sunday School, I always asked to wear her locket. She thought I like the locket. That wasn’t it at all. I knew I wasn’t worth coming back for, but I knew she would come back for her locket.” What does that story do to you? It is so tragic and so common. We do not have to have polio or any other disease to understand this women’s view. I have to also wonder, what is her view of God? What did she hear in those years of Sunday School or worship attendance that would help her see and understand herself in a new light – that she was acceptable to God?
One of the challenges for us to is believe that all of this “stuff” we call Christianity is real. How can we believe in a God that we cannot see? How can we believe that God is good when there is so much pain and violence in the world? How can we trust God when we have been let down and disappointed by people who say they love us? How can God accept me when I have done what I have done? These questions indicate barriers to belief. And they are real and we cannot make light of them. It is hard to believe when so much of both life and life experience says the opposite of what the Bible has to say. There is also a third and very common barrier to belief that we must also address.
c. Barrier number three – the barrier of doing something to be acceptable. Several years ago, a food-processing firm marketed a cake mix that only required you to add water to produce a creamy batter and fine cake. But, the mix did not sell as the company had hoped. They did some research and discovered that the public had trouble accepting a cake mix that required only water. It was too simple. Potential customers felt they had to do something themselves to make a cake mix. So the company changed the formula and required an egg. The mix started selling, pardon the pun, like hotcakes.
We have trouble believing that to be forgiven of our sins and enjoy a wonderful relationship with God. DL Moody, a great evangelist of another generation told the story of an English lady who confront him after he said to the congregation to which she belonged: “None in this congregation will be saved until they stop trying to save themselves.” The lady said, “You have made me perfectly miserable.” “Indeed,” replied Moody, “how is that?” “Why, I always thought that if I kept on trying, God would save me at some time; and now you tell me to stop trying. What them am I to do?” Moody replied, “Why, let the Lord save you!” We cannot make right what only God can make right. The Bible is clear on that!
6. In our text for today, we read the story of a very influential and powerful sorcerer Simon who was converted when Philip went to city of Samaria. As we read in verse 13, “Simon himself believed and was baptized.” But, then the Holy Spirit came to empower the Samaritan Christians as we read in verses 16 and 17. Simon liked what he saw. However, he liked it for all the wrong reasons. He did not see the deep change in these people. He saw the power that Philip had and he wanted that ability as well. In fact, he wanted it so badly that he was willing to buy it. Have you known of or observed people acting this way? Simon missed the point. Instead of letting the Holy Spirit possess him, he was trying to possess the Holy Spirit in a human way. We cannot possess God like Simon tried to do. We must allow God to possess us!
7. Here is my point, “We cannot earn or do anything to make ourselves acceptable to God.” We cannot keep all the rules. We cannot buy God. We cannot make all the right connections for us to be acceptable to God. So, how then can we become acceptable to God and accepted in Christ?
8. We can only make ourselves acceptable to God as we give up ourselves to God, receive and accept His forgiveness, and make the conscious decision to live His way. We are made right with God only as we apply Romans 5:1, “Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us.” Only as we accept what Jesus Christ did on Easter weekend – He died, was buried, and came back to life on the third day – can we become acceptable to God. And God wants us to be acceptable to Him. He wants to help us be right with Him. But, we do so only by faith.
9. For over 50 years Billy Graham has closed his services all over the world with the simple musical invitation “Just As I am with out one plea.” We become acceptable to God when we come just as we are – honest to the core of hearts and souls. We become accepted in Christ when we allow the deep and profound work of God to enter into us as we confess our sins and ask for His forgiveness. It is so easy to become acceptable to God by faith and trust in Christ. But it is so hard because it means we must give up all of ourselves to all of God and that is not easy to do.
CONCLUSION:
What is keeping you from experiencing real clear peace with God at this point in your life? Is it doubt that all this is truly real, that it is really true? Is it the inability to do something to make yourself acceptable to God? In other words, do you wish that He would add something to the recipe? Is it disbelief that someone really cares about you, or that there is some kind of catch?
There is a catch! The catch is a total surrender to the direction of God for the rest of your life and the complete openness to the purifying and empowering work of the Holy Spirit to live a life that God has created you to live in the first place. Because to live in the light of Easter is to begin to live in a relationship with God that He intended all of us to live from the very start. And that relationship includes being accepted in Christ as we finally understand and experience that acceptance only as we allow ourselves to be accepted by God. And God has no problem with accepting us. That’s why we have an Easter Sunday with an empty tomb. Amen.
