What does it mean to give a sacrifice of praise (Hebrews 13:15)?

We have here an important definition of praise. Sometimes people have an idea that it is the feeling in our own hearts; but that is its results, rather than praise itself. Praise is "the fruit of our lips confessing His name." God appreciates your joy, the happiness that fills your hearts and wells over; but there is one thing He appreciates infinitely beyond all our feelings, and that is Christ Himself confessed to God. It is a wonderful deliverance to realize that true praise is simply offering up to God the fragrance of Christ. That which delights God will delight the heart of every one who knows and loves Christ.

We shall always find a subject of praise. There is One Who is a perennial object of praise, that is, the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you say I have nothing to give thanks for? God has given me His Son and with Him He has freely given me all things, so at once my mouth is filled with praise. This is true not only today, but yesterday, and the day before, and will be in the days to come too.

It is God's will that we should offer the sacrifice of praise continually. "The fruit of our lips" is to tell God what beauty and satisfaction we have found in Christ according to the scriptures. This delight in the Lord is bound to be acceptable. God never refuses to receive such words. They are well pleasing to Him, Who delights in His well-beloved Son.

"Confessing His name." He has attached His name to His supper and He has also attached it to ourselves. We are called by His name. We bear the name of the Lord. We are not our own, we belong to Him. The Son has made known to us the name of the Father, that it may be embodied in our worship to the Father and the Son.

All praise is to be "by Him" (Heb. 13:15). The incense is to be upon the golden altar alone. Thus the linking of the name of our Lord Jesus with every prayer and thanksgiving is not a form, but a reality, a necessity. Could there be one particle of praise or a single prayer acceptable to God, save "by Him?" This sacrifice of praise is to be continual, in times of darkness as well as of light; it is the fruit of the lips confessing His name. Christ is the altar, the basis of praise; and the incense, the material of praise. Nothing is so sweet to God as the name of Christ; that is praise which offers that savor to God in truth — confessing what He has done and what He is. Praise is not offering our feelings or our state to God, though it will be accompanied by joy and gladness, but it is the confessing of Christ, and He produces joy in the heart of the true worshiper — the sinner saved by grace.

If I am a quickened soul, raised up with Christ and brought to God, knowing Him as the living and true God, do I owe nothing to the God who has done it? Should I like it to be proved that God has not an open hand to receive anything from me? Should I not be unutterably sad if my heart, standing in such blessing, could find no God to render its little bit of service to? Having brought us where we are, is it not unutterably blessed that He would have us there rendering up the fruit of our lips for what He has done? It is from the continual realization of what He has done, that praise flows forth; and oh! how it brings out the exceeding magnificence of God in His greatness, that can take notice of the very smallest things. What a little breath, breathed forth in a few words of praise, an "acceptable sacrifice!" One can understand Christ's sacrifice being acceptable — that one sacrifice by which we are perfected for ever. But does the same Spirit, after telling us of that, turn round to you and to me, saying, "I look to you to offer sacrifice?" What! can God accept as sacrifice a little breath, embodying to my soul the thought of what He has done? Yes! and I am to offer it to Him continually as the fruit of the lips giving thanks to His name.

There is a poor thing on a sick bed, lisping praises, and God having an ear to listen to and accept that sacrifice of praise. I was with a dying one who was full of uncertainty as to what would be her end; I said, "Would it not be better to use up the little time remaining to His glory?" "What!" she answered, "I, gasping here, able to do anything for His glory?" "Yes, if you take all you are suffering from His hand, saying to it all, Even so, Father, for so it seemeth good in thy sight, He will settle with His Son all about your end, on the one hand; and on the other hand, be listening for your sacrifice of praise." All love on one hand, and all magnificence on the other.

From this point it is, in the passage in Hebrews before us, that we find all the blessedness of these sacrifices beginning to be told out to us. We have come to God by the Sin-offering; what do we find next? An altar of which I have a right to eat. That is not the Sin-offering, for there is no altar there. It is the Peace-offering. An offering in which part went up to God, part furnished the table for the offerer, and part of it was for the priest. So that God and man, and the mediator between God and man (Christ in type), can sit down and rejoice in one common joy. An altar from which the sacrifice is gone up to God, on the other hand, furnishes from that same sacrifice a portion for man. "We have an altar whereof they have no right to eat who serve the tabernacle." Do you understand that? He says, You cannot eat that and serve the tabernacle. How can you? Why, that death of the Lord Jesus Christ means the complete putting an end to all that is connected with Judaism. All Christian ground is outside this camp. You must go outside. Has n't He gone outside? Yes, He has gone outside, and He remains there. You must go outside to Him. There is your altar — an empty altar. Do you see? Ah, if we are Christians, we have got to believe profoundly in that empty altar. The work is accomplished; it is not accomplishing; it never needs to be accomplished any more; it is accomplished once for all; it is done. And we have got an empty altar; empty, because the sacrifice is accepted and gone up to God. What is this empty altar for? Look at what the apostle says. "By Him therefore," he says, "let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually." The altar is what sanctifies the gift. The Lord Jesus Christ it is who gives our praises power to ascend to God. By Him we offer — no propitiatory offering now, but a sacrifice of praise for propitiation accomplished. Do you see, then, what you have done? You have crossed from the court of the tabernacle to the holy place; from the altar of burnt-offering passed to the golden altar, which is now — the vail being rent — right in the presence of God. We have left the altar of sacrifice, and we have come to the priest's altar in the holy place. We have come to offer our sacrifice of praise continually, that is, the fruit of our lips confessing ("giving thanks" it is, but in the margin "confessing") His name, — "that is, the fruit of our lips confessing His name." Oh, beloved, what a sweet and blessed thing that is — to be able to come to God to confess His name — to utter the name of Jesus before Him! Oh, there is not any thing so sweet to God as the true confession of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is not any thing that so delights Him as when He sees a soul profoundly conscious of the value of Christ, who when he comes before Him has nothing to speak of but the name of Jesus.

But now mark, there is another thing. This golden altar is an altar of sacrifice of praise continually — nothing else but praise. Is there any thing else? Well, there is this, although it is not really any thing else in character, — "To do good and to communicate forget not, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased." Here are more sacrifices, offerings for the same incense-altar — not the fruit of the lips now, but the life. That is the character of a Christian life. How beautiful it is! A whole volume of doctrine in it too. A Christian life is a sacrifice of praise to God in which the infinite value of the Lord Jesus Christ is confessed to Him. It is a sacrifice of praise to God, the heart thanking God for what He has done. Not a new claim upon God, not a claim at all; but the answer to God's claim, the answer of praise to Him for all that He has done for us.

Christian Sacrifices. — We have read of the one perfect sacrifice (9, 10) offered up once for all, so never to be repeated. No more sacrifice for sins can there be. No repetition of that sacrifice in any form is required. No altar have we on which to immolate a victim. No bloody or unbloody sacrifice for sins are we called to offer to our God. Yet have Christians no sacrifices to offer? Assuredly they have, and those which God will accept. All of them members of the holy priesthood (1 Peter 2:5), sacrifice becomes them; but as Peter in that passage takes care to state — spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. In harmony with this we read here in the Hebrews (13:15) of the sacrifice of praise to God to be offered continually. So, whether we learn of Peter or from the writer of our Epistle, the teaching is the same. Peter would have been as much shocked, if those amongst whom he specially laboured had altars erected in their place of meeting in Asia Minor, as certainly Paul would have been. Christian sacrifices, however, there are, and of another class of them are we also reminded (16): "To do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased." To care for others, ministering to them in their need, is a feature, and that an acceptable one, of Christian sacrifice. The Philippians understood that when sending to minister to Paul in his prison at Rome. And Paul accepted this service as an odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well pleasing to God (Phil. 4:18). To offer these of course neither a priest, nor an altar, nor the death of some fresh victim is required. Such sacrifices as praises to God are the outflow of the heart in worship; and doing good, etc., is the activity of the Divine nature displayed in the saint — the practical manifestation of Christian love.

As strangers, then, and pilgrims, they went forth outside the camp as to their place; but able to offer a sacrifice of praise to God continually, the fruit of their lips, confessing Christ's name. Often had the temple courts resounded with the service of song; still the same Psalms might be chanted which David composed, and the sons of Korah, generation after generation, had taken up; but the sacrifice of praise which God could now accept, the Apostle lets those believers know, would be continually offered up elsewhere. No time would henceforth be unseasonable, no place unsuited, where a heart, conscious of God's grace, was occupied with His goodness and mercy towards sinners. In the inner prison at Philippi, and at the unusual hour of midnight, that sacrifice was offered and accepted. From the apostle at Rome, as from his brethren in the faith in Jerusalem, it could ascend at all hours to the throne of God. The strangers of the dispersion in Asia Minor could render it, and from the rugged island of Patmos, John, the apostle and evangelist, offered it. (Acts 16; Eph. 1; Col. 1; 1 Peter 1; Rev. 1) Without restriction as to time or place, or the frequency with which it might be brought, one condition regarding it was, and is indispensable, "By him," that is, Christ, "let us offer," etc. On the ground of His death, and by Him alone, can any draw nigh with it. Where that is unknown, or He Himself is rejected, no such sacrifice can God receive. It is connected with the Lord Jesus, and with His finished work on the cross. That must be first known, and He must become the object of the soul's faith, before it can offer this sacrifice which God delights to receive. What Paul states, Peter also affirms (1 Peter 2:5), that spiritual sacrifices are acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. He first struck the right note by Whom alone they can be presented. "In the midst of the assembly will I praise Thee" were the words of prophecy, of which we know the fulfilment. He who hung on that cross, bearing God's judgment against sin, was heard and delivered; so, He has sounded the key-note, for those who share in the deliverance and redemption effected by His blood.

Verse 15. "By Him, therefore," etc. Outside the camp the Christian finds himself with God. His altar and the preparation for His acceptable worship, are provided there. It is by Jesus, whom the world disowns, that we are called to offer now the sacrifice of praise. That praise finds no free utterance within the camp. For it can be rendered only by the circumcision, who worship God in the Spirit, and have no confidence in the flesh. Their rejoicing is in Christ Jesus. The pleasant odour of their offering is their believing celebration of His love. The sacrifice of praise which God accepts is the fruit of lips which make confession of His name.* The praise which God thus looks for from the heirs of His salvation is not to speak only at particular seasons, but to be always on our lips. It is to be a continual sacrifice. For it is the believer's recognition of an abiding Saviour. Time and circumstance, which tell so powerfully on the children's natural experiences, are incapable of altering the Spirit's note of praise. For Christ, who is the song of the believer, is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. In Him we find a joy unspeakable and full of glory, amid the needful heaviness of our manifold temptations. Praise is the Spirit's contrast to the godless hilarity of the natural man. To be abounding in the faith, with thanksgiving, is a true token of the Christian's spiritual growth. With a solemn consciousness of his position in a world which is not of the Father, the believer is to put away, as inconvenient and incongruous, the former things. While the world rejoices in its own inventions, unmindful of the woe in which its laugh must be extinguished (Luke 6:25), God's children are to stand arrayed in their Divinely-provided comeliness of thanksgiving and praise (Ps. 33:1; Eph. 5:4; James 5:13).

Verse 16. While our own lips are to be fruitful in the praise of God, we should seek to open more abundantly the lips of others (2 Cor. 9:11-13). God loves a free communicator of His gifts. But Christian beneficence is a sacrifice. It is to be rendered, that is, for the love of Him to whom the life of the believer is a thanksgiving. The parsimonious parings which are grudgingly bestowed, rather to still a legal conscience, than to succour Jesus in His needy people, can give no pleasure to the God of grace. He knows who pour the richest gifts into His treasury (Mark 12:43). Faith enters as a principal ingredient into every acceptable work. A feeling of natural kindliness may find pleasurable exercise in an active benevolence. This is no sacrifice. For we have nothing truly our own to give, but what we first received from God; and if in forgetfulness of this, we do our kindness independently of Him, we both wrong Him and deceive ourselves.

What is it we offer to God? Hebrews 13 answers, “By Him, therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips confessing His name” (N.Tr.). You go to God with Christ, according to the measure in which you know Him. You may be weak in faith, and if so the measure of your presentation of Christ will be small. You may be rich in faith, and if so you will be able to set Christ before God in a large way. But inasmuch as the offering, whether large or small, is always Christ, both are equally well pleasing to God.

After his delight in a person, nothing gives the lover so much pleasure as hearing the beloved praised. It is balm to a parent's ear to hear a child spoken well of. This is probably the meaning of Hebrews 13:15: "By Him (Jesus) therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips, praising His name." The sacrifice of praise to God derives its fragrance to Him from the sweet savour of the Name of Jesus. It is thus pleasurable to the Father for His people to commune with Him, sharing His delight in His Well-Beloved Son.