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I. OUR RELATION TO GOD, PRODUCED BY THE GOSPEL, NECESSARILY DEMANDS OUR SERVICE. God has given us salvation at a tremendous cost. He not only sent His Son, but He spared not that Son. God not only spike by prophets, and by holy men of old, but He was "in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself." We serve, therefore, not merely an existent Deity, a splendid and majestic God, but we serve One who has wrought and suffered loss, and made valuable cost, and borne diminishing, and self-emptying, and death for us. The kingdom is not a mere natural growth, not a mere inheritance; it is a conquest gained after terrible conflict, assured only at the price of the blood of Jesus Christ. Hence logic, and rhetoric, and poetry, and art — these are poor responses to such service for us as God has rendered. Even praise, though it should be in hymns themselves inspired, seems feeble as a return for such affluence of service as we have received. We, too, must serve; we, too, must render back in thankfulness all that we have, all that we are.

II. THE SERVICE WHICH WE CAN RENDER UNTO GOD IS THE CONTINUAL SENSE OF GRATEFULNESS UNDER WHICH WE OUGHT TO LIVE TOWARDS HIM. The position of the believing recipient of the grace of God is a paradox. He must serve; and yet what service can he render? What does God need? How shall the Infinite and the Eternal be added to or made more great? Besides, what have we that we can render? All that is ours is already God's. From Him it came; by Him it consists; on Him it depends. To give Him aught, then, is only to give Him His own. Oh, wondrous paradox of a Divine necessity! We must serve, and we have no service; we must render, and we have and are nothing. See yonder snowflake dropping into the ocean. It has vanished in a moment, and is lost in the boundless fulness of that heaving deep. What can the snowflake add to the immensity of waters? Was it not itself exhaled from that ocean, and ascending as vapour, caught by the cold of the sky, and sent back again to its ocean source? See yonder mirror, flashing back the light towards the sun. What shall that reflected beam add to the glory and brightness of the centre of all light? It is only the return of the ray upon its own path, which had already come from the sun itself. And so what is our service, what is the best we can do, the richest we can give? It has only found the place whence it first came. Here, then, our text comes to our help. "Let us have gratefulness," it says, "and by this let us serve God acceptably." "Whoso offereth thanks glorifieth Me, and follows a path in which I will show him the salvation of Elohim." This spirit changes all life into a service. Every scene is a temple. Every word is worship. A work of bounty, of compassion, of self-denial, does not exhaust this grateful spirit. It does always its best, and then, when the best is done, cries with true self-knowledge, "We are but unprofitable servants." And may it not be here, that the quality of the service, as suggested by the word "acceptably" of our text, should rightly be considered? Acceptable service we are commanded to render, and the more we contemplate the service, and the power we have to pay it, the more clearly we find our inability, our utter bankruptcy even of gratitude. Then, we remember that the sacrifice, which redeemed our souls from death, the atonement by which our sins were expiated and our guilt removed, still remains all efficient, ceaseless in its power, infinite in its appealing force with God. "The things that were shaken" passed away, we learned, "that the things that could not be shaken" might remain. And the blended law and love which were found in the " blood that speaketh better things than that of Abel," in the Jesus, "Mediator of the new covenant," these passed not, but remain for ever. And so our failing gratitude, our empty return, our poor gift of service — these can all be filled to a Divine fulness at the Cross of Jesus.

III. WE LEARN THE SPIRIT IN WHICH OUR SERVICE SHOULD BE FOR EVER RENDERED. "With reverent submission, and godly fear." Reverent submission is the becoming, and careful, and observant attitude of the soul, keenly alive to the holiness of God and its own unworthiness. Our words should be few and fitting and well chosen, our penitence deep and real, our feeling true and sweet, our desires pure and high; and thus should we worship and bow down with "reverence and godly fear."

(L. D. Bevan, D. D.)

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KJV: See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven:

WEB: See that you don't refuse him who speaks. For if they didn't escape when they refused him who warned on the Earth, how much more will we not escape who turn away from him who warns from heaven,