PLEASING GOD
J. Strachan
John 8: 29; 1 Thessalonians 4: 1; Romans 8: 1–10; Hebrews 11: 5
I would like to say something about being pleasing to God. I think that is something that would come into the desire of every believer, that he should be pleasing to God. What marks men generally is that they want to please themselves, but as God works in someone I think the outcome is a change so that instead of wanting to please himself or herself there is a desire to be pleasing to God.
I have started with this reference to the Lord Jesus in John 8 where it says, “And he that has sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, because I do always the things that are pleasing to him”. What that must have meant to the Father to have a Man here on this earth who did “always the things that are pleasing to him”. What a contrast to every man that had preceded!
There had been some in whom there was some desire to please God, but now a Man who always did the things that were pleasing to Him, never at any point different. What a wonderful thing it must have been for the Father to have in the life of Jesus One who did always the things that were pleasing to Him. Indeed, His very coming was with that intention.
It says of Him prophetically in the Psalms, “Behold, I come, in the volume of the book it is written of me—To do thy good pleasure, my God, is my delight, and thy law is within my heart”, Psalm 40: 7, 8. Think of One coming specifically in that attitude, to be always pleasing, to do His good pleasure, a Man with God’s law within His heart. How He carried everything that was for the delight and pleasure of God in His affections! What it must have meant to God as He saw Him come into manhood, and then as He saw Him grow up, always affording Him pleasure. You will remember how it speaks of Him as a boy of twelve as He was found in the temple hearing and asking questions. He says at that point, “Did ye not know that I ought to be occupied in my Father’s business?”, Luke 2: 49. He was thinking about the Father and about the Father’s things, and God would remind us how He found pleasure in Jesus at that age. Would He not therefore find pleasure in a boy or girl of twelve who wanted to hear about the Father’s things and ask questions about them?
Then as He grew up to about thirty and the full maturity of manhood we get heaven expressing its delight, the Father’s voice saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I have found my delight” (Matthew 17: 5), calling attention to Him, as if it is intended that we should take account of Him, take account of what was there under the eye of God for His pleasure. Two of the other gospels tell us that the voice said, “Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I have found my delight” (Mark 1: 11; Luke 3: 22), giving Him a personal sense of the Father’s approval. Would you not love to have a sense of divine approval in being for God’s pleasure? That was Jesus even before He came on to public view; it related to the thirty years of hidden, secret history with God in which He was living for God’s pleasure. God voiced His delight, gave expression to it, so that others could take account of it, and so that Christ Himself should go forward in the sense of being personally approved. He went forward in the sense that He was not left alone, “He has not left me alone, because I do always the things that are pleasing to him”. He went forward with a sense, you might say, of the Father’s company. There were times when it looked as if there was no one else, no company for Him; He was “left alone of men”, but, apart from the time of the forsaking on the cross, He went through in communion with the Father, with a sense of the Father’s pleasure. And in regard of His service He ever had the sense of being pleasing to God.
When the time came for Him to come out on to full public view amongst men, healing, teaching, helping people, conveying God’s goodness and blessing to men, He did all that in the sense of the Father’s pleasure. How wonderful!—“Behold my servant whom I uphold, mine elect in whom my soul delighteth!”, Isaiah 42: 1. Just think of everything that Jesus did; the Father was pleased with it, God was pleased with all that He found in that Man. When the time came for His life to be laid down He says, “On this account the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it again”, John 10: 17. Think of that—a Man going forward to lay down His life, and doing it at the Father’s commandment; what pleasure it must have afforded the Father! It reminds us of the burnt-offering, which was cut up into its parts, the head and the fat and the legs and the inwards. You can look at the life of Jesus in the most minute detail, everything in it affording pleasure to God, and all finally offered up as a sacrifice of a sweet odour. That is what went up to God when He laid down His life, that life that meant so much to God and meant so much to Him. I believe He enjoyed that life in which He was pleasing to God, because He says, “Take me not away in the midst of my days!”, Psalm 102: 24. He felt what was involved in the termination of that life in which He was so pleasurable to God.
So there was the laying down of His life, and not only that, but He was to take it again, and in taking it again He was to bring in a whole universe populated with men in whom God could find His pleasure. How wonderful to think of that, that God should not only have His pleasure in one Man but in a universe in which men will be secured according to the divine pleasure.
So to effect that, the Father’s glory intervened in the realm of death and Christ was “raised up from among the dead by the glory of the Father”, Romans 6: 4. Think of a Man being raised up from among the dead!
There must have been millions lying in death, lying in the grave, and God intervened to show His pleasure in this Man who was entirely delightful to Him by raising Him from among the whole realm of the dead. God raised one Man in a selective resurrection and glorified Him.
As He is before God now, God is infinitely pleased with Him, and He will be pleased with all those who are blessed through Him. What a wonderful thing to be a believer, to be brought into the consciousness that you are accepted in the Man who affords God such pleasure.
We have considered what God found in Christ, and God also wants to find pleasure in believers at the present time down here. It is not merely a matter of waiting till you get to heaven and God finding His pleasure in you there, which He will do, but God wants to have believers pleasing to Himself at the present time. Now that was the concern of Paul as he wrote to these dear saints in Thessalonica. They had not been converted for very long, they were comparatively young in the faith, and he says, “We beg you and exhort you in the Lord Jesus”—you can feel Paul’s affections coming into this—“even as ye have received from us how ye ought to walk and please God”. If we are going to be pleasing to God, I think we have to learn how to do it. We have to acquire the spiritual know-how so that we might know how to walk in such a way that it pleases God. So Paul was concerned about these dear saints in Thessalonica, and I think the Lord would be concerned presently that we should learn how to walk so as to please God. Paul gives them credit for having started; he says, “even as ye also do walk”, then he says, “that ye would abound still more”. How delightful it is to think of believers in this room today having started on this pathway, this pathway of faith where we are concerned to walk in such a way as to please God, and then the thing is that we might acquire the know-how to abound in it still more. Christianity is an order of things in which there is room for improvement in our practical answer to the truth. While we are down here it is a time of education when we can acquire the know-how so that we can do things better, be more pleasing to God.
Now Romans 8 is a very helpful chapter in acquiring the understanding of how to please God. In this section of Romans it is a matter of coming to things in our own experience.
Initially God presents things to us in the gospel and we lay hold of them in faith. God has done tremendous things for us in the glad tidings that have been made available to us through His Son; He has greatly blessed us. But then there is another side of the truth that is connected with our spiritual experience and God would say, ‘Now I want you to progress in your own personal, spiritual experience’. Romans 8 is a very helpful chapter in understanding how we may thus progress. We learn to engage in some analysis, not to make us introspective, but it is right to be able to analyse things. We have to be able to analyse what is pleasing to God and what is not pleasing to God—we have to do that in our histories. One of the things we have to come to is the distinction between flesh and spirit. The believer, as part of his spiritual education, must be able to distinguish between flesh and spirit. It is a great matter to be able to say, “I myself with the mind serve God’s law” (Romans 7: 25), that you can discern something in yourself that is on the line of desire to be pleasing to God. Of course, you find that there is something else inside you that is going in a completely different direction, and if it operates you will find the result is that there is something that is displeasing to God. But then it is a great thing to realise that God has done something in my soul and l identify myself with what God has done in me and say, ‘That is I myself, that is my true self’. “I myself with the mind serve God’s law”, so you identify yourself with the thing in yourself that wants to be pleasing to God. Then we find that there are things that are according to flesh and there are things that are according to Spirit. We have to keep our analytical faculty going so that we can distinguish between them. I learn to say, ‘That belongs to the flesh, and that belongs to the Spirit’.
Now God does not expect anything good from the flesh, therefore we should not expect anything good from the flesh either. God has condemned sin in the flesh. Where has He condemned it? He has condemned it in Has own Son. Oh, how affecting that is! Think of the feelings of God that would enter into that, the condemnation of sin in the flesh in His own Son. He has shown the impossibility of anything good, anything for His pleasure, coming from the flesh, and therefore the believer has to calculate in that way that he cannot expect anything good from the flesh either. If the flesh operates it will act on the principle of sin, but if the “I myself” operates, then it will act in the direction of what is pleasing to God. Then there is the mind of the flesh and the mind of the Spirit. “For the mind of the flesh is death”; that is the direction in which the mind of the flesh will gravitate; but the direction that the mind of the Spirit will operate in is towards life and peace. Now, do you see the distinction?
There is something that is operating in the direction of death. Does anybody want to have anything to do with that line of things? On the other hand, there is what is operating on the line of life and peace, “but the mind of the Spirit life and peace”. So the believer applies his mind to these things. There is a process that goes on in your mind and you sort things out. It is a very important thing to get matters sorted out in your spiritual experience and to learn to identify yourself with what is pleasing to God and refuse the line of things that is displeasing. That is the distinction between flesh and Spirit, the things of the flesh and the things of the Spirit, the mind of the flesh and the mind of the Spirit.
Now you might say, ‘How am I going to work this out? I can distinguish, but then I find that I have no power to do the things .I would like to do. I would like to be pleasing to God but I find I have no power’. Well, that is where the Spirit comes in to help you. You will notice it says, “They that are in flesh cannot please God”, therefore you cannot expect anything pleasing to God on that line. But the Spirit is life on account of righteousness; that is, the believer is to rely on another power altogether. You do not rely on your own strength; you recognise that you cannot be pleasing to God according to the flesh and you rely on the Spirit.
The effect of that is that the believer can be here practically righteous and pleasing to God. It is a great matter to apprehend that there are the means available in the Spirit for the believer to be here pleasing to God. The Spirit is the power for practical righteousness. So it says, “And they that are in flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in flesh but in Spirit, if indeed God’s Spirit dwell in you”.
Now this comes down very much to the place that we are prepared to give practically to the Spirit of God, so that the Spirit can be known as dwelling in the believer. He is not just visiting. You know, somebody might come to the door in an emergency and you let him in, and when the emergency is past you let him go, but that is not dwelling. Dwelling means that someone can come and stay and be restful.
Is that how the Spirit of God is with you, dear brother, dear sister? Has He found a restful dwelling place in your heart? “But ye are not in flesh but in Spirit, if indeed God’s Spirit dwell in you”. Well, it is a matter in our spiritual experience of giving place to the Spirit so that He can be known as dwelling in the believer, restful there. The result of that is that you are not in flesh, you do not act along that line, you act along the line of the Spirit and you prove that the Spirit is life on account of righteousness, you prove practically that the power to please God is in the Spirit.
Now Enoch is a very interesting man. I think he corresponds very much to ourselves. We are thinking about translation, are we not, dear brethren? The next great movement is going to be translation. You may get engrossed in the things of the world, but that is not really the believer’s outlook. Death is not the believer’s outlook either. The believer’s outlook is that he is going to be translated, raptured to be with Christ. Meantime we are here, but we are here as persons who are just going to be translated. So Enoch walked in faith and he “was translated that he should not see death”. Just think of that, the possibility that is within our range of being amongst those who will be translated without seeing death. It says of Enoch that he “was not found, because God had translated him; for before his translation he has the testimony that he had pleased God”—“before his translation”; what a privilege to have the testimony that he was pleasing to God! That lies, dear brethren, within the range of each one of us to have this testimony that we are pleasing to God, before our translation. God will make us conscious after the translation that He is pleased with us, I am sure of that, but then there is this aspect of what is happening before the translation. Are we going to be set to be here as those who are conscious of having this testimony of pleasing God? I believe God would give us that if we are set for it. He is a rewarder of them who seek Him out. What a reward to have—the conscious sense before our translation that we are pleasing to God.
‘Oh’, you say, ‘things are very difficult in the world. It is very difficult to be here all the time pleasing to God’. Enoch lived in a very difficult world. I do not know if you have ever thought about that. Enoch lived in the context of Cain’s world, a man who was a murderer and who had gone out from the presence of God. What comes to light in connection with him is a whole order of things in which men can live to please themselves. There were all sorts of things available in Cain’s world. There were persons who were breeders of cattle, suggesting the world of commerce; and there were those who handled the harp and the pipe those who would go in for music and the arts; there were those who were forgers of tools—those who went in for science and engineering and all that kind of thing; then there was one in Cain’s line whose name was Naamah (‘Charming’), reminding us of the charms that the world puts on. Enoch lived in the context of a world like that, but he was different, he walked with God.
It is a great thing to learn how to walk with God, to walk in the Spirit, to walk by faith. I think Enoch knew what communion with God meant. To walk with God means you are in communion with God, and he must have afforded great pleasure to God. Enoch, I think, went through a course of spiritual history in the process. He was the seventh from Adam. I think there is a suggestion in that of the culmination of a course of spiritual history. Hence we work out this matter of walking with God, of being in communion with God, so that we may have the conscious sense of being pleasing to God. Enoch had that, he had it before his translation. Dear brethren, we are just on the verge of translation: are we going to set ourselves to be here pleasing to God so that before our translation we may have the testimony of being pleasing to Him? May the Lord bless the word.
Address in Edinburgh
13 March 1982