Scripture Reading: Philippians 2:5-11
INTRODUCTION
My next five lessons, Lord willing, will be on the topic of Bible Authority. I have titled the Series “Pleasing our King.” Our first lesson will be the introduction to our series which, Lord willing, will include lessons on what we do when we come together to worship our King:
• Our Music
• The Lord’s Supper
• The Collection
• Proclaiming the King’s Will
To begin this series, I would like us to consider a very important question: “What is our goal as Christians? Why is it that we do what we do? How we answer this question is important. We need to have the right reason as to why we choose to do what we do in service and worship to God. I believe the Apostle Paul sums up pretty well what that reason should be in 2 Corinthians 5:9
“Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him.”
In everything we do, is this our desire? This needs to be the motivation we have in approaching the will of God and the Authority of Christ. Each one of us as Christians must make it our goal and aim to be pleasing to Him in EVERYTHING we do.
There are three points I would like us to consider today when it comes to being pleasing to our King. Pleasing our king means that we must remember:
1. Who The King Is
2. How He Reveals What Pleases Him
3. Why We Must Desire To Please Him
❶ WHO IS THE KING?
Who is in charge? Who is the ultimate source of authority? Of course the answer to this question should be easy for us to answer as Christians. But the question must be asked because there are people that claim to be serving God out there who allow other influences rule in their lives and to be their ultimate authority decisions. Many turn to themselves and to other people as their source of authority and guidance. They turn to others to be their King and Ruler.
These things are not our source of authority:
• Our feelings or intuition. No matter where we believe these feelings are coming from, they are not the ultimate source of authority. Saying “I feel God would like it if we do this” when God does not speak on the matter or says something else on the matter is dangerous. Our feelings are not King.
• Our personal experiences. I have recently been studying with someone who allows their personal experiences to be their King above Jesus when it comes to miraculous spiritual gifts. Because he had seen guys on TV do miracles or he himself had learned to speak in some kind of heavenly language led him to reject what King Jesus and His Apostles say about those things.
• What we have always done as a church. Traditions are not our King. They must be submitted to what He says also. Just because we have done something a certain way for so wrong does not make it right.
• What our families have always believed. Our parents, grandparents, and other families members are not our King either. When we become Christians, we make the decision to take Jesus’ words above even what those closest to us say. Jesus says, “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple” (Luke 14:26) Our allegiance to Him as King needs to far surpass our allegiance to anyone else.
• What preachers and elders say. Even those who we look up to and respect in the church are not King.
If any of these contradict what the true Authority and King says, then we are wrong. Plain and simple. We are wrong. If we allow these things to take precedence over Jesus by using these things as our source of authority, we are putting these things on the throne of our lives. We will not allow this to happen if we truly want to please our King. Everything that we think or feel must be submitted to Him.
We need to choose each and every day who it is that will be the One who reigns in my life and leads me to make decisions in what I do in my service to God. This is what we must decide as individuals and as local churches. This is what authority is all about. It is all about pleasing our King instead of pleasing ourselves and making ourselves and those around us King.
Jesus is the King. He is the One who created us. We belong to Him. He is the reason why we can become citizens in the Kingdom. He is the One who God exalted and sat at His right hand. Jesus is the King, not us or anyone else! Jesus is the Ruler and King of everyone, whether they like it or not. Jesus is the King of the atheist whether they choose to submit to His Lordship in their lives or not. Paul says in Philippians 2:9-11 about Jesus:
“Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, 11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Because Jesus humbled Himself to the point of death on the cross, God exalted Him and made Him King over all. He was given all authority on Heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:19-20). If Jesus has all authority on Heaven and on earth, how much does that leave for you and me? Zero. Zilch. None. He is the only One deserving of being the King of our lives, and He is the only One deserving of being the head of His church. As Paul says in Colossians 1:18, “in all things He (speaking of Jesus) is to have the preeminence.”
Jesus is the anointed One of God, God’s chosen King. He is the authority we must submit to and desire to please.
❷ HOW DO WE KNOW WHAT IS PLEASING TO HIM?
Jesus says to Pilate in John 18:37, “You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice." Those who are the sheep of Jesus Christ will only listen to the voice of the Shepherd and King. They will not listen to others who trying to take them away from the voice of their Shepherd.
When Jesus here in John 18 proclaimed to Pilate that He was born to be the King over a kingdom that is not of this world and that all who are part of this kingdom hear his voice, He was proclaiming something that in inherent in Kingship, that He as the King gives some standard of truth, a “law.” He began a New Covenant in which all who are His sheep must adhere to. Kingship and authority go hand in hand. They are inseparable. The King gives the standard that must be followed.
Paul told the Colossians in 1:9-10 that he prayed that they would “be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; 10 that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God…”
If we want to be fully pleasing to God, we need to be filled with the knowledge of His will. But where do we get this knowledge? The only way in which we can “be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding…and increasing in the knowledge of God…” is to, as Paul says in Colossians 3:16, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom…” Only the word of Christ given through His Apostles and Prophets can equip us with the knowledge we need to be pleasing to God. We cannot know whether anything is pleasing or displeasing to God unless He reveals it to us in His word.
But the question arises, how does our King in His word communicate these things to us? I believe He communicates His will to us the same way any of us communicate our will to others. Parents, whenever you want to communicate to your kids that something is pleasing to you, how do you do it? Can I suggest you do it in one of three ways. You will either TELL them that what you want them to do, SHOW them what you want them to do, or IMPLY something to them in what you tell them or show them. Is there another way but these three ways to communicate your will to someone? This is how God in His word communicates His will to us.
• He TELLS us what pleases or displeases Him in direct statements and commands;
• He SHOWS us what is pleasing or displeasing to Him with illustrations or examples; or
• He IMPLIES something to us. He desires that we make logical conclusions from what He has told us or showed us.
This is how our Lord communicates to us in scripture. Let’s look at an example. Let’s look at what God reveals about baptism:
TELLS
He tells us, “He who believes and is baptized will be saved, but he who does not believe will be condemned” (Mark 16:16). If we want to be pleasing to God, we will do what He tells us to do here in this direct statement to be saved. God uses both direct statements and commands to show us that baptism is something we must do to be pleasing Him.
SHOWS
Jesus gives us a multitude of examples in scripture of people being baptized. We learn in these examples that a way of baptizing that pleases God is by immersion. John was baptizing because it was a place where there was much water (John 3:23). When the Ethiopian Eunuch was baptized, we see that they went down into the water and then came out of the water (Acts 8:38-39). We are not given any examples of other modes of baptizing that are pleasing to God other than immersion. It is also the only mode that is inherent in the definition of the word.
IMPLIES
God also implies certain things to us in scripture about baptism. God implies to us that preaching about baptism is included in “preaching Jesus.” We are told that Philip preached Jesus to the Eunuch, and the Eunuch responded by saying as they travelled, “look, water, what hinders me from being baptized?” This implies that Phillip told him about baptism. Another thing God implies to us in scripture about baptism is that babies cannot be baptized. Since he tells us that one must believe, repent, and confess Jesus as Lord before baptism, then it logically follows from this that an infant cannot be baptized because they are not able to do those things. Also, when God tells us Mark 16:16 that we need to believe and be baptized to be saved, and when He shows us in Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost that one must repent and be baptized for the remission of sins, God is implying to us that these passages apply to us if we want salvation and the remission of our sins. We must us the ability to reason and the logic that God gives us as we come to commands, direct statements, and examples within the Bible as to whether they apply beyond their original audience to us.
These are the three ways that God communicates His will to us.
WHAT ABOUT WHEN OUR KING COMMUNICATES NOTHING?
What do we do when God is silent on a matter? Does God’s silence prohibit or permit?
I will make a few quick points about this:
• First, if we are seeking to please God, we will only do that which we know is pleasing to Him. We will examine what He does say, and base our practices on what is revealed by our Shepherd. Jesus gives us a great example of this in John 5. In verse 19 He says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.” He says in verse 30, “I can do nothing on My own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.” Is this not the kind of attitude we need to have if we want to please God? We should only want to do what we know is pleasing to Him; what we know will bring Him glory. The reason why we shouldn’t want to act on silence is because it is acting in an area of the unknown when it comes to God’s will. If we don’t know if it is pleasing to God, we should not want to do it as His people!
• I will stick by the statement I made a few minutes ago: The ONLY way we can know for certain that something is pleasing or displeasing to our King is if He reveals it to us through His Apostles and Prophets in the New Testament. When God is truly 100% silent on a matter, we as those who desire to please Him need to show some caution in saying that God condemns or approves of something. It is dangerous to be presumptuous either way when God does not reveal His mind on a matter. God is the only One who can properly commend and approve, and He is the only One who can properly condemn. Silence should not be seen as a reason to condemn an action or commend an action. “We don’t know” at times is the best thing we could say. We should
stick with the old saying that we speak where the Bible speaks and are silent when the Bible is silent.
• Second, God is not silent about as many things as we think He may be.
o The Lord does puts limits around His communication. When a person in a position of authority says something that indicates He only wants people to do what he says or indicates, and to go no further than that, then that One is actually making a statement that encompasses any silence. When John says in 2 John 9 that if we go beyond the doctrine of Christ, we do not have God, this means that God does not want us to practice things that He does not show His approval of. There are many other passages which show the principle of God saying, “do not go any farther.” I believe these passages must lead us to only want to do what we know God approves of. When people say something along the lines of, “well, God doesn’t say not too,” they are wrong. God does say not to when He does tell us in scripture not to go beyond what is written.
o We also need to remember that not everything that is authorized must be specified. General authority is given often, which includes matters not specifically mentioned in scripture. One common example is a meeting place. God is not totally silent about a meeting place. God tells us not to forsake the act of assembling with our brothers and sisters so we can stir one another up to love and good works. To fulfill this command, we at the very least need a place to meet. We can debate at some other point what kind of meeting place that should be, but at the very least, this shows His approval of some kind of meeting place. God also does not specifically mention dancing or condemn certain kinds of dancing in the New Testament. But He is not totally silent about it. He implies some things in scripture that show that some kinds of dancing are displeasing to Him. Galatians 5:19-21, in its listing of the “works of the flesh,” condemns what is variously translated “lewdness” or “lasciviousness” or “licentiousness.” These words carry the idea of “indecent bodily movements that can arouse indecent sexual desire.” That pretty much describes many kinds of dancing done today. I could give many other examples of things like this in which God either gives us general authority or some other principle or command that covers some actions.
I could say more, but I will leave it at that. Hopefully these are at least some helpful things to think about when thinking about the “silence” of our King.
❸ OUR MOTIVATION TO PLEASE THE KING?
And finally in closing, our final point. What is our motivation to be pleasing to God?
“Therefore we make it our aim…to be well pleasing to Him. 10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5:9-10).
As we approach the authority of Christ, this is something we should always keep in mind. In the end, it only matters how One person looks at us, and that is our King. He as the King is also the One who will judge us for what we do in our service to Him. With this knowledge we need to make sure what we do pleases Him so we can be amongst those on that day to whom He says, “Well done good and faithful servant.”
Will you be part of that number because you have made it your aim and goal to be pleasing to Him?
