Pleasing God
I am not sure when or how the idea got started, but somewhere along the line some of us have accepted the idea that serving God is primarily about denying ourselves of pleasure…..in order to follow rules.
I believe that the Bible teaches that Christianity is not about following a set of requirements in a dispassionate fashion like schoolchildren who have just found out that they will have to do multiplication tables instead of going to recess. Rather, it seems very clear that God wants His children to understand that they were created for pleasure.
Since the fall, the human race has been separated from the fellowship that Adam and Even shared with God. It was as if heaven and earth had been linked by an enormous golden chain, stretching into the clouds above--but sin quickly severed that bond. Yet God Himself had a solution. He became the sacrifice upon a cross to restore fellowship between Himself and His creation.
The cross was where Jesus reached up with his last bit of strength to clutch that detached golden link, pulling heaven once again to earth, and as He permanently anchored it to the cross, He cried out “it is finished”!
Yet despite these titanic feats of mercy and grace on the Lord’s part, there are still Christians who feel that God is on the outskirts of their lives. I’m here to tell you that God has gone to great lengths for you to have pleasure! His plan is that you would find this pleasure by living to please Him.
In today’s passage Paul talks about three ways in which the weary Christian can enjoy the pleasure of the Lord. God loves you and wants you to enjoy your relationship to Him by using the body, mind and gifts that He has given to you.
With our Bodies
With our Minds
With our Gifts
With our bodies
1Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is your spiritual act of worship.
• The Bible tells us that our bodies have a greater purpose that goes beyond mere dressing, feeding, exercising, and working….they are literally intended to be little temples dedicated to pleasing God!
• I exhort you today, in view of God’s mercies shown at the cross to set some new goals. What do you want to accomplish for the Lord in your lifetime?
2 Cor 5:9 So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it.
• And if we share Paul’s goal to please God, we need to see that a commitment to that goal is necessary.
• Paul says that our commitment is to offer our own bodies to God as living sacrifices.
• But notice that this is not a typical sacrifice. Christ died as our sacrifice so that we might live as holy and pleasing sacrifices to God!
• We were bought with a price so that we would live just as Jesus did. John 8:29 summarizes Jesus’ entire mission in one verse:
“The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him."
“For every look at Yourself take ten looks at Christ."
ROBERT MURRAY MCCHEYNE
With our minds
2Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will.
• The second way that we are to please God is with our minds.
• Too many times people forget that we are to love God with all of our mind.
• The sinful mind cannot please God, but He delights in the mind controlled by His Spirit.
• We are to use our minds for the Lord by searching for things that we can do to please Him!
Eph 5:8-10 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord.
We can find out what pleases the Lord by reading His word…that sounds so simple, but the Bible is where God shows us the things that He loves!
• We need to destroy the idea that God’s pleasure and our pleasure are mutually exclusive! By doing what God loves, we will reap dividends of joy for all eternity!
Rom 14:17-18 For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by men.
• God wants your mind today.
• Christ wants to use you for His own glory, but before we can enjoy Him, we have to come to Him in repentance.
“They who come to Christ, do not only come to a resting-place after they have been wandering in a wilderness, but they come to a banqueting-house where they may rest, and where they may feast. They may cease from their former troubles and toils, and they may enter upon a course of delights and spiritual joys."
JONATHAN EDWARDS
• So many people want to know the will of God and yet seldom put in to practice the things that He tells us are His will in His word!
• Only when you are studying the Word of God will you be able to test and know what God’s will is! If you aren’t doing this already, start studying your Bible…look for those verses that talk about pleasing God.
• Verse 2 says that God’s will isn’t something that is contrary to human enjoyment and pleasure. When that idea hits home, people have been freed to proclaim with Paul that God’s will can be summed up with three words:
• Good, Pleasing and Perfect!
3For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.
• I believe that the Christian church has millions of untapped resources, acres of diamonds to be unearthed. But sadly many of these rich talents cannot be mined due to stubborn, childish, selfish or proud mindsets.
"Our mind is where our pleasure is, our heart is where our treasure is, our love is where our life is, but all these, our pleasure, treasure, and life, are resting in Jesus Christ."
Thomas Adams
• People who become too proud to use their talents for the pleasure of God are like that man in one of Jesus’ parables who buried his master’s treasure in the ground instead of investing it wisely like the others did.
• Instead, go to the Lord in prayer today and ask Him how you can please him with what He’s given you!
• When was the last time you prayed, “God, what can I do to please you today?”
• (1Thess 2:4) [W]e speak as men approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel. We are not trying to please men but God, who tests our hearts.
4Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.
• As believers, we need to realize that just as our hand belongs to our body as much as our nose, so we belong to Christ’s body, as well as to one another.
• The church is a body of believers, and when one part is ill or in pain, we all suffer. Likewise, when the church is living to please the Lord…the joy is just as contagious!
• (1 Thess 4:1) Finally, brothers, we instructed you how to live in order to please God, as in fact you are living. Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more.
• That is one example of what God’s will is for our lives…to live in order to please Him, and do this more and more!
With our gifts!
6We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. 7If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; 8if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.
• Paul is assuming that we already HAVE a spiritual gift.
• God has given you and me a gift not so that we can exalt ourselves, but so that we can find our pleasure by using it in ways that are pleasing to Him!
If you don’t know where to start, start with prayer and then start experimenting…try new things…take a risk for the Lord!
But start with prayer!!!
(Col 1:9-10) [S]ince the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way!!!
• Yet before we can use our bodies, minds, and gifts, we must go back to that cross where the golden chain of Christ’s righteousness still holds strong.
• If we have never accepted the fact that it is not our strength or our gifts that bound the throne of God to the cross of Christ…but the goodness and the love of Christ…we need to do so today.
“God keeps open house for hungry sinners."
THOMAS WATSON
If you are hungry to serve the Lord with your bodies, minds, and gifts, then come to Him today in humility and rededicate yourself to doing His good, pleasing, and perfect will…that is where our pleasure is located….. because that is what pleases Him.
Heb 13:20-21 May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen
