Allen Jackson - Let's Please God - Part 2
It is better in our lives if God is pleased. Look at 'ol Hebrews 11:5. Says, "By Faith Enoch". You meet Enoch way back in the book of Genesis. We don't know much about him, but he got a commentary in the New Testament in the Hall of Fame. It happens in Hebrews 11. He said, "By Faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death; he could not be found, because God had taken him away. For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God".
Wow. How about you got so sold out to pleasing God, he said, I just wanna hang with you now. No catastrophic physical problem. I'm just gonna come get you. I'm not even gonna leave your earth suit behind. Say, well, I don't believe that. That's the wrong answer. God came for Elijah too. Remember that? He pleased God and God said, come hang with me for a while. See, we're so rooted in this world. We really don't want that to happen. Well, I've already got tickets. I got a plan for July. What's the...there's a country song in there. Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to go now. I think there is. And in that same song, I'm sure a dog and a pickup truck and a train. Got to be.
Hebrews 13. "Don't forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased". Again, he's asking us to do things that are described as sacrificial, and it would please God. It's possible to make a sacrifice and not please God. Those Hebrew slaves are living in the wilderness, in the desert, former slaves and they displeased God, because even without a great deal of things, they still had hearts fully given to evil. But we, if we choose, we can make decisions that in the moment may not be pleasant. See, I think we've had a filter that isn't helpful. We've wanted to do the things that were pleasing to God that we liked.
Oh, come on, we all have this. Not one or two of us. We all struggle with this. We wanna do the things that we think are pleasing to God that we like to do. We like to go to church if it's convenient enough. You know, it's more fun to come when the air conditioning is working. We blasted out that the HVAC system was down today. Bring a fan. You would have been tempted to live stream. Not evil, but we've kind of lost sight that pleasing God should even cross over into things that maybe always aren't even pleasant. You know, well, God wouldn't want me to be unhappy. Oh, really? Really? Have you read your Bible? Says that Jesus learned obedience by the things that he suffered. And I seem to remember reading Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Something about, I don't wanna do this. If there's any other thing to be done, I would rather do that thing. I do not want to do this. How did we arrive at the place that we serve God in the context of what's pleasant? You see the reason we have a national problem and that we're a couple of ticks away from God's judgment, that I don't believe we will walk back, at least not in our generations, is we have given ourselves to comfort and convenience. Let's please God. Let's decide we're gonna turn that light on, on the inside of us in a new way. There's a couple of places I thought it was worth noting at least briefly where God made it, went out of his way to say he was pleased with Jesus.
Matthew 3, "A voice from heaven said," this is baptism, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased". Can you imagine a voice from heaven? You and I are like thrilled if we just have that warm fuzzy feeling. A voice from heaven? That's my boy. And y'all seem pretty calm. I think that would, you see, it hasn't even mattered in a while what it'll be. I'm saved. Folks I can't, with all of my heart, I believe in the significance of the new birth, but I am terrified of what we have planted in people. Because we're going to be held accountable, that you can say some little prayer and then live your life however you wanna live it. And it doesn't matter because you can kinda go tee-he-he, I'm some kind of sort of star. We're not gonna mock God.
Jesus, watch the effort he invested. Watch what it required of him. The agony the Bible describes. And God said, I'm pleased with him. Matthew 17, same book, same author. So this is not like a conflated, another incident. This one's in a very different setting. It's the northern part of Israel that Jesus has taken the disciples, the three that he's selected. He didn't treat all 12 the same. Are you emotionally prepared for that? He recruited 12 and he treated three differently than the others. Jesus had favorites. Oh, that'll get you a parent teacher meeting. How about decide, you're so sold out to pleasing God and you wanna, I got a little thing in my office says.
Jesus loves everybody, but I'm his favorite. Deal with it. Somebody gave it to me. I didn't know if it meant them when they bought it or me when I got it, I'm not really sure, but I'm good. It's in my office. Matthew 17, they're on this mountain. "After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James, and John the brother of James, and he led him up to a high mountain by themselves". You know, there's a redundancy there, right? I'm belaboring it a bit, but he says he took Peter, James, and John and he took them by themselves. I promise you there was some heartburn. Oh, why just them? "And then he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as light. And there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus".
I've always wondered exactly what kind of name tags they had on so that Peter, James, and John knew it was Moses and Elijah. Do you think they were laminated on a lanyard? Do you think their little heavenly robe had it stenciled on their chest pocket? I don't know. "And Peter said to Jesus, 'Lord, it's good for us to be here.'" Bless his heart. "If you wish, I'll put up three shelters, one for you, and one for Moses and one for Elijah". Because they needed that. "And while he was still speaking, a bright cloud enveloped them, and a voice from the cloud said, 'This is my Son whom I love; and with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!'"
Wow! Folks, let's please God. Let's decide that the greatest achievement we could have this summer would be some sort of an expression of our faith and an orientation of our lives that was more pleasing to God than we've ever been before. What if that was our ambition for the summer? Let's please God. The payoff, if you're interested, I believe there is. Jesus talked about providing for yourself a purse that wouldn't wear out. Philippians 2 gives us a commentary on Jesus. He says, because of what he did, I didn't bring you the preceding verses. You can check me. It says, "Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him a name that's above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee would bow, on earth every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God".
You see if you will choose to please God, God will honor you. Now, I promise you in our current culture, you're gonna be labeled, they're gonna call you something. If you take a biblical world view and you say that being a homemaker is a legitimate ambition for a woman, there's gonna be some folks get heated up. You'd probably be a sexist. If you say marriage is between a man and a woman, somebody's gonna get torqued and you'll be some phobic or something. Because if you can't engage the discussion on the merits of the discussion, you just shout hateful things. But if God decides he's pleased, he will exalt you. Let's please God.
Now, the alternative to that is God being displeased. Remember, it's a binary choice. You're either pleasing or displeasing to him. If God is displeased, the outcomes are not great. Jeremiah 10. Jeremiah had one of the more difficult jobs in the Bible. He's the prophet in Jerusalem that has to tell the people the city is going to be destroyed and many of them will die and there's nothing they can do. That is not a fun message. Says, "The Lord is the true God; he's the living God, the eternal King. And when he is angry, the earth trembles; the nations cannot endure his wrath".
I would submit to you that we will not survive the wrath of God. That we should not imagine our liberty and our freedom, our schools and our health care, and our wonderful economic engine that enabled us to triumph on multiple world wars. That an empire that has been defined by dollars more than it has been colonies, will not survive the wrath of God. And I don't believe, that's not on the heads of the pagans folks. That is fully at the doorstep of the people of God. Are we committed to pleasing God? I believe we can be. I believe we can be. In 1 Kings 11, says, "The Lord became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the Lord".
Again. It's worth noting, we have these theologies that say once we're in, everything's just golden, there's nothing you can do. It's not gonna be diminished. I mean, you may have a bad day or a bad season, but it's just kind of okay. You know, kind of wave a grace bush. Everything's okay, this is Solomon. God chose him. He anointed him. He gave him a skill set that was unparalleled in his generation and unprecedented in history. But then Solomon began to live another way, and it says God was angry with him. We don't wanna displease God. And when you recognize you do, you wanna be so concerned about it that you change.
Say, oh God, I realize I've been on, I have been, what I've been doing isn't pleasing to you. And I don't wanna do that. I don't want anything to do with it. I wanna do anything to do with anybody that wants to do with that. Because I wanna please you God. See we've been, this has been baked down to, you need to go to church. Well, if you love God, you'll go to church. Just go to church. Put on your clothes, go to church. Just sit there. Don't say anything, don't do anything, don't raise your hand, just sit there, go to church. God's people go to church. Are you a Christian? Yes, I am, I go to church. We don't quite say it that way, but that's kind of what's been baked into us. How are you doing? Lord, I'm doing great. Went to church. What did you learn? I don't know. He talks forever. But I keep some of those outlines in my Bible. I can show it to you.
You can, maybe you can figure out what he's talking about. I have no clue. But I went to church. This idea that we would be pleasing to God. God was angry with Solomon. He said, you didn't keep the Lord's command. And since this is your attitude and you haven't kept my covenant and my decrees, I'm gonna tear the kingdom away from you. See, we don't live with very much imagination that there's a consequence for being unpleasing to God. We want to get out our grace bush. Psalm 95. It's an idea we've already touched, but it says. "For forty years I was angry with that generation. They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known my ways".
They walked with God, they walked with him through the Red Sea, they ate manna every day. They had to pick manna out of their teeth. And God said I was angry with the generation. Do you have an imagination that God could be angry with the response of an entire generation? It's biblical. We don't wanna be that generation. Let's please God. Let's give ourselves to pleasing God, more than you have an ambition for an upgrade on whatever you're hoping to upgrade. Let's please God. You see, it's really pretty simple. We're either gonna please him or oppose him. In Mark chapter 3, Jesus is ministering. Jesus is in the house.
Verse 2 says. "Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus". You understand the reason. One of the reasons that fear has gripped the hearts of God's people is you know there are people looking for a reason to accuse you if you step out as a Jesus person. They're gonna put a label on you. Say, you're being really quiet. Like I won't say anything. I'll be a sexist. I don't wanna be a phobe of something. I have to look them up. There's so many phobias they accuse us of, I have a hard time keeping up. They're there, "looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they're watching him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath". Because that would be awful. "And he said to a man with a shriveled hand, 'Stand up in front of everybody.'"
Couldn't you have just done it out behind the synagogue when service was over? I mean, come on, Jesus. Give us a break. Do you have to torque him off at every service? What about being conciliatory? Can we have a little tolerance for people with a different view of what work is? Come on now. I mean, just be a little more broad minded, Jesus. Couldn't you have healed them on Sunday? How about Thursday at lunch? No, in the synagogue, on the Sabbath. The grumpy group are right over there watching you. "'Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?' But they remained silent". They're gritting their teeth. We got you this time. "And he looked around at them".
This is the punch line. "He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts". What did they do? They were silent. They were silent. They were confronted with an opportunity to affirm the good and they were silent. And Jesus was angry and deeply distressed. Church, let's please God. Let's sell our hearts to that. Now, he heals the man. Look at the last sentence. It says, "The Pharisees went out and began to plot how they might kill him". That's the cancel culture way before the 21st century. Please don't think evil is going to stop. It's not gonna stop with an open border. It's not gonna stop with reckless spending. It's not gonna stop with a single conviction. It isn't going to stop. Evil always leads to destruction.
Have you read history? 200 million people died in the last century because of evil, and it's still stalking the earth. And the only thing that will oppose it and overcome it is the power of God. And for that, we need the people of God. We need to change the questions. I'm gonna close with this, because I want you to live with these questions until I see you again. I'm gonna suggest we have to change the questions that we ask. We start asking our children these things. Really early, we repeat it ad nauseam. We ask one another as adults, what do you wanna do? What do you wanna do? Well, I don't know, what do you wanna do? Oh, what do you want to do? As if what we want should be the determining factor of what gets done. As if we'll get to a better place doing what we want to do.
Truthfully, it's not a very helpful question. I wanna submit to you, we should start to ask, what do you need to do? What do you need to do? If you could have been a reporter on D-Day and gotten into one of those boats filled with young people, those Higgins Boats had those landing craft headed towards the beaches of Normandy, and you wanted to bump your social media platform. So you got a ticket to get in one of those boats, and you could have popped a microphone in the face of one of those young people, and you'd said, do you want to land at the beach in Normandy? Why did you wanna do this? A pretty safe bet would say nobody wanted to do it. Tens of thousands of them wouldn't survive the day, and they understood that, but they also understood that it needed to be done.
What if we started asking our children and ourselves and our friends, what do we need to do? What do we need to do to please God? Not what do you want to do. What about the moms with a sick child, and the child in the middle of the night gets sick and there's a mess to clean up? Hey mom, do you want to clean it up? Oh could I, I just love cleaning up messes from sick people. Like when your kids are sick, call me. No, no. But we have almost totally lost our imagination that we should do what needs to be done. Let somebody else do that. I don't want to do that. I don't care if you wanna do it. Let's please God.
I promise you, if you begin to contemplate this and invite the Spirit of God to help you, there'll be ideas come to you, places you'll see. You could respond and you won't want to. The question is, do I need to? Don't say, do I have to. Do I need to? There were people that were way out of their way not to be in those boats headed for Normandy. There were families that pulled all kinds of strings so their kids wouldn't be in those boats. You know that. I know that.
Do you know how many initiatives totally captivate our culture because people have raised their hand and said, this is what I want to do. I wanna do that. I wanna become that. I wanna...do you know how few times we say, what do we need to do? Let the change begin with us. This summer, let's please God. How fun is that? What are you gonna do this summer? I'm gonna please God more than any summer in my lifetime. What are you doing? You're weird. I know. But come on, there's room for one more. And some of you are afraid somebody's gonna come for you. I'm trying to do this well enough. God does. I know I gotta stand with me, I wanna pray for you. I didn't bring you a prayer. I want to pray for you. What are we gonna do this summer? You listened.
Heavenly Father, I thank you for your Word, it's truth and power and authority. I thank you for the honor of bearing the name of Jesus, that in your great love for us, you called us out of darkness. Lord Jesus, for the sacrifice you made that we could participate in your kingdom. You have given us breath and life and days under the sun. And our commitment as we stand in your presence today is a desire to please you, Lord not to rely on who we've been or what we've done, but in the days before us to please you. We ask you to give us wisdom and courage and discernment. Holy Spirit, we ask for your help for those places where we are currently displeasing to you. Help us to see them with the clarity that we might change. May we not excuse it or tolerate it. I praise you for it. And Lord, I thank you for your responses that we will see with our eyes and hear with our ears, evidence of the glory of God Almighty. We praise you for it. Thank you for the great honor of serving you. May the joy of the Lord fill our hearts, and we'd be more aware of your presence than any threat we could perceive. In Jesus's name, amen.