Pleasing God

Can I encourage you just to open your Bibles with me this evening, first, again, to 1 Thessalonians 4? And then, if you are able to turn to Colossians 1, that will be a help as well.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, there was a bishop in Bangor of North Wales. His name was Lewis Bayly, and he wrote a book entitled The Practice of Piety, the subtitle for which was Directing a Christian How to Walk, That He May Please God. I have determined that I’m going to track down a copy of this book, addressing as it does a subject of vital importance. It went through seventy-two editions before a final edition was published in 1842. The book was in circulation for well over a hundred years and with the express purpose of tackling this question: What does it mean, in the most practical of terms, for a Christian to please God?

In my experience in the last little while, most of the time that I’ve heard the word piety used, it has been used within the context of disdain. It has been used in a way that suggests piety is a form of quietism, that it is a form of withdrawal from society and usefulness, and indeed, it has become almost a figure of fun amongst people that we might expect would hold it differently. And it is therefore of some import that when we turn to the opening verses of 1 Thessalonians 4, we discover that in actual fact, what Paul is addressing is this whole question of piety. Or he would have been well pleased, I think, with Bishop Bayly’s description of “directing a Christian how to walk in order that he might please God.” Paul would have said, “Now, that is exactly what we’re going to do. We’ve written to you in the opening three chapters about what you need to know. And now, in these concluding chapters, we want to write to you about how you ought to live.”

The whole emphasis in Paul’s final two chapters here of 1 Thessalonians is on the matter of ethics—on the extreme practicality of what it means to live as a practical, biblical, vibrant, and attractive Christian. Sadly, one of the features of contemporary Christianity is that—and this is factually true—Jewish families have a better standard of living when it comes to fulfilling marriage vows, effective child-rearing, and the abiding by principles of the law. That I say not by conjecture, but that is actually the findings as a result of research in relationship to religious heritage.

I think there is an obvious reason for that, and it is this: that Jewish people have no problem, at least in Orthodoxy, recognizing that God has standards. They have been trained from their earliest days to know that God has given a law and that God has given the law not to be toyed with but to be adhered to. And consequently, if they’re going to live in obedience to that law, then it is going to make an impact on their lives. Christians in the last fifty years have been so concerned to make it clear to everyone that we are not under the law that they have virtually vetoed the idea of the law of God altogether. And this amounts for the confusion that is represented in so many lives and in so many families and, indeed, in so many churches.

While we understand that the believer no longer keeps the law as a means of acceptance with God, the fact of the matter is that we are still under obligation to keep God’s moral laws and his commandments. And that, frankly, is a sentence that will do well to be pondered by many of us. When I have addressed this in the past in this congregation, I have had people come and challenge the very assertion itself: that we are under obligation to keep God’s moral law.

Interestingly, as we have had the privilege of airing the Ten Commandments in some fifteen cities around the country in these last two weeks, there has been a quite overwhelming response to it, and hundreds of albums of these Ten Commandments have been sold to people. And the response which is coming back is simply this: “We never realized that we were supposed to do this stuff. We never realized that this was actually applicable to us. We never realized that God had given us these commands in order that we might know how to please him.”

Pleasing God is the guiding principle of balanced Christian behavior.

And so, what we have throughout all of Scripture is a call, then, to this biblical standard. And as we’re going to discover, not this evening but on subsequent evenings, Paul is intensely practical concerning this matter of pleasing God. He says, “I want to explain to you what pleasing God means when you think about the whole question of sex.” And that is not for this evening. “I want to tell you what pleasing God means when you think about the whole question of work. And I want to tell you what pleasing God means when you deal with the matter of bereavement.” And there’s not a man or a woman living who does not have an interest in, a concern about, a perspective on the issues of sex, work, and the death of oneself or a loved one.

If we are going to declare that we have been brought to a new life in the Lord Jesus Christ, then the world has every right to look and see a new lifestyle—that there would be that dimension to us which is holy, which is bent on pleasing God. And despite the fact that the Bible has a tremendous amount to say about pleasing God, it struck me forcibly this week that apart from this book by Lewis Bayly at the beginning of the seventeenth century, I haven’t actually read a great deal or seen a great deal written or addressed on the subject of what it means to please God. I know that we’ve heard about knowing God, and loving God, and obeying God, and seeking God, and many other things, but I haven’t seen much on pleasing God.

And yet Paul is suggesting here—indeed, declaring here—that pleasing God is the guiding principle of balanced Christian behavior. It was, indeed, the very example of the Lord Jesus himself, who in John 8 declared, “I always do what pleases [my Father].”[1] “Why are you going here, Jesus? Why are you doing this? Why are you not doing that?” His answer in one phrase was “I am seeking to do what pleases my Father.”

Now, this guiding principle of pleasing God is, says John Stott very helpfully, three things.[2] It is a radical principle. A radical principle. Because it forces me to recognize that I cannot say that I love him and that I know him if I do not seek to please him. The child who declares their love and their knowledge of their parents’ wishes and concerns lives only with a superficial grasp of that if they do not make it their express purpose to please their parents. And therefore, it is radical in that it hits at the very heart of Christian discipleship. It forces me to ask the question, “Who am I trying to please?” When I walk into the study or the office tomorrow morning, who am I trying to please? Well, the answer is, we’re probably trying to please a number of people. We go into the schoolroom: Who am I trying to please? But, says the Bible, at the very foundation of it all—and, indeed, at the capstone of it all—should be, for the believer, an overarching commitment to please God. It is a radical principle.

It is also a flexible principle, insofar as it saves us from pharisaism and from legalism. It saves us from a big, long list of dos and don’ts, because the emphasis is not on keeping the law but on pleasing the Lawgiver. And it is very possible for us to create a long list of things that we either do or we don’t do in which there is no pleasure; there is just carping subservience. But when we abide by the principle of saying, “Well, I want to please the one who gave the law,” then it follows that we’ll do what his law says. But our emphasis is “I want to do what pleases him. I want to discover it, and then I want to do it.”

It is also, as a guiding principle, something that is progressive, insofar as we can spend all of our lives with this as our overarching emphasis and never reach the fulfillment of it. If tonight we affirm again our desire to please God and to do it more and more, we’ll be back next Sunday, still with the same overarching desire—perhaps a little closer, but definitely not there. And indeed, we may live all of our lives with this as the guiding principle of our behavior.

I do love the story of the boy who was being cajoled into some wrong behavior by his friends. I think they wanted him to throw some stones and smash some windows—something like that. And he determined that he wasn’t going to throw the stones, and the boys began to cajole him and to say that he was chicken, and he said, “No, I’m not afraid.” And they said, “Well, it is just that you are afraid of your father and what he will do to you.” “Oh no,” said the boy, “I am not afraid of my father or what he will do to me. But I am afraid of what this action might do to him.” That is the perspective of the child who wants to please his Father. It is not some groveling, fearful activity. It rather is a delight, and it is a revolutionary delight.

Now, before we break this bread together, I want to turn with you to Colossians chapter 1, and I want to answer the question “What does it mean to please God?” from Paul’s prayer for the Colossians. Interestingly, in Ephesians 5:10, Paul says to the Ephesians, “[I want you to] find out what pleases the Lord.” “Find out what pleases the Lord.” And that, in fact, is a great quest for our lives, and there are a number of places to which we might go to answer that question. Indeed, the whole of the New Testament helps us to answer the question, and the subsequent verses here in 1 Thessalonians will do the same. But in order to give us a start on it, I want to just draw your attention to these four things which Paul prays for the Colossian Christians and which help us to answer the question “What, then, does it mean to please God?”

Fruitful Living

What pleases God? First of all, fruitful living pleases God. Colossians 1:10: “And we pray this,” says Paul, “in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work.” “Bearing fruit in every good work.”

We sometimes hear people referred to as being “good for nothing.” We may even be tempted every so often to review our lives and to regard ourselves in that way. But the fact of the matter is that having been placed in Christ, what the New Testament says to us is this: that all of our days and all of our deeds are to be good for something, and they are to be good for someone. And when a man or a woman sets themselves to the quest of finding out what pleases God, seeking to live in a way which brings pleasure to him, one of the things that becomes immediately apparent is that fruitful living which produces good works is one of the ways in which God is pleased with us.

Now, there is a dependence which is necessary for fruitfulness to be effected. You may remember Jesus, in one of his pictures, as he gives it to his followers, concerning the story of the vine and the branches, he says to them in John 15, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.”[3] “Even more fruitful.” “No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.”[4]

All of our days and all of our deeds are to be good for something, and they are to be good for someone.

And so, the simple truth is this, for us to face this evening: there is a dependence which fruitfulness displays. The individual who has set themself to the task of pleasing God will be surprised by fruitfulness in our lives. Indeed, God willing, others will notice the fruitfulness; it will not be something that we have to parade around the hallways or out in the streets. It will not be that we are seeking to do good works in order to gain acceptance with God, but it will be that as a result of being accepted by God, having been grafted into Christ, who is the vine, we will, as we mentioned this morning, discover these springs and shoots and flowers emerging from our lives, declaring the fact of our dependence upon he who is the vine.

Can I ask you tonight, as I’m faced with the question myself: How fruitful is your life? Are you bearing fruit to good works with people at your school or in your home or in your office, in your laboratory? Not necessarily be able to articulate your theology, but they would say, “You know, there is somebody whose life just has a dimension to it. It is attractive. It’s almost like a bowl of beautiful, ripe fruit on a table. It makes you want to reach out and have some of it.” Paul says, “We’re praying for you, that you might bear fruit in every good work, because fruitful living pleases God.”

Knowledgeable Living

What also pleases God, he says, is knowledgeable living. “And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God.”[5] “Growing in the knowledge of God.” It pleases God as we get to know him better. Paul, in Philippians 3, says, “That I might know him and the power of his resurrection—that I may know his passion; that I may be conformed somehow to his life.”[6] And he’s writing in the context of the Colossian church, within the framework of a kind of mysterious knowledge which was known as Gnosticism, which was a peculiar experience into which certain initiates were gathered. And these were the people who were saying, “You know, if you want to really know God, this is what’s involved.” “And so,” says Paul, “if you want to talk in terms of knowledge, make sure that you understand that when we speak about knowing God, we’re not talking about the superficial theory of the unbeliever, nor are we talking about the secretive heresy of the Gnostic, but we’re talking about that which is a birthright of those who are in Christ.”

The knowledge of God to which he refers, says Hendriksen, is “heart-transforming and life-renewing.”[7] It transforms my heart, and it renews my life. “More about Jesus,” says the hymn writer,

           would I know,
More of his grace to others show;
More of his saving fullness see,
More of his love who died for me.[8]

The knowledge in our living which pleases God is not a knowledge that produces Christian tadpoles with huge, big heads and tiny, little bodies and arms and limbs, but it is a personal knowledge.

The knowledgeable living which pleases God is not knowledge about; it is personal knowledge of.

In the ʼ60s, when fan clubs for pop groups began, I recall that they used to produce these little magazines. They were about five by eight in Scotland and England, and I remember there was one which was done for the Fab Four. And if you got those little magazines, in there you could learn all sorts of things about your heroes. For example, I remember that they would have these profiles which said, “Paul McCartney’s eyes are blue. His height is five foot eleven. His weight is eleven stone. His age is twenty-four. He drives a Ford. He lives in a cottage. His favorite food is spaghetti. He has two dogs and a cat. He likes soccer, and he dislikes elevators.” I could learn that off by heart, tell everybody about it, and they’d say, “Oh, so you know him, do you?” And I’d say, “No, I just know a lot about him. I read it in a book.”

The knowledgeable living which pleases God is not knowledge about; it is personal knowledge of. Do you have such a personal knowledge of the Lord Jesus tonight? Able to say with Paul, “To me, to live is Christ and to die is gain”?[9]

It is not only personal, but it is progressive. It’s a wonderful thing, is it not, in marriage to realize that with every day and week and month and year that passes, the knowledge of one’s spouse is far richer and far more meaningful than ever we might have intended it could ever be in those early weeks of courtship and those early days of marriage. We used to sing a chorus in Scotland. It went,

I love him better every day,
I love him better every day;
[Near] by his side I will abide,
[ʼCause] I love him better every day.[10]

Powerful Living

What pleases the Lord? Fruitful living; knowledgeable living; thirdly, powerful living. “Being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might.”[11]

You know, it’s a tall order to please God in every way. We look at this and we say, “Goodness me! I don’t think that I will ever be able to please God in this way. I’m not sure that I’m going to manage to accomplish many of these things.” And then we come to this wonderful truth: that the powerful living which pleases God is not a power which we muster up in our own strength, but in point of fact, it is a power which is infused to us as the Holy Spirit is living within our lives. We are “strengthened with all power.” So neither our aspiration nor our determination nor our perspiration can take the place of the inspiration which is part of our Christian living.

This is actually a present continuous tense which is used here. The word is dunamoumenoi. Dunamoumenoi. And it speaks of a constant infusing of power. And so often, our Christian lives are a bit like the human cannonball that we’ve seen at the circus, where we put on the helmet and we slither down the tube, only to be propelled once in a great, dramatic burst of smoke and come hurdling out to land in the safety net, and then it’s all over. And then we go around looking for another way to slide down the cannon—another tape or another sermon or another something that can get us one of these powerful experiences again, so that we might have this powerful living. And someone says, “You should go here, or you should go there, or you should try this, or you should try that.” Paul says, “Don’t you worry about any of that. You are growing in a knowledge of God. You are strengthened with all power.”

It’s not the power of the human cannonball—one great burst, and then you’re on your own. It is the power of those Boeing engines in transatlantic flight, where you look out of the window, and you marvel at the thought, first of all, that there could be enough thrust to bring this thing off the ground, and then that for all those hours across the Atlantic or across the Pacific, you would be sustained in flight as a result of this great energy. And that is it tonight. And many of us would be able to testify to the fact that God has continued to endue us with power, because we’re so aware of our own weakness.

The power, then, in discovered in this way, and it is displayed, you will notice, in a quite dramatic way: that you would be “strengthened with all power.” How will this powerful living reveal itself? We live in a contemporary culture that is consumed with power. They love powerful people. They like powerful this and powerful that. And there’s a great quest to be a powerful person. Well, how will this be revealed in our lives?

“Well,” he says, “this strengthening with all power according to his glorious might is so that you may have great endurance and patience.” Interesting, isn’t it? Not so that you would be dramatic, not so that you would be necessarily well-known, but so that your life would be marked by steady persistence and by a quiet confidence.

You think about the people who have made the most dramatic impact on your life, many of whom have faced circumstances that have not been the best. I think of people that I visited in the first two years when I was assistant in the church in Edinburgh—spent a tremendous amount of my time in nursing homes with elderly people and actually, in many cases, folks whose lives had been radically impaired by illness. And there are still ladies’ names—it happens just to be ladies in this case—who stand out to me in my recollection.

The lady who used to be the chief nurse in the royal infirmary—I may have mentioned her to you before. By the time I was visiting her in the hospital, the muscular disease to which she was subjected was such that it was impossible for her even to keep her eyelids open for more than a split second. Everything was closing down. And she used to lie in the bed, and I used to hold her hand, and she used to say, “Read to me.” And I would read to her, and she would comment and interrupt as I read. And as I read of God’s faithfulness, she would say, “That’s right.” As I read of God’s goodness, she would have something to say concerning that. And as I read of God’s power to keep, she would lie there as a living testimony to it—no longer able to impact people around the wards, no longer able to stand, no longer able to feed herself, no longer able even to sustain a gaze into your eyes, but somehow, in the most awful of circumstances, manifesting to me powerful living, steady persistence, quiet confidence.

Thankful Living

What pleases the Lord? Fruitful living, knowledgeable living, powerful living, and finally, thankful living. Verse 12: “giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light.”[12] Giving thanks for what? Giving thanks for the redemption that we experience. Verse 13: “For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and [has] brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption,” even “the forgiveness of [our] sins.”[13]

Notice God’s initiative in the wonder of his grace. Look at the verbs in verse 12: he has “qualified” us; he has granted us “to share in” this inheritance; he has “rescued” us; he has “brought us” in.

On Friday, as we had the opportunity to do this call-in program that went, first of all, to New York City and then went to Los Angeles, the best call that we had was the last caller at the end of the first half hour. And a fellow was on his phone in the car, from the Bronx—a guy by the name of Joe. As he came on the phone he… I daren’t try his accent, but it was a good one. And he says, “Hey, this is Joe.” I said, “Hi, Joe. How are you doing?” He said, “I’m doing great!” I said, “Why is that?” He said, “I’ve just been a Christian for eight weeks, and I’m so excited,” he said. “The Lord is doing so many things, giving me so many provisions. He’s so good to me. He’s so dear to me. I’m just…” This guy was fit to be tied. It’s amazing we didn’t hear this major crash and explosion as he drove his car off the road. I was concerned he would hang up soon so that he could drive in safety. But there was no question. Anybody listening said, “Either the guy’s a fruitcake, or else something really happened to him.” All he phoned up to say was, “I want everyone to know I’m thankful!” Indeed, he concluded his call, but he says, “I just want to say this,” and then he told everybody how thankful he was to the Lord Jesus for redeeming him.

Thankful living for the redemption we experience and for the relationship we enjoy. He has brought us into a kingdom, and he has made us members of the family, and we’re sharing in an inheritance with the saints in the kingdom of light. In other words, thankful for the privileges of family membership.

A Pitfall, a Perspective, and a Place

What pleases the Lord? Fruitful living, knowledgeable living, powerful living, thankful living. This little reminder makes us aware of a pitfall to avoid—the pitfall of seeking to please men rather than God and seeking to please myself rather than God. It provides for us a perspective to adopt—namely, to seek that all of my decisions, my desires, and my choices would be governed by a prior determination to please God.

I can guarantee you, teenager, that if you make a covenant to please God, and that is your number one commitment—you just decide that, say, “I’m going to determine, having been redeemed by God’s goodness, having been given a relationship in God’s family: this is going to be it for me. I’m not going to make my first endeavor in life to get straight As. I’m not going to make my first endeavor in life to be well thought of. I’m not going to make it anything other than to find out what pleases God. That’s going to be the overarching commitment in my life. I’m going to find out what pleases God.” If that is your first question every time you date someone, every time you go for a job interview, every time you seek to determine where you’re going to go to college or university, every time you have the opportunity for a dirty deal or a devious plan, you’ll be on the right track. You’ll be on the straight and narrow. I’m not going to give you any more rules than the Bible gives you. It’s the Ten Commandments.

Here’s the principle: to please God. A pitfall to avoid, a perspective to adopt, and a place to apply it. Where should we apply the principle? Everywhere. With whom? Everyone. To what? To whatever you do. There’s not a thing you can think about to which this principle doesn’t apply. And as we’re going to discover in subsequent weeks, it certainly addresses the issue of sex. It definitely addresses the issue of work. It speaks powerfully to the issue of loss of loved ones.

Hey, let’s determine as a church family to make a concerted effort to find out what pleases God.

[1] John 8:29 (NIV 1984).

[2] John R. W. Stott, The Message of 1 and 2 Thessalonians: The Gospel and the End of Time, The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1994), 79.

[3] John 15:1–2 (NIV 1984).

[4] John 15:4 (NIV 1984).

[5] Colossians 1:10 (NIV 1984).

[6] Philippians 3:10 (paraphrased).

[7] William Hendriksen, Exposition of Colossians and Philemon, New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1975), 57.

[8] Eliza E. Hewitt, “More about Jesus” (1887).

[9] Philippians 1:21 (NIV 1984).

[10] Sidney E. Cox, “I Love Him Better Every Day.”

[11] Colossians 1:11 (NIV 1984).

[12] Colossians 1:12 (NIV 1984).

[13] Colossians 1:13–14 (NIV 1984).