Pleasing God

 June 30 – Pleasing God

2 Corinthians 5:9 – “So we make it our goal to please Him [Jesus], whether we are at home in the body or away from it.”

       All of us are at different stages of growth in our knowledge and trust in our heavenly Father and our Master Jesus Christ - which is why we all need reminders about how to live. We are told that Jesus has come to give us life to the fullest (John 10:10); however, that does not mean that he is to be our personal Santa Claus, satisfying our every whim. Our life does not consist in the abundance of our possessions (Luke 12:15), or even in the abundance of awesomeness in one possession. Pleasing God in our actions and thoughts is what will bring us the most abundant living possible. Look at Isaiah 58:13,14 in the spiritual light of Hebrews 4:8-11 (the fulfillment of what it means to keep the Sabbath as we rest in the completed work of Jesus, not in a literal sense of the seventh day of the week).  “ 'If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath and from doing as you please on my holy day, if you call the Sabbath a delight [your salvation in Jesus] and Yahweh's holy day honorable, and if you honor it by not going your own way and not doing as you please or speaking idle words, then you will find joy in Yahweh, and I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob.' The mouth of Yahweh has spoken.”

       Therefore, here are some reminders about pleasing God.

Romans 12:1,2 – “Therefore, I urge you brothers, in view of God's kindness, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, set apart and pleasing to God – this is your reasonable act of worship. Do 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.”

1 Thessalonians 4:1 – “Finally, brothers, we instructed you how to live in order to please God, as in fact you are living. Now we ask and urge you in the Master Jesus to do this more and more.”

Hebrews 11:5,6 – “...for before he [Enoch] was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God. For without faith, it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists, and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”

Proverbs 15:8 – “Yahweh detests the sacrifices of the wicked, but the prayer of the upright pleases him.”

Psalm 104:34 – “May my meditation be pleasing to him, as I rejoice in Yahweh.”

1 John 3:21,22 – “Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God, and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him.”

Philippians 4:18b – “....I am amply supplied, now that I have received from Epahroditus the gifts you sent. They are a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God.”

Hebrews 13:20,21 – “May the God of peace....equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him....”

Isaiah 58 – This entire chapter, partly referenced above, describes obeying (pleasing) God and the blessings that will follow. These are awesome promises!

Only Two Nations

 June 1 – Only Two Nations

Psalm 33:12a – "Blessed is the nation whose God is Yahweh..."

       The above phrase is a frequent statement seen on church marquis across the United States, from many years prior to this current year of 2021. I just saw it on a marquis of a local Baptist church in my home county. It signifies several things: 1) that America was, and/or still is, a "Christian" nation, one whose founding was based upon Christian principles; 2) that America is/was divinely inspired to be a different/special nation in the grand scheme of the nations of the earth, post-middle ages; and 3) that, perhaps, America as a whole, has left its divine calling as a light and moral example to the rest of the heathen world. There has already been so much written about the creation of this great democracy in the 18^th century AD, regarding the spiritual foundational thinking (or lack thereof) of a new society, rebelling against the oppressive British overlords. This is not the crux of this article.

       My argument here is much broader in nature. Throughout the whole of scripture, there is a theme that re-appears: God's chosen people are pitted against the other people groups in the region, whether they are large (e.g. Egypt, Assyria, Babylon) or whether they are small (e.g. Moab, Ammon, Amalek, Jebus, Canaan). To God, there were only two sets of people: his specifically called people (descendants of Abraham thru Isaac) and all the rest of the world. God even calls his nation his son: "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son" (Hosea 11:1). God also says "Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation...." (Exodus 19:6a) "I will send my terror ahead of you and throw into confusion every nation you encounter...I will send the hornet ahead of you to drive the Hivites, Canaanites, and Hittites out of your way...little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have increased enough to take possession of the land" (Exodus 23:27a, 28, 30). The whole theme of Psalm 83, as another example, is planned revenge of the nations surrounding Israel.

       As the new covenant is played out, we find that the Gentiles (nations) are slowly brought into the body of Christ (Acts 10). Verses 34, 35 state "Peter began to speak: I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism, but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right." Paul tells us in Colossians 3:11, "Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and in all." Romans, chapters 9-11 presents a back-and-forth argument for the acceptance of the Gentiles into the family of faith. There is even a mention that not even all of Israel belonged to Israel. Then verse 9:30 gives us the crux of the matter: "What then shall we say? That the Gentiles who did pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith, but as if it were by works." So we see here that God's people even in the Old Covenant were only truly those who lived by faith. The same is true for us now – the Christians are the ones who live by faith in Christ's righteousness, which means that they are God's people, his holy nation (1 Peter 2:9).

       The odd thing about the theme verse above (what was on the church marquis), is that it is missing the 2^nd part of that verse, "the people he chose as his inheritance. A political nation does not choose to be a "godly" nation, even if that is their intention, or even if they impose a religion in order to make God (Allah) the head (e.g. Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, with their Sharia law). One cannot even call a nation Christian, even if a majority of its people belong to God. There are only two nations in God's eyes now, as it always has been: those who are his by trusting in his love, and those who are not by refusing his love.