Hebrews 11:5 By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him… I. If we ask WHOM WE ARE TO PLEASE, reason, uninstructed by revelation or experience, would immediately say ourselves, or if reason did not say so, feeling would. We accordingly find that man, as soon as he begins to act, acts solely with a view to his own gratification. It would never enter his mind to act otherwise were he left alone. But then none of us are left alone. We are mixed up with our fellow-men, and are trained from our earliest infancy more or less to please them. And these two things, pleasing ourselves and pleasing our fellow-men, we contrive to carry on together. We please the world, and in doing so, we please ourselves, for we gain something that we desire from the world by pleasing it — if nothing more, its good opinion. But God comes in and disturbs all this. "Please me," says self. "Please me," says the world; and while we are striving to obey both, there is a voice from heaven which says," Neither must be obeyed: you must approve yourselves to Me." There appears before us a third competitor for our powers of pleasing; one of whom we never thought, and to whom not a feeling or principle of our nature inclines us to listen. So perverse are we that we cannot do it. "They that are in the flesh," says the Scripture, "cannot please God." You see then that we have no merely moral, half-heathen duty before us; it is a Christian duty. II. How WE ARE TO PLEASE GOD. 1. We must begin with accepting the offers of His grace. We know that in order to please a fellow-creature we must fall in with his disposition and character. If he is a man of a kind disposition, we must on no account repulse his kindness, but yield ourselves up to it, and let him do us all the good he will. Now the great God of heaven is a God of infinite kindness towards us. "Here is pardon for you," He says; "here is peace; here is My love for you, My presence, My likeness, My joy, My kingdom. Look through My universe — there is everything for you that is worth your having." Now to please Him is to accept these offers. It is to let Him see that we value His kindness and care for His blessings. 2. To please God, we must conform ourselves to His mind and will. And this will show itself by our ceasing to be angry and discontented with His dealings with us; and still more clearly by our efforts to do His will. He pleases God the most who places himself entirely in God's hands, and who strives the most after the holiness which God loves. 3. To please God we must aim to please Him supremely, far above all. Our first, supreme desire must be to approve ourselves in God's sight. III. WHY WE SHOULD THUS SEEK TO PLEASE GOD RATHER THAN ANY ONE ELSE. 1. It is easier to please Him. Only let us once accept the offers of love He has made us in His Son, and we can please Him; anything that we offer will be acceptable in His sight; the mere desire to please will give Him pleasure. Is it difficult for a child to put pleasure into a father's heart? Does a mother require much from her infant to afford her delight? But what is a father's or a mother's love to the love of the great God for us? As a shadow to a substance. His mighty love for us then makes it easy for us to please Him. But turn to the world. It is hard work to please that. What a multitude there is in it to gratify! every one wanting to be gratified in his own way, regarding you as nothing but the mere instrument of his pleasure. We may sacrifice ourselves on the world's altar, but, alas! we shall gain nothing; the greater part of the world will be angry because the sacrifice has not been made for them only or as they would have it made. And then what a weathercock is the mind of man! How light and mutable! What pleases him today, he is tired of to-morrow, and offended with the day after. He who seeks to please God, has only one to please instead of multitudes; and He One who is considerate and merciful, and never requires us to hurt ourselves in order to please Him, and is always of one mind. That which pleases Him once will please Him for ever. 2. It is better to please God than any one else, more for our advantage. Think how little man can do for us, even if he is disposed and continues so, to do his best. Our greatest sorrows he can do little indeed to lighten, and our heaviest wants he car. do nothing at all to supply. We cling to him as though he were all in all to us; an hour will come when we shall feet him to be a shadow. But think what God is. He is that God who made heaven and earth, and who could in a moment unmake them, bring them all into nothing again. He governs all things. He can give us whatsoever He will, and withheld from us whatsoever He will. 3. It is more ennobling to please God than to please any one else. The effort to please Him elevates the soul; seeking to please others debases it. We become like God by seeking to please Him. By keeping Him constantly before us we are changed into His image. This is not theory. I may appeal to every-day facts. Take the poor cottager whose heart God has touched, and taught to seek His favour. Apparently with everything around him to depress him, there is often an elevation in that man's mind which constrains us to wonder at him. He has risen to a loftiness of thought and feeling which we can scarcely understand. And it is his piety alone which has raised him, his simple and earnest desire to please his Lord. And then look at some of the world's great men, men who live on the world's favour and applause. How low do we frequently see them sink! We marvel at the littleness they betray. 4. Hence we may observe that a supreme desire to please God conforms us more than anything else to Christ our Lord. He "pleased not Himself," the Scripture says. As we read His history we never suspect Him of having done so. It was not His own gratification that brought Him out of His Father's world and kept Him in our world amid pollution and sorrow. He sought not His own honour here, He did not His own works, He would not speak even His own words. And a careful reader of His history will never suspect Him of having been a pleaser of men. He points upwards to His Father, and says, "I do always those things that please Him." Now there is a blessed resemblance between Christ and His people. They have the same spirit that He had, and it is their joy and delight to have it. We say that it forms their character, they feel that it is a main part of their happiness. (C. Bradley, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God. |
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