To please God

[AI translation] This expression, to please, means to behave in a way that the other person finds nice, beautiful, appealing, good, impeccable, delights in. Such synonyms also occur in the Hungarian translation of the Bible. In every human being there is an aspiration or intention, conscious or unconscious, to please. One of the main motives of self-esteem and self-validation is the desire to please. I am not referring here, of course, to external pleasing. I do not mean attracting attention with clothes, physical beauty, all kinds of titties, in other words, conquest - which is of course also a general human aspiration, especially a female trait - but the way a person lives, moves, speaks and acts in front of other people. She tries to do all this in a pleasing way. He tries to show what is beautiful about himself, what he knows - or at least thinks - will please. He tries to carefully conceal anything that might not be pleasing to others. For example, how kindly a well-bred person can smile and chat even when very angry outbursts of emotion are stirring inside! If the person we are smiling at could see behind our kindness, they would certainly not like it.We humans are great actors. We imagine a pleasing role and play it. We have practised our roles so well that we rarely fall out of them. If we then fall out, if the mask sometimes falls off, then we have something to be ashamed of! When we want to please the other person, we inevitably get involved in some kind of lie. The more people we want to please, the more lies we get caught up in. If we could be truly honest with the other person, we would certainly not please them. If everyone knew about you what only you know about yourself, if everyone could see the thoughts, feelings and repressed emotions that lie deep in your heart, do you think anyone would respect you? Would anyone else on this earth like you? And when you think people like you, you actually like yourself the most. In this self-indulgence, he can even tolerate that there is someone who doesn't like him! It is people who are so self-indulgent and in love with themselves that someone once said that they are the happiest because they have no rivals!
But the most important thing is not whether the other person likes you, but whether God likes you. Have you ever asked yourself seriously whether God likes you as you are? Whether the things you do from morning till night, from the time you get up until you go to bed, are pleasing to God? Does the Lord delight in the way you raise your children, the way you talk to your spouse, the way you judge the events of the world, the way you go about your daily work? Does the Lord delight in the way you pray, or the way you sing the psalm here in church? Is God pleased with the way you bear your sufferings and adversities? Or how you rejoice in God's blessings and gifts? Again, let me emphasize that what is important here is not what people think of you, because that is always a false and lying vision. It is deceptive, because those who like you see even your faults embellished, and those who don't like you see even your values through dark glasses. The question is what God thinks of you!
God has different tastes than people. Your behaviour and opinions may be very much to the taste of men, or a group of men, but not to the taste of the Lord God! You can be by some action or word very pleasing to men, and by the same action or word very detestable to God! You may be very beautiful and exemplary in the zeal with which you have sought to come here to church this morning, putting aside all obstacles, and God may not like it, because when you leave here you will again be concerned not with what God says to you, but only with what people say to you! As long as you want to please people, you will most certainly not please God, and vice versa: if you want to please Him, you will not please most people! Because human taste is different from divine taste!
Then God has a different eye, a different vision, from man. He does not see you as you show yourself or as you imagine yourself to be, but sees you as you are! That is, as you are in essence, in truth, in everything: without a mask, outside the rehearsed role! And this soul, stripped of all its covering, quite naked - my true self, and yours - cannot be a very pleasing and delightful sight to the eyes of a holy God! Now the Word of God says, "...it is impossible to please God." (v. 6) So it is not only that it is hard to please God, and that he who would please Him must get himself together, but that it is impossible to please God, even if you present yourself to Him, and do anything good and beautiful, in vain! It must be sin, because sin is that which displeases God! And now let us understand well what sin is: that wrong or defective act, contrary to God's law, which we do? Because then not sinning, according to us, means not doing that particular wrong or wrong thing any more. But that's not the case. But sin is something much more and deeper. Of course, every action that is contrary to God's law is also sin, but not only that, but also our goodness, what we consider good and right in ourselves, all of that also falls under sin. So it is not sin to steal, to lie, to murder or to commit adultery - of course, these are also part of sin. But stealing or murdering is not sin itself, but the fruit or consequence of sin. It is only the stream that springs from an even earlier source. Sin is the spring from which these dark things spring, burst forth, burst forth. You know what sin is? It's that we're separated from God. And whether we do right or wrong, whether we do right or wrong, everything happens in this state of separation from God, that is, in sin. All of our human virtues, however beautiful, are virtues that shine in the mud of sin. All our human faults are faults blackened in the mud of sin.
Perhaps a picture will better understand this sad truth. Let us imagine God's law, the Ten Commandments, as if they were a series of interlocking links! The top link is the first commandment, the second is connected to it, the second to the third, and so on. And the whole chain is connected to God by the top link, which is the first commandment. Now the sin in paradise means that the top link, the one that begins, "I the Lord am your God" (Exodus 20:2), has been broken, and so the whole glorious chain has fallen into the mud. In vain, then, does the rich young man plead before Jesus: I have not killed, I have not stolen, I have honoured my father and my mother, I have kept the commandments from my youth, what can be the end of me? for Jesus immediately points to the one end, saying that the chain was not broken in the middle, but at the top, 'I the Lord am your God'. Well, he couldn't sell all his possessions and follow Jesus, because his heart was bound to the world and not to God. And so even his supposed many beautiful virtues, which otherwise made him very likeable, were virtues in sin. The other links that had not yet been broken were broken at the very top, lying in the mud!
And so are we all! So you, too, with all your virtues and possible good qualities, are involved in sin. You might say that sin is in you. And this sin that is in you is then realized in sinful actions. Thus it becomes theft, murder or fornication. And even if you have never stolen or given false testimony in your life, you still have the same sin in you, which under the influence of a different upbringing, a different situation and a different environment, has been realized in another person into the sin of theft or perjury! Well, that is why you cannot please God! Impossible! For even if you have not sinned against the seventh or ninth commandment - though this is unlikely - you are guilty of breaking the whole law, because the chain has been broken from above. And so the whole - whether still in one piece or broken in several pieces - is in the mud! Therefore, whoever still thinks that he pleases the Lord God, let him know that he does not please Him, but pleases himself! And whoever still pleases himself, he certainly does not please the Lord God! When you begin to displease yourself, you begin to please God!
Here begins the faith without which it is impossible to please God! Do you know where faith begins? It's when you start to see something really ugly. Something you've never seen before: yourself! Faith begins with a terribly disappointing realisation: with what Paul said: 'I find then in myself, who would do good, this law, that sin is in me' (Rom 7,21). (1 Jn 1,8) The very first discovery of awakening faith, then, is that as you are, with all your honourable virtues and unpleasant faults, you are a prisoner of sin, which is condemnation and death! Have you already come to this vision of faith, or are you still deceiving yourself - in the words of the Word, deceiving yourself - and defying the Lord God? If you have come, then rejoice, for this is the first sign of your reception into grace!
If you then see the wretchedness of sin in yourself to such an extent that you can turn away from yourself in hatred, then God will reveal something very beautiful to you. Someone of whom God once said, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased". (Mt 3,17) See that there was only One on this earth who pleased - because He could please - God: the Lord Jesus Christ! He says: I will take from you all that you do not please the Lord God, and will give you in its place all the purity, holiness and innocence in which He delights. Let's swap! This is how you will be lifted up from the mud, and how He will sink down to death and damnation in your place!
Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ - I might say, believe in Jesus Christ! In other words, accept by faith what God is willing to impute to you: that in the person of Jesus you died on the cross. The purity and righteousness of Jesus is your righteousness and purity, the resurrection of Christ is your resurrection from the mud, and His ascension is the sure guarantee and possibility of your ascension! Believe in the person of Jesus so much that God sees no other when He looks upon you than Jesus Christ! You are free to believe such nonsense, for that is why the Holy Son of God came so far down to come into such mysterious fellowship with you here in sin, in the mud, through your faith! In that faith, move and move your hand or foot into action, that it is the hand and foot of Jesus, your eye the eye of Jesus, your heart the heart of Jesus, your money the money of Jesus, your life the life of Jesus. Without this faith, it is impossible to please God!
Oh, how much depends on whether you please God or not! Nothing less than eternal life or eternal damnation itself! And now, when you go out of this church, remember that only that in you which is not you, but that which is of Christ in you, pleases God! God wants to say to you what He said to Jesus, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased". And he will say it, if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ!
Amen.
Date: 17 October 1948.