Pleasing God

“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. But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” —Hebrews 11:5–6

Let me say, before I attempt to speak to you on this subject, that I believe the man who lives so as to please God makes the very best possible out of his life, both in its relation to the life that now is and the life that is to come. He not only lays up treasure in Heaven, but he secures treasure on Earth. The life that is lived for God is not only a holy life, it is a happy life quite apart from anything we are going to get when we get beyond the River. God manifests Himself in a way to those who live for Him that more than repays for any sacrifice or suffering that may be entailed.

These statements regarding Enoch living to please God led me to believe this: (I want to put it as simple and direct as I can), it is possible for a man in this life to live so that he will please God. Enoch did that. That is what it says. Enoch lived in such a way as to please God. So I say it is possible for a man in this life to live so as to please God.

We May Know It

Secondly, if he lives a life that is pleasing to God, it is possible for the man to know it, and Enoch knew it. Shall I make that a little bit stronger? It is probable that he will know it. Enoch had the testimony, not so much that Enoch gave the testimony. I do not think that is the thought at all. I do not know that Enoch ever stood up and told people that he was living in such a way as to please God. He may have done so, but that is not the thought here. The thought here is that the Holy Spirit bore witness to the spirit of Enoch so that he knew he was living a life well pleasing to God. Enoch knew that, and if Enoch knew that, I may know it too.

God Expects It

The thought which I would emphasize is this: That is the kind of life God expects His people to live. Shall I put it another way? When you do not live that kind of a life, God is grieved, God is disappointed. Can God be disappointed? Can God be grieved? Why, all through the Scripture you read about God’s disappointment in people; about God’s grief over those who go astray and disappoint Him. And if God could be grieved with Israel, if God could be disappointed with men back in the Old Testament economy, surely God can be disappointed in me. If He could be disappointed with people in the twilight of Faith, much more with you and me who have greater privileges. The saddest passages in all the Bible are those on the one hand which tell of God’s prophecies concerning His people, His great purpose and plan for His people, God’s objective that which God would have us be, and, on the other hand, over against this, the failure of God’s people to realize that.

The Disappointment Of God

Have you ever noticed these passages: over and over again in the Scriptures you will find on the one hand God’s provision set forth, God’s expectation of His people set forth and right beside it always, as if a wail from a broken heart, God fairly groaning in disappointment over His people for their failure to appropriate that provision and live that kind of life. You will find this all through the Old Testament, and so it is today.

The apostle Paul, in writing about the children of Israel, says, “With many of them God was not well pleased.” Here is a man with whom He was well pleased. Why was He not well pleased with Israel? Because they fell short through unbelief. They never reached the place God desired them to reach; never did the thing God wanted them to do; never lived the life God would have them live; never enjoyed the blessing and fellowship of God it was their privilege to enjoy.

Let me quote a passage or two from the fifth of Deuteronomy: “O that there were such a heart in them.” That is an expression of agony. “O that there were such a heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children forever!”

Do you see God’s purpose for them? “That it might be well with them, and with their children forever!” But it was not well with them and with their children forever.

He brought them out of Egypt that He might bring them into a land flowing with milk and honey, but they never went in.

“But with many of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness.” They fell through unbelief. And again: “For as the girdle cleaveth to the loins of a man, so have I caused to cleave unto me the whole house of Israel, and the whole house of Judah, saith the Lord; that they might be unto me for a people, and for a name, and for a praise, and a glory: but they would not hear.” “Oh that my people had hearkened unto me, and Israel had walked in my ways! I should soon have subdued their enemies, and turned my hand against their adversaries.”

God Undertakes For Those Who Please Him

Have you found out that if you live for God and do His will, He will look out for the enemy? “If my people will walk in my way, and will hearken unto my word; I will subdue their enemies; I will turn my hand against their adversaries. The haters of the Lord would submit themselves unto Him.”

What a statement that is: “If my people will only do my will; if they will only walk in my way, I will subdue their enemies,” and more than that, that great crowd outside, the whole world that makes no pretense to religion, that great godless mass will be moved, says God, “when my people live as they ought to, when they will submit themselves unto me.”

We sometimes say, “O for a revival!” We pray, “O God, let us have a revival. Save our children, our neighborhood, bring about a better condition in society or community.” And the Lord is looking down on the church and waiting for the church to get into the place of communion and fellowship with Himself.

The Lord says, “When my people do as they should, I will feed them with the finest of the wheat, and with honey out of the rock will I satisfy them.”

Having Our Own Way

There is God’s great plan and desire for His people, but what lamentation: “But my people would not hearken to my voice; and Israel would none of me.” And because of this, they were not fed with the finest of the wheat, and they were not satisfied with honey out of the rock. “My people would not hearken—so I gave them up unto their own heart’s lust, to walk in the counsel of their own words.” And He has given up a whole lot of Christians to do the same thing. That is one of the curses that has come upon us as the result of a life of disobedience and rebellion against God. God says, “Have your own way.” And I am afraid that a great many professed Christians are having their own way. It is a judgment instead of a blessing. God says, “I gave them up unto their own heart’s lust.” Over in the epistles, in the Old and New Testaments we see the same thing.

You remember what Jesus said about Jerusalem before He went out to His death: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate; and verily I say unto you, Ye shall not see me, until the time come when ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.” It was a sad word, and Luke says that as He looked at the city He wept over it. He did not glory over what was to come upon them. There was no pleasure in His heart as He thought of the great suffering that was coming to that nation because of their rejection of Him.

God’s plan and desire for His people is a glorious purpose. May the Lord help us to see it.

Now says the apostle in Corinthians, “These things are written for our instruction; these things are written for our admonition upon whom the end of the ages is come, to the intent that we should not fall as they fell.” That is why God has given us the record of Israel. “Neither lust after evil things, as they also lusted.”

But you say, “If those great men back there in the Old Testament fell, how am I going to do any better?” These things are written that we should not fall as they fell. They are sort of red lights in the shallows; they are warning bells where the shallow water breaks on the rocks, telling us to keep away in the deep places; but so few of God’s people seem to heed the warning.

Ample Provision

I believe the provision God has made for us is ample. I believe God never asks me to be what I cannot be. God never gives me something to do which I cannot do. God never requires me to give something which I cannot give. May we understand that. When the Lord wants you to walk in a certain way and serve Him with a certain kind of life, He makes it absolutely possible for you to live that life.

“Without faith it is impossible to please Him.” “Enoch pleased Him,” says the apostle. If you do not believe it, if you do not believe it is possible for you, you don’t please Him. May the Lord give us that simple faith.

I want to give you three phases of the life that pleases God as suggested by three passages of Scripture in the New Testament. The first is in the twelfth of Romans, the second is in the last chapter of Philippians, and the third is the one I have taken for my text. Each one suggests a different phase of the Christian life.

The Consecrated Life

For instance, in this first passage of Scripture to which I refer, Paul is speaking to Christian people. All the way through those preceding chapters he has been showing us how God saves us by Christ without any merit of our own whatever, just through His own mercy. Blessed be His name!

Finally, after he gets that question entirely settled, he turns around and looks at the church, looks upon that saved body of Christians and says, “Now then, I beseech you by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and well pleasing unto God,” (for that is the word there. Just the same word as you have in Hebrews). What does it suggest? That, when a church of God saved by grace, recognizes that they have been saved by grace, not by any merit of their own, they will turn around and say, “Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee.”

The Lord will no more force a Christian to surrender his life to Him than He will force a sinner to come to Him. The sinner is not compelled to become a Christian. We can just preach salvation. We can pray them in Christ’s stead to be reconciled to God, but we cannot compel people to be saved. In the last analysis a person himself has to say, “I will,” or God Himself cannot save them. Isn’t that true? We know it is. And it is equally true that God will not compel you, as His child, to give your talents, to give your life for service. He will wait for you to turn them over to Him and say, “Lord out of the gratitude for Thy great mercy and Thy great love, I see the great need in the world, I see the great need for laborers in the harvest, here am I. If Thou canst use me, take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee.” And, if you will give it, God will take it. He will not ask you what you have. If you have only one talent, He wants you to give that to Him.

Have you ever noticed that God never says anything about the man that has the most to give in pounds and talents? It is the fellow that only had one that He is talking to. The fellow that had two did something with them, and the fellow that had five did something; but the fellow that only had one said, “What is the use? I have only one talent. What is the good of trying to do something with one talent?” Jesus is annoyed when He speaks of the man that buried his one talent.

He never asks you to give what you cannot give, but, if you give, He will take, and He has not bound Himself to use only educated men, neither has He bound Himself to use a fool as far as that is concerned. He does not say, I will take big men, brilliant men, white men, black men, etc., but the Bible makes it plain that He will take a consecrated man, He will take insignificant instruments if they are absolutely yielded to Him.

I was greatly impressed one day in New York. I was preaching in Dr. Haldeman’s church, and I went down to hear a lot of missionaries in Dr. Simpson church. It was a farewell meeting, and they were giving their experiences. The one that touched me most was that of a girl.

She told how she was the daughter of a widow. The father died and left the mother with ten children when they were very small, and she was the oldest one. I am sorry for the oldest one in a family of ten. She went on to tell how poor they were. She had always worked hard all her life, worked as a servant, and lived in attic bedrooms up on the third floor. She found all her joy in the church of Jesus Christ. She said, “When I could go on Sundays, I was there, and I never missed a prayer meeting. When a missionary came, I always went to hear them. I always loved the missionaries and prayed for them. I used to hear of great unevangelized tribes, and the need of young men. And I would say, ‘Surely some bright young man will come up and give himself for this work,’ and I would go away sad when no one offered themselves.

“I got up and ran home as fast as I could and went upstairs into my little room, and, intuitively, I found myself saying, as I knelt by that bedside, ‘O God, if you cannot get a man and can use a woman, take me.’”

Do you see that? And she said, “The Lord took me right there, and here I am on my way to Africa.”

I have not been surprised to hear that God has greatly used that woman. And, friends, that is all He asks, just that we yield what we have. The trouble comes in not yielding, not giving up, not letting God have His way. There is rebellion. Most people act as though they thought the Lord would spoil their life if they gave it up completely to Him.

If I am to live a life well pleasing to God, first of all, I must yield myself to Him, and He will put His seal on my life. I could give a personal testimony along this line.

In the beginning of my ministry there was a young woman in my church, and we had a great conference, good spiritual teaching. At the close of the conference she said, “I do not know whether I am going away happy or not. To be frank, I have received so much light, and I am not prepared to walk in that light.” She looked miserable.

It is not often that you hear Christian people talk like that, but they very often act like that.

We got that woman aside in a little room and had a prayer meeting, and, before it was over, she gave her life up to Christ to walk in the light. She just let go and let God have His way with her.

A few days later I got a letter. She had left town and gone to her home in a northern village.

She said, “I had a strange experience when I left the city. I got on the train in the morning, and I had been reading my little pocket Testament and I had dropped it on my lap and was looking out of the window, when I became conscious of a woman taking the seat by my side. Looking around, I saw a woman whose face wore an expression of deep sorrow. She began to talk about the Testament on my lap.

“She said, ‘I presume you are a Christian,’ and she told such a story of sorrow and suffering as I had never heard. I had never dreamed people ever had such sorrow. But the joy was this,—before we got off the train, I had led my first soul to Christ.”

She continued, “I was waiting at the junction for the train going back North. There was a man walking up and down in the waiting room. Finally he stopped in front of me and said, ‘Do you believe that little book?’ At first I thought he wanted to quarrel with me or argue. I looked up and said, ‘Yes sir, I believe the Book.’ He merely choked and looked as though he were going to sob. Finally he said, ‘I believed that Book once myself. My mother always believed that Book,’ and he began walking up and down. I did not know what to do. But just as the train was coming in, he stepped up and said, ‘Woman, do you believe in prayer? If you do, pray for me. Only God can meet my need today. Pray for me.’

“Isn’t it strange, Mr. Philpott, I have been a Christian for ten years, and I never had any one come to me before and ask for spiritual help; I never had anybody ask me to pray for them before. But one night I gave my life to God and the next week I get on a railroad train and a woman in great sorrow comes and talks with me, and I lead her to Christ, and a man in a strange railroad station asks me to pray for him. Isn’t it strange?”

Do you think so? It was the first time in her life she was in a position to be used of God.

God Almighty is using every Christian in Chicago that is usable, but a lot of them are not usable. God cannot use them, there are hindrances in their lives.

If I am to live a life well pleasing to God, the first step is to take my life and let it be consecrated to Him.

Do not map out what you are going to do. You do not know what you are going to do. So many seem to think that a consecrated life means going to Africa, to China or something like that.

God is not calling everybody to the foreign field. He is calling some people to stay at home, and I know of no harder place to live the Christian life than among one’s own flesh and blood, for a man’s enemies are often those of his own household. So the call is sometimes to stay at home.

Never plan your life ahead.

One night I was going out to preach in a little town. I was helping in some special meetings in a Baptist church. There was a snow storm on and the electric cars had been stalled. The girl at the confectionery counter kept looking at me as if she knew me. Finally I made an excuse to buy a paper.

She said, “You were at our church the other night, talking to young people. You were talking about consecration.”

I said, “Yes.”

“I do not know anything about that life you were talking about. You talked about being happy in the Christian life I can honestly say I never enjoyed the Christian life, I am serving God that I may be saved, but, as for being happy, it would be a lie for me to say so. But I was greatly impressed when you told me the story of that girl in your church, the girl that started in the work twenty-seven years ago.”

I said, “My dear sister, why don’t you do as that girl has done, give your life to God as I told you she had done?”

Several nights after, she beckoned to me to come over and said, “I want to tell you something. I am having a great time, but I have had an awful testing. You know that night I talked with you when you were snowbound? I went home and got in bed as I usually do, but I could not go to sleep. I thought about that girl, how she got up and lit the light and took her Bible and consecrated herself to God. I got on my knees and said, 'I am not going to sleep until I know I am fully consecrated to God. I made up my mind that I was going to Africa.'

Harder Than Africa

“I got up in the morning and started to work. As I was going to cross the street, there stood two little children and an old woman with some black bundles. Something came in my heart to help them. Then I thought I could not help those folks. If I were to help that old lady carry one of those black bundles, some of the girls who knew me might come along, they would think she was my mother and those kids my sisters.’

“when I got up close to her, I banished this thought out of my mind.

“As I came near, she turned to me, and, in broken English, she said, ‘Do you know where the terminal station is?’

“It all came back to me, and I remembered my consecration.”

Some folks forget it. Some say, “I will do it,” and then forget it.

She said, “I remembered it, and I said, ‘For Jesus’ sake.’ It is wonderful when you can say, ‘For Jesus’ sake.’ So I said, ‘Yes, I am going right to the station, and I will help you carry one bundle.’ I began to feel as though I had taken fire down under my hair. It was a mortifying experience, and I found out what Paul meant when he said, ‘Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth.’”

In one of the preceding verses it says, “For ye are dead.” Mortification always sets in after death, and some folks object to that.

She said, “I was mortified as one of the little children began to cry, but I kept saying ‘For Jesus’ sake.’ As I walked all the way to the station with her.

“When I put the bundles down at last in the little room and shut the door, I felt as though I had all heaven in my soul. The joy of the Lord! I never knew what it was before. It was not Africa at all. It was harder.”

Bless your heart, some folks have opportunities to do things like that every day of their life. It is something like that that shows how real the consecration is.

“Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee.” That is the first step, and the second is suggested in the last chapter of Philippians.

Little Deeds Of Kindness

Do you remember where Paul received a gift? He was in prison, and the little church down at Philippi had gotten together a little offering and said to their preacher, Epaphroditus, “Take this little gift and carry it to Paul. It may make the prison a little brighter for him.

I do not know what they carried, but we have that splendid letter as a result. The postscript was always the best part of that letter to me. Just as Paul got through writing those bits of advice, he says, “Now then about the gift. I received it, and I am full.” You know what he meant. He was full. He could hardly speak. He says, “It is a sacrifice, an odor of a sweet smell, it is well pleasing to God.”

I would to God we could get the church to see that the little deeds of kindness we may do are well pleasing to God. And I do not know of any Christians that have more opportunity than Christians living in Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia, and the great American cities. Oh, the sorrow and suffering; oh, the tears and broken hearts everywhere. What deeds of kindness we might do! What kind words might be spoken!

It is the little things we do for Jesus that we cannot talk about, that the newspapers do not publish, just the little kind words and deeds that bring the greatest joy into the heart and life. I wonder if we do not have opportunities almost every day to speak a kind word or do a kind deed.

I was reading the life of a great statesman a little while ago He was a great man, the Earl of Shaftsbury. He was not only a great statesman, but one of the finest Christians old England ever knew, one of the greatest philanthropists, not even excepting General Booth. He would take a lantern and go out under Blackfriar’s bridge looking for men. He set hundreds of men up in a little business like selling newspapers. When asked what he considered the greatest compliment ever paid to him, he said, “If I tell you, you will laugh.”

They said, “No, we want to hear it.” So by and by, under pressure, he said:

“It was not a big thing. I was coming down the Strand one morning and, as I came to a certain street where the traffic was greatly congested, I noticed a little girl walking up and down and looking in people’s faces. I watched her for a while, when all at once she said, ‘Mister, will you please carry me across to the other side of the street?’ I stooped down, and she put her arm around my neck, and I carried her across. When I put her down on the curb, I gave her a kiss and said, ‘My little lady, you were there a long time. Why did you wait so long?’

“She replied, ‘I was waiting for some man to come along that I thought I could trust to carry me across the street, and I knew I could trust you.’

“When that little girl said that, it just melted my heart to think that a little girl, not knowing what way to take in a place of danger, felt that she could trust me by something that she saw in my face. That was the best compliment that was ever paid to me.”

“God help us; there are thousands of little ones that do not know what way to take. May God make us the kind of men that can be trusted. I want to be the kind of man that a little one can trust to carry her across the street.

Now, the second phase of the life that is well pleasing to God is suggested in the last chapter of Philippians where Paul says, “I have received your gift, and I am full. It is well pleasing to God, and my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.”

Have you ever noticed where that verse comes in? Have you ever noticed how frequently Christians quote that verse when they have no claim on it? They say, “God will supply every need of mine.” To whom was the apostle talking? He was talking to a church that had made a great sacrifice, people who gave up something to meet the need of somebody else. I want to tell you if you sacrifice for others, the almighty God will look out for you, but if you are just walking around with no thought except for your own selfish pleasure all the time, you may quote that verse until you are black in the face, and He will never meet your need. But when I try to meet the needs of others, God will meet my need, and he will give good measure, pressed down and running over. For with the same measure that you mete it shall be measured to you again.

Paul said, “I received your offering, and God will supply every need of yours.” You want to put the emphasis on yours. See who it is.

Just another word. It is suggested in the last verse that I read as my text that it must be a life of fellowship with God.

A Life Of Fellowship

Enoch had this testimony that he pleased God. What did he do? He walked with God. That’s all he did. He walked with God. And may I say this, beloved friends, if you undertake to live this life without finding out the secret of walking with God, you will fail in it. It must be a life spent in fellowship with God; it must be a life in union with Him.

There are a lot of things I might say about that walk with God, but I cannot take the time. I am just going to say this, that I know a great many Christians and a great many good Christians, too, that just do not enjoy the presence of God as they ought, and the Lord is disappointed.

He was pleased with Enoch because Enoch liked to be with Him.

Are you a father? Have you got a boy?

You know they have professional boy workers in the YMCA. I heard one say once: “Why don’t you fathers chum with your boys? That is the only way to reach the boys: to chum with them.”

I said, “It might be well, perhaps, to urge the boys to chum a bit with their fathers.” You cannot get them to do it. Some fathers are just hungry to have their boys chum with them, but they do not feel at home with their father: they feel more at home with others, maybe with aliens. You know that is often true.

Well, God was well pleased with Enoch because he liked to be with Him. I had rather be with God than anybody else. Enoch just loved to walk with God, he just loved to talk with God. If he were living in our day, he would love the Bible; he would love a spiritual meeting. That’s what he would. The Lord help us to see it. That is the life well pleasing to God—living in His presence, living in union with Him.

Let me say what I said in the beginning. The life that is lived to please God will be the life that lays up treasures in Heaven, and God will make out of that life the very most possible. It will not be a wasted life. May the Lord help us to live it.