Mat 3:13-17; God the Father Pleased with You.

Class Outline:

Thursday January 18, 2024

 

COL 1:9-12

For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; 11 strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience; joyously 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light.

 

Redeemed in Christ we are on the hook to please God because Christ pleased God.

 

COL 3:23-25

Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, 24 knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve. 25 For he who does wrong will receive the consequences of the wrong which he has done, and that without partiality.

 

REV 22:12

“Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done.”

 

Pleasing God is a life mandated - so it is given by grace and the power and ability is given as well.

It is a life mandated - so it will be judged and rewarded.

 

We should rejoice that God has so gifted us and empowered us that the life is not an option but a mandate, i.e. every believer can, and must, do it.

 

Idea: Jesus gets baptized to fulfill all righteousness.

 

MAT 3:13-15

Then Jesus arrived from Galilee at the Jordan coming to John, to be baptized by him. 14 But John tried to prevent Him, saying, "I have need to be baptized by You, and do You come to me?" 15 But Jesus answering said to him, "Permit it at this time; for in this way it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness." Then he permitted Him.

 

The phrase “fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness,” is seen by us from different aspects. Righteousness is an attribute of God. Righteousness is also the requirement of the law of Moses, which all men entered as sinners in Adam.

 

Jesus comes out of the water and the heavens open from which

 

MAT 3:16-17

After being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting on Him, 17 and behold, a voice out of the heavens said, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased [eudokeo]."

 

Then the voice from heaven leads us into our next discoveries, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.”

 

Why is the Father pleased with the Son?

 

HEB 10:1-10

For the Law, since it has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of things, can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year, make perfect those who draw near. 2 Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, because the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have had consciousness of sins? 3 But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins year by year. 4 For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. 5 Therefore, when He comes into the world, He says,

 

"SACRIFICE AND OFFERING YOU HAVE NOT DESIRED [eudokeo],

BUT A BODY YOU HAVE PREPARED FOR ME;

6 IN WHOLE BURNT OFFERINGS AND sacrifices FOR SIN YOU HAVE TAKEN NO PLEASURE.

7 "THEN I SAID, 'BEHOLD, I HAVE COME

(IN THE SCROLL OF THE BOOK IT IS WRITTEN OF ME)

TO DO YOUR WILL, O GOD.'"

 

8 After saying above, "SACRIFICES AND OFFERINGS AND WHOLE BURNT OFFERINGS AND sacrifices FOR SIN YOU HAVE NOT DESIRED, NOR HAVE YOU TAKEN PLEASURE in them" (which are offered according to the Law), 9 then He said, "BEHOLD, I HAVE COME TO DO YOUR WILL." He takes away the first in order to establish the second. 10 By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

 

I have come to do your will, O God. Animals have no will to offer themselves.

 

The Father was pleased with the Son because He fulfilled all righteousness.

 

It was God’s will that He offer Himself for us.

 

It was the Father’s will for His Son to give Himself for those broken by sin. This obedience pleased the Father.

 

Php 2:5-8

Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. 8 Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

 

But His death is not the end. The resurrection is as fitting as His death on the cross, for He glorified the Father - could that end in death?

 

Php 2:9-11

For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

 

Pleasing God, we don’t lose but gain.

But for a time we indeed lose and it is painful.

Why this way?

 

Jesus saved the lost, because, like the Father, He loved mankind.

 

JOH 13:34

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.

 

“In respect of agapao as used of God, it expresses the deep and constant "love" and interest of a perfect Being towards entirely unworthy objects, producing and fostering a reverential "love" in them towards the Giver, and a practical "love" towards those who are partakers of the same, and a desire to help others to seek the Giver.” [Vine’s]

 

God commissions every believer to be an ambassador of the gospel, just like Christ. If we do not have God’s love we will be very poor at this.

 

God is not fickle like man, therefore, pleasing Him is based upon unchangeable, beautiful things.

 

It is not just acts alone that please God. Acts done in love please God, 1Co 12-13.

 

1 Cor 12:31-13:3

And I show you a still more excellent way.

 

13:1 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

 

Love means loss when you give of yourself for another.

 

Jesus Christ did not just do works.

He did them with love and pleased the Father.

 

Believers please the Father just as Christ does.

They are called to love like God.

 

Love gives and saves, in Christ and in us. 

The substance and foundation of pleasing God is good works done in love.