Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1165
“I always do those things that please Him.” John 8:29.
OUR Lord Jesus stood alone as the Advocate of right and truth in the days when He dwelt among men. It is true He had a few followers, but they were so slow to learn and so weak in action that they rather increased His difficulties than rendered Him assistance. He was a solitary Champion in the midst of armies of foes. Those foes were powerful, cunning, cruel and exceedingly active, yet He was calm, unmoved and faced them without fear. He was never put to the blush by them and never turned His back in retreat. Our Lord was victorious all through the campaign of His ministry. I may say of Him that He went forth conquering and to conquer—and on the Cross He gained His crowning victory!
Since you, also, will meet with enemies, would you learn to be as calm as He? Since difficulties must beset your pathway, would you possess the same strength as He? Would you, in fact, live as He lived, and, finishing your course, would you enter into His joy? Then study well the records of His sublime career and you will see that the secret of His power was the Presence of His God—“He that sent Me is with Me.” And the secret of His comfort was fellowship with Jehovah—“He has not left Me alone.” If you would know how you can enjoy the Presence and fellowship of the Lord— and all the power and comfort which come thereby, the Savior tells you the secret in the following words—“For I always do those things that please Him.”
If we would have God with us, we must be agreed with Him. “Shall two walk together unless they are agreed?” Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said, “He that has My commandments and keeps them, he it is that loves Me, and he that loves Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him and will manifest Myself to him” (John 14:21). To do the things which please God is the way to secure His Presence and consequent power and happiness. I shall, at this time, endeavor to set forth the Savior before you all under two aspects—as the Mediator, in which office we delight to trust Him, and as the Model, in which Character we endeavor to imitate Him. May the Holy Spirit so illuminate our minds that under both aspects our souls may be greatly blessed as we gaze upon our Lord.
I. First, then, as THE MEDIATOR. He says of Himself, as God-Man, the appointed Redeemer, the sent Son of God, “I always do those things that please Him.” This was and is true of our Lord every way. Of His Incarnation we read those memorable words—“Lo, I come: in the volume of the Book it is written of Me, I delight to do Your will, O My God: yes, Your Law is within My heart.” In the same Psalm He describes Himself as a servant whose ears had been opened or bored that He might be a servant forever. And in another place He says, “He wakens morning by morning; He wakens My ear to hear as the learned.” The Son of God was willing to come to earth to do His Father’s will and His birth at Bethlehem was one of the points in which He pleased the Father.
He was also doing the things which pleased the Father during His obscure life as the carpenter’s Son. We know but little of it, and it is vain, by pencil or tongue, to attempt to paint what Scripture has left beneath the veil of silence. But we know this much of it, that He was about “His Father’s business” and that “He grew in favor with God and man.” He was the “holy Child Jesus,” and therefore must have done the things which pleased God. At the end of His retirement, when He came forth at 30 years of age, the Father set the seal upon the past as well as bore witness to the present when He spoke with an audible voice from the excellent Glory, and said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
His subjection to His earthly parents and His reverent silence till the hour was come to speak were things which pleased the Father. When He entered upon His public and active service He began well, for He commenced, by an act of which He said, “Thus it becomes us to fulfill all righteousness.” It was at His Baptism that the Father expressed His pleasure in Him and the Spirit descended upon Him. His Baptism was an emblem and a type of the perfect obedience which He intended to render—it set forth His immersion into depths of suffering, His sinking in death and burial, His
rising again from the tomb—and His ascension into Heaven for us. Doubtless, all these are to be seen by the spiritual eye in the symbolic rite practiced in Jordan’s waves. Blessed are they who follow the Lamb where ever He goes!
Immediately after this our Lord was led by the Spirit into the wilderness where He was tempted of the devil. His going there and His threefold victory over the Tempter were well-pleasing to God. Did not Jehovah send His angels to minister to Him? And what was this but a token that He had pleased God by defeating the arch-enemy? Throughout His life our Lord was always acceptable to God and fulfilled in very deed that ancient Word of the Prophet Isaiah, in his 42nd chapter, at the 21st verse, in which he spoke and said, “The Lord is well-pleased for His righteousness’ sake; He will magnify the Law and make it honorable.”