By Bob Mendelsohn
#JFJAustralia @JFJAustralia Facebook/JFJAustralia
This thought was triggered when someone I didn’t know very well asked me to do something. Without thinking, but quickly obliging, I finished the fairly simple task. The person was over-the-top in thanksgiving, saying, “You are the best! Thanks so much!” they oozed. My reply was quick, “My pleasure.”
Later that morning I pondered that phrase, “my pleasure.” Was it really pleasing to me to accomplish something for this man? What’s the root of that whole idea?
In my Bible reading this week, I read Psalm 16. This is one of the psalms that informed the apostle Peter in his Shavuot sermon (Acts chapter 2). There we read
“For David says of Him, “I was always beholding the Lord in my presence. For he is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken, therefore my heart was glad and my tongue exalted. Moreover, my flesh also will abide in hope, because you will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor allow your holy one to undergo decay. You have made known to me the ways of life; you will make me full of gladness with your presence.”
Peter’s sermon continues with “Brethren, I may confidently say to you regarding the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. And so, because he was a prophet, and knew that God had sworn to him with an oath to seat one of his descendants upon his throne, he looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, that he was neither abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh suffer decay.” (Acts 2.25-31)
I love how Peter used Psalm 16 and the issue of decay to demonstrate the betterness of Yeshua compared to King David. And Peter called David a prophet. In that psalm, we read the words of verse 11:
“Thou wilt make known to me the path of life;
In Thy presence is fulness of joy;
In Thy right hand there are pleasures forever.”
There are two Hebrew words for ‘pleasure.’ The one used here is na’imot. We use the phrase “na’im m’od’when meeting someone for the first time. “Pleased to meet you.” It’s the same word used in Psalm 133, “Behold how good and how ‘pleasant’ it is for brothers to dwell together in unity.” At God’s right hand are pleasant things-- things that bring him pleasure.
Recently I hear myself praying with regularity something like these words. “God, let me cause you to smile at the end of my day. Let me bring you pleasure today.” It’s as if I want to be at God’s right hand, where his pleasures are.
Psalm 149 has another Hebrew word often translated “pleasure” in English.
“For the LORD takes pleasure in His people; He will beautify the afflicted ones with salvation.” (v. 4)
The word here in Psalm 149 is ratsa and carries a deeper meaning. “To be pleased, to delight in, to enjoy, to be accepted.” (LXX: eudokia) And this word forms the root of the word used in Lev. 26:41 where the translators usually use the phrase “make amends” or “pay for their sins.” (LXX: eudokia)
Isaiah 53 is the go-to chapter for many messianic Jews in showing who Yeshua is, as the predicted Son of God and Saviour of the world. There we read of his suffering in painful detail. I don’t know of any detail harder to read than the one found in verse 10 there, “Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him, putting him to death.” No father should ever have to watch his son be painfully treated. No loving father can be part of the put-to-death situation about which we read there in Isaiah’s prophecy. But here it is, in black and white. It pleased the Father to crush/ bruise the Son. Why?
Thus, I believe God is well pleased with us when we receive the grace of forgiveness. God shows his pleasure when we are forgiven of our sins and sit with him at his right hand. If you are a believer in Yeshua, you know you cannot make amends, nor pay for your own sins. You know that God in his mercy has rescued us from our own devices and our own self-centered nature. He has paid for our sins by sending his son to earth, to die, to rise from the dead, and lives to make intercession for us.
One final lexicographical word, in Matthew 17, where we encounter the Father’s good pleasure at the Transfiguration, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased (Greek: eudokia). That’s the same word used in Leviticus 26 and Psalm 149. Our being forgiven highlights God’s pleasure.
In the book The Pleasures of God by John Piper, a full chapter (and many continued references throughout the book) is dedicated to the “Pleasure of God in His Son.” What made the Father pleased was the relationship the Father had with the Son from before eternity and certainly before Creation. Yeshua is seated at the right hand of the Father. We who are born again, forgiven of our sins, are brought near into that same enthronement. Hence other chapter titles include the “pleasure of God” in all he does, in election, in Creation, and so many other aspects of the Father’s satisfaction (another key Piper category).
In my recent prayers, wondering aloud if at the end of each day God would be pleased, I’ve come to understand that when I’m in the beloved, hiding in the person of his son, sitting with him in victory at the Father’s right hand, the Father is well pleased. If I ask God today, and I invite you to join me, if he would do that for me (and for us, really), I think he just might say, “My pleasure.”
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