the Lord Jesus Christ on the
morning of his resurrection encountered Mary there in the garden. And we've been singing about
that. I was pleased to see that our
hymn made reference to Mary's encounter with her master there
in the garden. And it's a lovely thing for us
to remember the tenderness with which the Lord spoke to Mary
Magdalene that morning. His friend, Mary, was there mourning
her master. His follower, as she was, had
come to the garden to seek her Lord. and she saw a gardener
there. And the tomb was empty. And in her questioning mind,
in her uncertainty, she says to the gardener, sir, tell me
where you've taken him. If you've taken him away, tell
me where you've laid him. that I may take his body away. Have you ever thought about what
Mary was going to do that morning with her Saviour's body? How
would that woman have managed to gather up her Saviour's body
and make her way out of the garden at that time of the day? How
would she have done it? but she just wanted her Savior's
body. She just wanted to be able to
take him and give him a decent burial. What must have been going
through her mind? Even in his death, they couldn't
let his body rest in peace. They had to come, they had to
open his tomb, they had to take him out, they had to destroy
the peace of this situation. Show me where you've laid him
and I'll take him away. And I'm so pleased that the Lord
spoke to her with those tender words, Mary, Mary. Oh, he loved her and she loved
him. And in that dawning moment, in
that realisation that this was the Lord, as she fell at his
feet, as she clutched his hands, as she wanted there to worship
him and tell him how much she loved him, the Lord says, wait
a minute, Mary. There's time for that in the
future. You've got work to do this morning. Go speak to my disciples. John chapter 20, verse 17, we
read these words. Jesus saith to her, "'Touch me
not, for I am not yet ascended to my father. "'But go to my
brethren and say unto them, "'I ascend unto my father and your
father, "'and to my God and your God.'" Mary wanted to embrace
her master, to kiss his hands, to bow at his feet, but the Lord
would not have that. Not that this was some ephemeral
body, ethereal body, not that this was some ghostly body that
he had that couldn't be touched. The very fact that he told her
not to touch him was argument against that. This was the Lord
in his resurrection body, certainly a special body. We've been thinking
about that, but that was not the purpose of Jesus saying,
don't touch me. He wanted his disciples to be
informed about his resurrection. He wanted his mourning people,
his fearful people, to be informed that he was risen from the dead,
that he had taken his life back again. He had fulfilled all the
obligations of the demands of the justice of God, and he had
defeated Satan. And so he sends Mary back as
a messenger to the disciples. Go to my brethren, my brethren,
sinful men, Sinners, all of them, but the Lord Jesus Christ calls
them His brethren. Such is the union that Christ
has with his people. Such is the union that he has
with his church. He the head, we his body. To identify himself with us as
brothers, as heirs and joint heirs, as those brethren in one
family brought by adoption into the very family of God. And he
reinforces that, and I'm sure you've noticed these words before.
He says, my father and your father, my God and your God. This language teaches us about
the Lord Jesus Christ's mediatorial office. Don't let that phrase
frighten you. We know that he is our mediator,
one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. And we speak about the work of
Christ as the mediator, as his mediatorial office. role his
mediatorial office. And this speaks of that role
that he performed. He came as a man to the earth. God had prepared him a body. He came as a man in that body. He became one with us. He took upon himself our flesh. And in that mediatorial capacity,
he acknowledged God not only as his Father, but as his God. As his God. God is our Father,
but he is our God. And we honour him as our God,
as the Lord Jesus Christ did honour him as his God and was
obedient to him as his God in that mediatorial capacity. And this does not suggest that
the Lord Jesus Christ was in any way inferior or lesser to
the Father, for we know by the word of God, taking Scripture
with Scripture and rightly dividing the word of truth, that there
is three persons in the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
and there is an equality in the Godhead. The Lord Jesus Christ,
however, in this mediatorial office became our representative. He entered into our world and
into time. He took upon himself our flesh. And he, as man, acknowledged
God. He was a servant to God. And his role in the covenant
purposes of God, covenant of grace, we mentioned earlier,
we call it the covenant of peace. That role was a role that saw
the Lord Jesus Christ taking upon himself all of the obligations
of covenant purpose in order that he would satisfy God's demands
upon his chosen people. And when he talks about God his
Father, and when he talks about God as his God, it reminds us
of that union that the Lord Jesus Christ took with fallen man. He was sinless, and yet he became
one with us. It's a phrase that the apostles
picked up and used in their own writing. They were obviously
struck with the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ acknowledged
his father as his God. And we discover it here in the
introduction to the book of Ephesians, being employed by Paul as he
writes to that church there at Ephesus. Ephesians chapter one
and verse three. Let's just read it again. Blessed
be the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. The God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. You see, he's recognizing here
that the Lord Jesus Christ has come as a man, and that was the
point. This intercessory work This mediatorial
work required that the Lord Jesus Christ took upon himself our
flesh, that he became one of us in order to represent us in
God's covenant purposes. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in heavenly places in Christ. According as he hath
chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should
be holy and without blame before him in love. This union that
there is between Christ and his people. Verse 5, having predestinated
us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself according
to the good pleasure of his will. The God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ directs us to understand this mediatorial role that the
Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled and satisfied. And when we talk about
blessing God, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, when we talk about blessing God, we invariably mean, when
it's employed in Scripture, that we are honoring him. We are recognizing
His dignity. We are recognizing His preeminence. We are bringing before Him those
things which we offer to Him as our worship and as our prayers,
as that God who is over us. And we are acknowledging His
glory, His majesty, His dominion, His dignity, His power. Blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. But Paul goes
on to say, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings
in heavenly places in Christ. So here's the same word, blessed
be God who has blessed us. being used rather in a slightly
different sense but to speak about the goodness of God that
he dispenses upon his people, the giving of blessings, the
giving of the needs that we have, the satisfying of them and the
provision of those things which are good for us. And so we bless
God by honoring him and worshiping him and he blesses us by giving
us those things which are needful to us. And indeed, it's spoken
of as all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. We'll touch upon that in a little
while. But here we see this blessing,
this twofold aspect of blessing or blessedness. We bless God
and God blesses us. And in a sense, we understand
that. We understand that we bring our
honour to God, and that has been the way of his people from the
beginning of time. In the Old Testament, the psalmist
writes in Psalm 103, it is David who is the author, and he says
in the first verse of that, blessed be the Lord. Blessed the Lord,
O my soul. and all that is within me, bless
his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and
forget not all of his benefits. You see, that's exactly what
Paul's saying. All those years later in this
New Testament dispensation, he's picking up exactly the same theme
as David. Bless the Lord, O my soul, who
gives us all these blessings. We honour him and the Lord blesses
us with his goodness. Who hath blessed us, says Paul,
according to the good pleasure of his will. But you know, there's
another aspect of this that I want to touch upon. In the covenant
of peace, in these covenant relationships that we have with God through
the Lord Jesus Christ, there are countless blessings for the
elect. We've been thinking of some of
them as we took communion this morning. We are able to share
in the broken body of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are able to
participate in a memorial service, in a memorial feast that tells
us of the blessedness we possess because of the sacrifice, because
of the representative work of the Lord Jesus Christ. He has
made us holy. He has made us without blame
before God, that there is a purity, a perfectness about the new creation,
the new man that has been created in us by the work of God, the
Holy Spirit. And while we are well aware of
our own inadequacies and our own failures and our own sinfulness
in this flesh, indeed, the Word of God tells us that in the flesh
there is no good thing. We know that he has made something
new, a new creation which has been forged, which has been created
within the souls of men, such that we are in Christ, perfected
in him. The blessings of God to us. But here's the thing I wanted
to show you, that for all of these blessings that give us
so much joy in this world, we ought not to forget that there
is a blessedness goes to God, too, and that while he blesses
us and causes us to rejoice in his goodness towards us, the
Lord God, out of those very same acts of his generosity to us,
takes pleasure in the giving of them. So while we recognize
the blessedness of God as us offering him our worship, God
takes pleasure in those offerings. God takes pleasure in his giving. God is pleased to bless his people. This afternoon, I want to think
with you for a little while about what makes God happy. What makes
God happy? What is it that makes our God
happy? You think that's a strange way
to put it. Well, perhaps it is. But the word of God tells us
throughout that God takes pleasure. He takes pleasure in many different
things. This afternoon we're going to
think about five things that makes God happy. And the first
one is this, the election of grace pleases God. The election of grace pleases
God. Our God and Father has a people
that he has loved from eternity, and yet a people that he knew
would go astray. A people that he knew would follow
their father Adam into sin, would set up a breach, would, by their
disobedience and by the entrance in of sin, cause a separation
to take place between God and man. We are sinners. We are sinners
in nature. We are sinners because of what
we are. We are sinners because we are
people of flesh. And because of that sin, there
is a gulf that has been formed between God and man. Nevertheless,
the Lord God loved a people. He loved the people before time
began. He loved the people in the eternal
dimensions. He loved the people and he caused
that love to gather that people in his purpose. And he chose
out that people from amongst the fallen sons and daughters
of Adam. And he brought them to himself. And it pleased him. It pleased
him to gather that people to himself. He formed a plan. He had a purpose and he formed
a plan. He predestinated that people
to be made like Christ, their Savior. We sometimes think that
the Lord Jesus Christ came with a body that looks like ours.
No, no. Adam was created with a body
that looks like Christ's body. That body of Christ's was the
body after which we were formed in pattern. And the Lord Jesus
Christ came in a body that had been prepared by God the Father
for him, in order that he might have this body like ours. and
he represented us as the second man, as the last Adam. He went to the cross as the representative
of those that it pleased God to place his love upon. And there is a work which has
been made called adoption, by which the Lord Jesus Christ,
through his work on the cross, has brought us into the family
of God, such that we who can say now our Father, are merely
voicing the words that the Lord Jesus Christ himself has spoken. He said, my Father and your Father,
my God and your God. And we, because of Christ's work,
acknowledge the fatherhood of our God. It is God's pleasure
to bring this people to himself. And this was a desire that he
had above all else. For love's sake, our God takes
pleasure in decreeing, in promising, in securing the good of his people. He justifies, he sanctifies,
he calls, and he glorifies, and he has bestowed all his goodness
upon us at his good pleasure. First Samuel chapter 12 and verse
22, we read these words. For the Lord will not forsake
his people for his great name's sake. Why? Because it hath pleased
the Lord to make you his people. What makes the Lord happy? It
has pleased the Lord. to make you his people. What an honour. What a wonder
that God should be pleased to make someone like me his son,
someone like you his daughter, to make us his children and to
deal with every problem that arose because of our sin and
the breach and the gulf which had been formed because of it.
No wonder Paul could say, blessed be the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, for he hath blessed us with these blessings
for the pleasure of his purpose. What else makes God pleased? What else makes our God happy? Our God is pleased with his Son.
Our God is pleased with the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, when
we think about the revelation of God, we know from the Apostle
John's statements that the Lord Jesus Christ is the eternal word. Now, why is that word, word,
used to describe the Savior? because he was the one who spoke,
because he was the one who revealed, because he is the one who is
audible. In the beginning, God created
the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and
void. And God said, let there be light. God spoke. Who spoke? All the persons of the God? No,
it was with the Lord Jesus Christ who spoke. He is the Word. He
is the Word. And so when Christ spoke, because
without him was not anything made, the Lord Jesus Christ is
the eternal Word of God. And so whenever we encounter
God revealing himself, Whether it's in the Old Testament or
the New Testament, it is Christ that is speaking. And the Lord
said, it's Christ who's speaking. It's not the Father, it's not
the Holy Spirit. It's Christ who is speaking,
the Lord said, because he's the word. But there are one or two notable
differences to that principle. And largely those differences
are when the voice comes from heaven that says, this is my
beloved son. in whom I am well pleased." And
throughout the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ, we discover
that God the Father makes a testimony about God the Son here upon earth
when God the Father speaks to us. In addition to the revelation
of the Word, God the Father, as it were, reinforces that testimony
by saying, this is my beloved Son. in whom I am well pleased."
So the Lord Jesus Christ pleases his Father. In Isaiah, we hear about the
prophet saying to God, whom shall, or responding to God when the
word is heard, whom shall I send? But we read these words that
Isaiah speaks and we understand them much more significantly
in the context of this purpose of God to redeem a people for
himself. So that, as it were, the Godhead
says, Whom shall I send? And the Lord Jesus Christ replies,
Here am I, send me. And it pleased the father to
send the son. It pleased the father to send
the son into the world to prepare a body for him. to send him into
the world to be the redeemer of his people because it pleased
the Lord to gather his elect to himself whom he loved. And
so here is pleasure upon pleasure, happiness upon happiness that
comes to God. God, desiring the deliverance
of his people out of that bondage of sin and from the curse of
the law, was pleased to establish a covenant of grace and peace.
and he was pleased to send his own son into the world in order
to secure their salvation. All spiritual blessings in heavenly
places, they come to us in Christ. We have an inheritance in Christ. And all of those blessings are
ours to possess now. Just because they're heavenly
blessings doesn't mean to say that we'll get them when we go
to heaven. No, the idea of heavenly blessings is to speak to us of
its certainty, its It's continuity, it's enduringness, it's durability. The fact that these are heavenly
blessings are blessings which have been established in the
mind and purpose and will of God and are deposited and bestowed
upon sinful men here and now. These are the blessings of God's
eternal covenant. This is the blessing of justification,
of being made right with God. These are the blessings of God
saying, I have found a substitute. One has stood as surety for his
people and God himself has adorned that people with every spiritual
blessing in Christ Jesus. and he was pleased to do it.
He delighted to do it. Such was his love for that people
that he took pleasure in doing exactly that. Lord Jesus Christ came into the
world and he pleased his father. in so doing. But we discover
something else about the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. We
discover that there was a price to pay for the redemption of
his people. And Isaiah tells us in chapter
53, verse 10, it pleased the Lord to bruise him. It pleased
the Lord to bruise him. Have you ever thought about the
inconsistency of that statement? This is my beloved son in whom
I am well pleased. Perfect, perfect. He was obedient
in all of his ways. He honoured his father in everything
that he said, everything that he did. He only spoke as he heard
from his father. The Lord Jesus Christ satisfied
his father, pleased his father in everything he said and everything
he did. And yet it pleased the Lord to
bruise him. This takes us down to the very
foundation of the purposes of God and the redemption of his
people. Sometimes preachers, theologians will suggest that
this was just the way that God chose. No, this wasn't just the
way that God chose. This was the only way. It had
to be that God himself took the sin of his people and carried
it away. It had to be that one was found,
one was discovered who could carry the weight of righteous
indignation, who could carry the weight of judgment, who could
carry the very blow of God's righteous anger against sin. And no man was fit for that.
save the God-man who came and represented the people of God's
pleasure. And the only way that that could
be secured was if he would bow under the sword of judgment and
receive those blows at God's hand. And God was pleased to
bruise his son, because that was the only way that he might
redeem his people. It pleased God to bruise his
suffering servant, that he should become the substitute for his
people. For by that means and method,
the pleasure of the Lord that is the elect of God, that people
that had been loved before time, that people that made God happy,
the elect of God, the pleasure of the Lord would prosper in
the hand of the suffering servant. The Lord Jesus Christ was the
great kinsman redeemer. He was kin to us because he was
one of us. He was redeemer to us because
by the shedding of his blood, by the opening of his wounds,
by the wrath of God entering in upon him, by that propitiatory
sacrifice that he made, he pleased God and he brought God's people
to himself. The Lord is pleased with this
people that he has chosen. He's pleased in his son and he
was pleased to bruise his son. The Lord is pleased with a fourth
thing also. He is pleased to gather his people
through the preaching of the gospel. He's pleased to gather
his elect whom Christ has delivered by the sacrifice of himself through
the preaching of his gospel. Now we praise the Lord when we
come together with an understanding of these great truths, these
great doctrines of his sovereign purpose. We praise him. And we
delight to please God. We are pleased to please God
in our worship. And the gospel, the truths of
the gospel of God's purpose that we rehearse, that we restate,
that we talk to each other about, that we share together when we
come, that very activity pleases God. He is pleased to build up
his people through the preaching of the gospel. This is such an
incongruous thing. You look at what we're doing
today, and the world would scratch its head. They would say, what
are these people going in there and sitting in there for three
quarters of an hour for? Why are they sitting listening
to this man standing up in front of them, speaking and telling
them about the Bible? Why would you do that? There
are so many other things that they would want to be doing.
And yet is it not true that we rejoice in doing this? This is
not a hardship. This is a pleasure for the Lord's
people. to share the gospel of our God,
to share in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ and speak to one
another about these things. We delight in these truths, and
the Lord delights to use those very truths to gather us to himself,
because that's what's happening here and now. The Lord is gathering
his people. Yes, we talk about the calling,
we talk about conversion, we talk about the Holy Spirit taking
the gospel and the living word and applying it to the souls
of men, and there is a conversion experience that must happen upon
every child of God to bring them from that state of deadness,
that state of rebellion, where their wills have to be suppressed,
they have to be made willing. In the day of his power, yes,
that's conversion, we talk about it, but we feed on the gospel
all the days of our life after that. And while we were strangers
to the gospel and indeed we had an antipathy against the gospel,
we would perhaps have hated the gospel and we would have said,
not again. But now, we lap it up. Now we rejoice to hear it. Now we want to know more about
the Lord Jesus Christ and what he has done. And the God of all
grace is pleased to take that gospel message and feed our souls. Week by week, month by month,
year by year, the gospel builds us up as individuals and as his
church. The saints are gathered to God.
The saints grow in a knowledge of the truth through the preaching
of the gospel. The gospel is so important, brothers
and sisters. It gathers the elect. It brings
in the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But it also pleases
God. It pleases God that we rehearse
these things in our midst, that we talk about these things, that
we speak about these things. It delights heaven when the Church
of Jesus Christ gets together. to talk about him and to preach
his name. First Corinthians chapter one,
verse 21, it says, for after that in the wisdom of God, the
world by wisdom knew not God. It pleased God by the foolishness
of preaching to save them that believe. Collectively as a church,
we are being saved by the preaching of the gospel. And individually,
we are saved by that self-same gospel. Paul could say to the
Galatians in chapter 1 verse 15, When it pleased God who separated
me from my mother's womb and called me by His grace to reveal
His Son in me, that I might preach Him amongst the heathen. Immediately
I conferred not with flesh and blood." It pleased God. It pleased
God. It pleased God to save the apostle
Paul. It pleased God to gather his
people to himself. The gospel pleases God. What else pleases God? Here's
the fifth one. The performance and the accomplishment
of his will pleases him. The unfolding of history pleases
God. All of the things that are happening
in this world please God. Oh man, how do you get your head
around that? All of the sin and all of the
wickedness and all of the badness that's in this world. And yet,
we have to take these things back to their origins. This is
God's purpose. Yes, sin is in the world, and
the sin of man is a rebelliousness against the will of God, and
yet God is working all things together to accomplish his purpose
and his will, which is his pleasure. And throughout scripture, we
read about it pleased the Lord. It pleased the Lord to do this.
It pleased the Lord to do that. And he is accomplishing his will
in all of the events of this world. And soon we will have
the pleasure of looking back and seeing how exactly everything
fitted together to the accomplishment of that purpose of our God. We make our plans. We try to
organise things. A holiday. A new job. And yet we discover that there
are so many things that are outwith our control that we pretty much
can't organise anything. It takes just about as much as
we can do to make a journey on the train from Cumbria down to
Wolverhampton without getting it all wrong. And yet, our God is in control
of every eventuality. If he's not, then your God's
too small. But when we understand who he is and what he is doing
and what he is accomplishing and how the fulfillment of the
purposes of his will cause him pleasure, all of this is doing
exactly what God intends and desires. Psalm 115 verse three
says, our God is in the heavens. He hath done whatsoever he hath
pleased. Our God is in the heavens, he's
done whatsoever he hath pleased. And the Lord Jesus Christ taught
us when we pray, that prayer that he taught his disciples,
we call it the Lord's Prayer. He taught his disciples to pray,
thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. The will of God, who would doubt,
is accomplished in heaven. And the will of God is being
accomplished on the earth. Nothing that the Lord Jesus Christ
ever asked from his Father was not forthcoming from his Father.
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That wasn't
a request which fell on dead ears. deaf ears, that was the
recognition of what was happening in time and in the purpose of
God. Whatsoever the Lord pleased,
says the psalmist in 135 verse six, whatsoever the Lord pleased,
that did he in the heaven and in earth, in the seas and all
deep places. Our heavenly Father seeks faith
He seeks righteousness. He seeks obedience in the lives
of his people. And it pleases him to find it
there. And you say, well, how is that
now? Because I know that I'm not obedient. and I know that I'm not righteous
and I know that I'm not holy. If I know that as a sinful creature,
how can God who knows and sees all things possibly imagine that
I'm holy and righteous and pure and perfect? because he sees
us in the Lord Jesus Christ. He sees us in that covenant relationship
that we have in Christ. These spiritual blessings that
he is pleased to dispense so liberally to us are spiritual
blessings that we possess from heavenly places, all spiritual
blessings in heavenly places, that we should be holy and without
blame before him in love. It pleases God that he should
make us so, and he makes us so because it pleases him. Oh, the blessedness of God's
covenant of grace and peace. Oh, the wisdom that he should
design the way of salvation by Jesus Christ, that he may at
once and the very same time dispense blessing, bestow blessing, and
receive blessing from us, because that's exactly what he's doing.
He's dispensing blessing, he's bestowing blessing upon his people,
and he is blessed by his people. He calls us holy and he makes
us such in the Lord Jesus Christ. He declares us blameless, justified,
as if I'd never sinned. God once looked upon Adam in
the garden and declared his handiwork very good. And now he looks upon
the garden of his church as he sees them in the person of Christ,
and he declares himself well pleased. This is my beloved Son,
in whom I am well pleased. And this is my beloved Son, in
whom I am well pleased. And this is my beloved daughter
in whom I am well pleased. And here's another one of my
beloved children in whom I am well pleased. What pleases our
God but the accomplishment of his purposes in the salvation
of his people? Here's a final thought, and with
this, we're done. Paul concludes this little passage
at the beginning of Ephesians in verse six by saying, to the
praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath made us accepted
in the Beloved. What pleases our God, pleases
His people. And what pleases His people,
pleases our God. There is a mutual pleasure in
the ways and purposes of the great God, our Saviour. And our hearts must be hard indeed
for us not to rejoice in these things that Christ has accomplished
for us. They must be cold and barren
if we are not going to praise him for his works and accomplishments. God has made us accepted in the
beloved, and we rise up with passion in our hearts with enthusiasm
in our spirit, with joy in our mouths, to praise Him for all
that He has done, for all the happiness that He has wrought
in our life's experience. And we do so in the knowledge
that that makes our God happy too. Amen.