How Jesus Pleased the Father — Zac Poonen

It's really a joy to be here again. What has been on my heart to share during this conference is the subject of having the mind of Christ. So before we get to that I want to show you a verse in 2nd Corinthians and chapter 5.

Paul's Ambition to Please the Lord

2nd Corinthians chapter 5. Here Paul speaks of having an ambition. The world is full of people with ambition. People have different ambitions. In politics, those who are in business, those who are academics and scientists, those who really accomplish something in the world, in any field, in any field, are those with ambition.

And even in Christian work there are people with ambition but the wrong type of ambition. Ambition to be a famous preacher or to be internationally known as a speaker or to build a mega church and to be known around the country as a great pastor.

All types of ambitions people have. Religious people, non-religious people. What was the ambition of the apostle Paul? See Paul has been given to us by God as an example because there are only two people in the whole Bible who said follow me.

One was Jesus and the other was Paul. Jesus said follow me. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 11 verse 1, follow me as I follow Christ. And so if the Holy Spirit has told us to follow Paul as he followed Christ, that's a good example to follow.

And I believe that every true servant of the Lord should be able to say like Paul, follow me as I follow Christ. Unfortunately there are very few like that in the world. Most people say don't look at me.

My family life is a mess but I'm going to teach you God's word. I would say to such a person he should stop preaching God's word. If his family life is in a mess he should go and set his family right and not bring more dishonor to the Lord's name.

But there's so much of this people who are after money, preachers. They can't say follow me as I follow Christ because Christ was not after money. He never in his life asked anybody for money. So how can today's preachers ever say follow me as I follow Christ?

This is the Babylonian state of Christendom we're living in. And in the midst of such a world we have the example of Paul. If you go to scriptures and you see how Paul has been my example for many many years.

Holiness, Church-Building, and the Will of God

See Jesus never taught us how to plant churches. Paul did that. Jesus showed us how to live the life and we can look at him to live the life. But we're not just interested in living a godly life. We're interested in planting churches.

Jesus did not come to earth to make holy people. He said I came to build. I will build my church. And if I'm just a holy person and I'm not part of a local church I have missed the will of God. Because Jesus has not come to make holy people.

He said I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. So it's easier to live a holy life than to build a church. I'll tell you that. And that's why a lot of people shrink away from that.

They just want to live individual holy lives. They have missed the will of God. So 2nd Corinthians 5 Paul speaks about his ambition in verse 9. Therefore also we have as our ambition whether at home and if you if you want to know what is home he says in verse 2 and 3 our home is in heaven.

That's where our home is. Here on earth we're not at home. We're absent from home. So he says whether I'm in heaven or absent from home it's the same thing. It says in verse 9 absent from the body to be at home with the Lord.

But whether I'm there at home with my Lord or absent from my Lord here in my body on earth I have only one ambition and that is to be pleasing to him. So what does that mean? Think of what your ambition will be when you get to heaven.

There you will have no ambition to make money because it's there's no money there. There'll be no ambition to be a great scientist or a businessman or a preacher because there's no preaching. There's no opportunity to build a mega church.

In heaven what will your ambition be? It will be to please the Lord and Paul says that is exactly the same as my ambition on earth. In other words Paul was going in a certain direction on earth. Please seek to please the Lord.

Please the Lord. Please the Lord. Please the Lord and then he died and he entered heaven and he's continuing in the same direction. He doesn't have to change direction or if the Lord comes such a person will not have to change direction.

He just continues the same way. But a lot of Christians will have to change direction when Christ comes because they're following some other direction here right now. Their whole passion in life is not to please the Lord.

It's something else and suddenly the Lord comes and say hey now we got to please the Lord. If that is how it is with you I want to say to you you're completely out of the will of God. The only person who can say I'm in God's will is the man who can honestly say that if the Lord were to come tonight I will not have to change the direction of my life.

It'll go exactly the same way as I'm going right now. Every day of my life I'm seeking to please the Lord and I enter heaven. I just continue in the same direction. I want to ask you my dear brothers and sisters to examine yourself in the light.

Don't look around at shallow Christendom around you and compare yourselves with other churches and other Christians and pat yourself on the back that you are better than them. I know you're better but that doesn't mean you're pleasing to the Lord.

This must be your goal. This is the way to press on to perfection. Paul says in relation to this follow me as I follow Christ. So if my ambition on earth has got to be exactly the same as my ambition when I get to heaven, I have to do something about my way of thinking because it's my way of thinking that's got to change.

It's because I think in a certain way that I make a certain ambition in my life. Think of a scientist. He thinks in a certain way it's a great thing to pursue science and to invent something and he pursues that.

Or someone else thinks it's a great thing to do a business and make a lot of money and become a millionaire and he pursues that. Or somebody says the great thing is to be a preacher, to be known as a famous preacher or to build a big church.

And that's his goal. All that will disappear when Christ comes. So you don't have to be a great preacher or speaker. If you as an ordinary believer without any fantastic gifts, most believers don't have exceptional gifts.

How many believers have you heard in your whole life, in your whole life who preach in such a way that you're blessed every time you hear? A very very few in my life I have heard. Why is it God has given very few people that gift?

It shows that is not the most important thing. It's necessary. It's one of the gifts that God's given in the body. But what about all the multitudes of ordinary believers who don't have these fantastic gifts?

What's God's plan for them? They can have the same ambition that Paul had, which is to please the Lord even if they are not apostles, even if they don't preach, even if they don't plant churches. I want to say to every person here who's got perhaps zero gifts, you can live a life pleasing to the Lord and you can enter heaven and hear the Lord saying to you, well done good and faithful servant.

So for that we have to change our way of thinking. So when we think of pleasing the Lord, let me show you two verses. First of all 1 Corinthians in chapter 10. In 1 Corinthians 10 it speaks about the children of Israel who came out of Egypt and God did not want them to wander for 40 years as they did.

As soon as they came out of Egypt, God had planned a route for them and in two years they reached a place called Kadesh Barnea where they sent the spies to occupy the land. And the spies came back and said these land is filled with giants, we can't go in.

And they pulled back and then God said to them, you read that in Deuteronomy 2 verse 14, God said okay because you didn't obey me you're going to wander another 38 years in the wilderness making 40 years altogether.

And it says here that God was not pleased with them. Notice in 1 Corinthians 10. Our fathers all were under the cloud, they all passed through the Red Sea, they were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, they ate the same spiritual food, the manna that came from heaven, they drank the water that came from the rock, which is a picture of Christ.

But with most of them God was not well pleased. So there we see that out of the 600 ,000 men, God is pleased with only two of them and it says most of them it means 600 ,000 minus two. He was not happy with all those 600 ,000 people.

He was not pleased with them but he did many miracles for them. He sent the manna every day, he healed their sicknesses, he split the rock to give them water. What does this teach us? That God does miracles even for those with whom he's not pleased.

Many believers think that if God answers my prayer he must be pleased with me. No, he answered the prayer of these 600 ,000 people for 40 years. They did not miss manna one single day. They got manna from heaven every day for 40 years.

Imagine if you experienced miracles like that, wouldn't you think inwardly God must be very happy with me because he's done some miracles for me. I think people who are healed of cancer miraculously or God does miracles even among believers and they get the idea that because God's done a miracle for me, he's happy with me.

It is not true. Many Christians think because I asked God for something very difficult and he answered my prayer, God must be happy with me. No, I want to clear your mind of this deception that if God answers your prayer, he's happy with you.

Here is the clearest example. He was not happy with 600 ,000 people even though he did miracles for them every day. There's never been a group of people on the face of this earth who experienced an answer to prayer every single day for 40 years.

You may have experienced an answer to a prayer three or four times a year. These people were experiencing it every day for 40 years, but God was not pleased with them. So please remember this. Answers to prayer, God protecting us.

You know, it says the pillar of fire protected them from wild animals at night. The pillar of cloud protected them from the heat of the sun during the day, but God was not pleased with them. God can give you supernatural guidance like a pillar of fire and still it doesn't prove that God is happy with you.

It's very, very important for us to understand this. This is why the Old Testament has been given to us so that we can read and learn who are the people who made God happy and who are the people whom God was displeased with.

It's very, very important for us for this to be firmly established in my mind. And this failure of the Israelites is mentioned three times in the New Testament. Here, 1 Corinthians 10, Hebrews 3, and in the book of Jude.

Let me show you one more verse. In Matthew chapter 6, sorry, Matthew 5. In Matthew 5, it says that God, 45, Matthew 5, 45, God causes his son to rise, S-U-N, to rise on the evil and the good. He sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

So here's an atheist farmer. One side and the other side, there's a God-fearing righteous farmer. Both plant seeds. The God-fearing farmer prays that God will give him a good crop. The atheist farmer doesn't pray.

He says, there's no God. I don't believe in all that rubbish. He plants his seed. Without prayer, he gets a good crop. And the God-fearing farmer, he gets a good crop. With whom is God pleased? He sends the rain on that atheist farmer's field, and he sends the rain on the God-fearing farmer's field.

Haven't you seen that around you, how God blesses some unbelievers, the same way He blesses you? I've heard of unbelievers who've had supernatural healing from sickness, just like I've heard of believers who have it.

He makes the sun to rise on that godless atheist's field, and he makes the sun to rise on this God-fearing farmer's field. What is the difference? Sometimes that puzzles us, when we see in the material physical realm, similar things happening to believers and unbelievers, both bad and good.

So these good things don't prove anything about the person. They only prove that God is a good God. That's all. Any material, you see rain and sun, are material blessings. And material blessing only proves that God is a good God.

Think of health. Health is a tremendous blessing. But is it only God-fearing Christians who got health? No. A lot of ungodly atheists are very healthy and who live long lives beyond the age of a hundred.

Money, it's a very useful thing to have here on this earth. But is it only Christians who have money? All these people who preach that God blesses you with wealth. Well, the Muslims say that too. They say some of the richest people in the world are the Muslim kings and sheikhs in the Middle East.

So what does it prove? God gives money and health to ungodly people and also to godly people. None of these things prove that God is pleased with them. It just proves that God is a good God. It's very important for all these false concepts that are being preached by deceiving preachers to get it right out of our head.

Because even though we may not believe in the health wealth gospel, in the back of our minds sometimes we think that if God's blessed me somewhere, it must be because He's happy with me. God's answered a prayer of mine, it must be because He's happy with me.

And it's that mental confusion that I want to remove from your mind and say that does not prove that God is happy with you. Because He does that for unbelievers. He did it for the unbelieving Israelites for hundreds of thousands of them for 40 years, even when He was not pleased with them.

He does it for atheists. He does it for Muslim kings and for Hindu businessmen and all types of people. The richest people in India are not God-fearing Christians. The healthiest people in India are not God-fearing Christians.

So what is it then that pleases God? How can I say that I'm living in a way that's pleasing God? How do I know for certain that my life is pleasing to God? If it's not by material blessing, it's not by God prospering my business or giving me a job or giving me a house to live in or any of these things.

Jesus Came to Reveal a Life That Pleases the Father

When God sent Jesus to earth, the entire Christian world thinks of Christ having come only to die for our sins. That was one thing. But that took only six hours of the 33 and a half years that He lived on earth.

Listen, out of the 33 and a half years that He lived on earth, He spent six hours being crucified for our sins. That's not the only thing God sent Him for. Why did He send Him as a little baby? Why didn't He send Jesus as a full-grown man, just like He made Adam from the dust of the earth?

He could have made a man and Jesus could have appeared and said, okay, here I am. I come to die for your sins. Because dying for our sins was not the only reason why Christ came to earth. That's why He so often said, follow me.

He could never have said, follow me, if He just died on the cross for six hours. Because we are never going to do that. He could never have said, follow me, if He came as a full-grown man. Because a six-year-old boy will say, Lord Jesus, I don't know how to follow You.

You were never a six-year-old. How do you know the problems I face as a six-year-old? But there's no one who can say, Lord Jesus, you don't know what I went through. He came as a baby, right all the way up to adulthood.

You see the little footsteps of Jesus as a one-year-old, as a two-year-old, as a ten-year-old, as a teenager, footsteps that you can put your feet in to follow. There's no one on earth who can say, you don't understand what I went through.

He came lower than anybody else. Why was He born in a stable? Why was He born in a cow shed? He could have been born in a palace. He was born in a cow shed. In my entire life, I've never heard of anybody born in a cow shed.

I mean, I met numerous poor beggars and poor people in India. Never once have I heard even at that level, anybody who had to give birth in a cow shed with cows and donkeys. It's only Jesus. I don't think in the history of the world, there's ever been any other person who was born in a cow shed where the baby had to be put in that feeding trough of a cow.

Can you imagine that? Why did He come there? So that nobody could say that Jesus didn't understand the poverty into which I was born. He came underneath everybody. And when He died on the cross, that is the worst form of killing a person that's ever been invented by man.

Today, there are more merciful ways of killing people with the electric chair or a lethal injection or even hanging. It's just all over in a moment. The most painful and the most excruciatingly painful way in which people have been killed is the way the Romans discovered to crucify a man and keep him hanging there till he dies.

And Jesus came down there from birth to death to show one thing that nobody on earth can say, you don't understand what I'm going through. We need to understand this. He said, follow me. So as I was saying, Jesus didn't come just to die for our sins, as most Christians think.

That's true. And we need that. But He also came to show how God wants man to live. And that's not preached in most churches. And that's why He lived 33 and a half years. Those six hours on the cross are just to take care of our past life.

He needed to die. He needed to shed His blood and be crucified because there was no other way for the guilt of my sin to be removed. But He lived on earth to show me how I must live. That's a very, very important aspect of the reason why God sent His son.

And that's why He said, follow me. And so we need to understand how He lived. And that is why we need to understand the mind of Christ. Because we read about 600 ,000 people with whom God was not well pleased.

Now, let me show you the example of one man about whom God said, I am well pleased. It's the opposite of what we read in 1 Corinthians 10. And that's in Matthew chapter 3 and verse 17, where when Jesus was baptized, the voice from heaven said, this is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased.

Here's another thing we can learn. And if you've heard me before, you've heard me say this many times. I never get tired of saying it because I believe that's the primary message God has asked me to preach for the last 40 years.

And I'll never stop preaching it. The Old Testament prophets very often were given one burden. If you read Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Ezekiel, God gave them one burden. They only preached that one message.

And this is the burden that the Lord has given me. And I never get tired of preaching it that Jesus never did a miracle for 30 years, never preached a sermon, never did what we call Christian ministry.

And yet God said, I'm well pleased with him. Some of you who don't have any gift of music or preaching or any ministry, can God be well pleased with you? Of course. Supposing you spend your whole life without ever preaching, without ever doing a miracle, without ever experiencing a healing or any such thing.

Can your life be well pleasing to God? Of course. The example is Jesus. He never experienced one supernatural thing in 30 years. His life was a very, very ordinary life for 30 years. Never doing what things which we would call religious or spiritual.

He just went to sat in the synagogue, never preached in the synagogue. First time he preached in the synagogue was after his baptism. And his life was well pleasing to God. And if you can understand that, Lord, how did your life please the Father?

If I can discover that, I've discovered the secret to how to have my ambition to please God, that my direction of my life will never change if Christ were to come suddenly. So it is in that first 30 years of Jesus' life that you discover what it means to be well pleasing.

Compare that with the 600 ,000 Israelites about whom it is written, God was not well pleased. And here I am well pleased. Those are the people who saw miracles for 40 years and answers to prayer and supernatural experiences and God speaking from heaven, thunder and fire and everything.

God says, I'm not well pleased. Here is a person who never experienced anything supernatural for 30 years and God is well pleased. Are you like that? Are you a Christian who's really born again, but you've never had one supernatural experience in your life?

You don't even speak in tongues. Never mind. Jesus never spoke in tongues, by the way. Don't worry. You've never heard a voice from heaven, but Jesus never heard it for 30 years. You're not able to preach.

Never mind. You're not able to play music. You're not able to do any great ministry. Jesus never did anything for 30 years, what you call ministry and religious work. How was He pleasing to the Father then?

Because He did what His Father wanted Him to do every day. That is the secret. If you want to know what is the secret of a life well-pleasing to the Father, turn with me to John chapter 6 in verse 38.

John chapter 6 in verse 38 we read, Jesus said, I have come down from heaven. I always call this the one-line autobiography of Jesus Christ. An autobiography is a life story written by the same person, Himself, about Himself.

And here is Jesus' life story that He says about Himself in one sentence. I came from heaven, and what did I do for 33 and a half years on earth? Never did my own will, but only the will of my Father.

That was what pleased the Father. My dear brothers and sisters, if you are gripped by this, I tell you it will change your life. If you're gripped by one thing, that the only way you can please the Father is if you follow Jesus and the way He lived in those, I don't say 33 years, because then you'll think of miracles and preaching and all that.

Let me say the first 30 years. Never doing His own will, but only the will of the Father. In other words, putting His own self-will to death every day and doing what pleased the Father. For example, He had to grow up and obey Joseph and Mary, which I'm sure was not easy.

It's not easy for any of our children to obey us. They've got a will that they have to put to death if they are to obey us. They have to say no to their own will when they obey their daddy or mummy. Jesus had to put His own will to death because in His case it was even more difficult because our children don't have as much wisdom as we parents have.

All of us parents have a lot more wisdom than our children. But there was one child who lived on this earth who had more wisdom than his parents, only one, and that was Jesus. And so imagine a child who has more wisdom than his parents, and he can see the wrong decisions his parents make, the wrong attitudes his parents have.

And when such a person tells this 10-year-old to do something he obeys, that really requires the crucifixion of his own self-will. You see, if you want to know what that means, it's like working in an office where your boss knows less than you of the job, and you have to submit to him.

He doesn't know 10 of what you know about that job, but he's the boss, and he tells you to do it, and you've got to do it. And you can see how painful that can be. That's exactly how Jesus was as a little boy, obeying imperfect parents and seeing Joseph and Mary fighting and quarreling with each other.

I hope you realize that they were all covenant people who were defeated by sin, and not despising them. It's very, very important for us to see this. There's an Old Testament verse in Leviticus in chapter 22.

Christ as the Sinless Sacrifice

I want you to turn. You see, in the book of Leviticus, you read how God was explaining the seriousness of sin, and how you had to kill a lamb as a sacrifice for your sin, which is portraying Christ who would come later on.

And here he tells us the type of lamb that you should select. I mean, you have many lambs, and some of them may be defective. So turn Leviticus chapter 22. Leviticus chapter 22 and verse 18. Leviticus 22 verse 18.

Speak to Aaron and say, if any of the house of Israel who wants to present his offering, when he brings his offering, for it to be accepted, for you to be accepted, verse 19, it must be a male without defect.

That's the point. Without defect. And look how much that is emphasized. Whatever has a defect, you shall not offer it. It will not be accepted. When a man offers a sacrifice of offerings to the peace offerings, to fulfill a vow or feel offering, it must be from the herd of the flock, verse 21, the last one, it must be perfect.

There must be no defect in it. They must, it must not be blind or fractured or maimed or having a running sore or eczema or scabs. You shall not offer to the Lord or make them an offering on the altar to the Lord in respect of an ox or a lamb.

If it has an overgrown or stunted member, you may present it for a freewill offering, but it cannot be offered as a sacrifice. And the priests were told you shall not accept any such offerings. Look at the emphasis on perfection in that lamb, symbolizing that finally the lamb of God that had to die on the cross, there could not be one sin in him.

That means the offering of Jesus when he died on the cross had to be an offering where in his entire life, now just think of this, in his entire life he could not have had one dirty thought in thirty and three and a half years.

Remember the Bible says he was tempted exactly like us, Hebrews 4 .15. You and I know how difficult it is to live one day without sinning, without a single bad thought, without a single unkind word, without a single angry word.

I'm just talking about 24 hours, one day or 12 hours, just the daytime hours. Without a single sinful action, without a single sinful attitude in our heart towards somebody, without jealousy, without pride, without looking down on someone, even for a moment.

If Jesus had despised somebody for two seconds, he would have sinned. He would have been a lamb with defect. No wrong attitude, no wrong thought, no wrong word, no wrong deed and no wrong motive in doing.

You know you can do something good and then the motive is to get honor or you feel a little proud that people appreciated what you did, sin. Immediately Jesus could no longer be a sacrifice for our sin.

So you can see what a tremendously difficult thing it was for Jesus to live 33 and a half years like that. You know most Christians think of the pain Jesus went through on the cross and oh how terrible it must have been to be hammered and nailed and crown of thorns and whipped and mocked and all that.

They concentrate on those six hours. There are other human beings who've gone through that type of, you know the apostle Peter was crucified and there are other Christians who've been crucified at different times.

Even recently we heard of some Christians who were crucified in Iraq or Syria or somewhere. There are human beings who have suffered that type of pain. That was not the greatest thing that Jesus did. He died on the cross of course took our sins but the most difficult thing was not the cross.

It was living 33 and a half years day by day by day by day by day without ever having one sinful thought, ever speaking one sinful word, without ever doing one sinful action, without ever having a single wrong attitude towards a single human being and without ever doing anything with a motive other than the glory of God.

To me that was the greatest miracle of Jesus' life. It was not raising the dead. Raising the dead He could do like that. It didn't, no effort at all. And this is how He lived. And as the Father from heaven saw Jesus struggling to live like this.

Now if Jesus didn't have to struggle. Now a lot of people don't understand that He lived on earth as a man. He was God of course. Even on earth He was God. That's why He could accept worship from people.

People worshiped Him. He didn't tell them to get up like the angels and Peter would do. He accepted it and He forgave people's sins. Nobody can do that except God. But even though He was God, He did not use the resources of God to overcome sin.

He did not use the privileges of God when He was on earth. For example God cannot be tempted. That's one of His privileges. It says in James chapter 1, God cannot be tempted. But Jesus was tempted. So how did He overcome?

How did He live this life which we find difficult to live for one day? That He lived for 33 and a half years. We need to understand that. I mean if this is the way that Jesus pleased this Father in heaven, I for one want to find out.

I don't know about you. I want to find out. I'm not satisfied with ministry because I know a lot of people who are in ministry are not pleasing to God. I want to find out how Jesus pleased God without any ministry, without any preaching, without doing any miracle, without casting out any demons, just by His life.

If I can find that out, I have found the secret of pleasing God. Then I can ensure that the direction of my life will not change if Christ were to come today. I just continue the same direction. So if your ambition is not to be a great preacher, or a miracle worker, or to have a great ministry, or to be recognized in the church, or to be an elder in a church, or some crazy worldly religious ambition like that.

If your ambition is to please God, you'll want to know the answer to this. Turn with me to Hebrews in chapter 4. I'm trying to explain to you what the mind of Christ was like. A mind that only was set on pleasing the Father, not a mind set on ministry.

A lot of Christians, their mind is set on ministry and that's why they go astray. And it looks so nice. They say there's a world to be reached. There's dying without Christ. We got to go and reach them.

It sounds very adventurous. People go to Mexico to serve the Lord. It's actually just to ease their conscience that they've done something for the poor people. People come to India. So-called missionary work.

Waste of money. If God has not called them, then it's disobedience to go to India or Mexico or anywhere. A lot of people go to all these places. It's evangelical tourism. A lot of churches arrange mission trips to Mexico to build houses for people.

It's evangelical tourism. They enjoy going to a place and get a satisfaction out of helping poor people. You think that's why Jesus came to earth? Just to get some satisfaction out of helping poor people.

Most Christians don't have a clue as to how to please the Father because they haven't studied the scriptures. They've been brainwashed by today's Babylonian Christianity. Even so-called believers, even so-called spirit-filled believers, they haven't understood the way.

Why is that? Because they think that they can get the answer outside of the scriptures. If God's word is not the primary source of your guidance, I can give it to you in writing that you'll go astray.

Like I often say, if you got a Bible in your own language and you don't study it deeply, you deserve to be deceived. You deserve to be deceived because God's given you the word in your own language, educated you so that you can read and you still don't study the scriptures.

If you've been a believer for more than two years, if you were born again more than two years ago and you haven't read the Bible fully yet, I think you should go and hang your head in shame before God and say, Lord, I'm ashamed of myself.