If we asked the average person in the street ‘What are the different ways to please God?’ I wonder how many answers we would get.
We need to know how to please God according to the Bible.
Table of Contents:
1. Noah sets the scene on how to please God
Have you ever noticed the difference in God’s frame of mind described before the Flood compared to after the Flood?
Before the Flood:
He was grieved in His heart that He had made man.”
Genesis 6:6 NIV
After the Flood:
He smelt the sweet fragrance.”
Genesis 8:21 NIV
(This article is based on Genesis 8:18-22 which is included at the foot of the page)
Before mankind aggravated and grieved God – there was a rotten stench of sin rising upwards.
After the flood God was pleased at the sweet fragrance, so what had happened?
Was God pleased at having to pour judgment upon the Earth?
Did it please God to kill so many humans, animals and creatures?
2. Why was Noah so pleasing and special to God?
Noah’s relationship with the Lord is described before the flood:
Noah was a righteous** man blameless*** in his generation. Noah walked with God.”
Genesis 6:9 ESV
The word righteous** is the Hebrew word צַדִּיק (tsad.diq) which means ‘just, right, correct, lawful’.
The word blameless*** is the the Hebrew word תָּמִים (ta.mim) which means ‘sound, wholesome, unimpaired, innocent, having integrity.’
That does not mean that Noah was perfect, he failed and sinned, but he wanted to please God and to walk with Him.
But this does not explain the verse that says:
The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart:
Genesis 8:21-22 NIV
‘Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood.
And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.
As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.’ “
3. Noah obeyed and trusted God which pleased Him
I don’t mean, that Noah had followed God’s Laws and commands to earn his salvation. Because Paul wrote:
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no-one can boast.”
Ephesians 2:8 NIV
Noah had received Grace.
He believed in God.
He had faith in Him and he trusted in the Lord.
Obedience to God’s laws is not like an exam, where if you answer a certain number correctly, then you pass.
Obedience is something that the believer wants to do, it is the fruit of a life that seeks to please God.
4. The outcome of believing in God is obeying God.
It is no good saying, that you believe in God, and yet choose to do your own thing.
James wrote:
Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
James 2:17 and v19 NIV
You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that and shudder!
You foolish man, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless?
Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did, when he offered his son Isaac on the altar?
You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did.”
I’ll say it again: The outcome of believing in God is obeying God.
Noah took some of the valuable animals and birds, which he had seven of each of, and sacrificed them to the Lord.
Just think of the few possessions Noah had at that time, and all his food supplies would have been virtually used up, and now he was sacrificing these valuable animals and birds to the Lord.
What a sweet fragrance that was to the Lord!
It wasn’t just this one act, but it was on top of how Noah had obeyed God in building the Ark, in the giving of his money, and time, and his whole life.
5. Our act of worship in pleasing God
When we go to church to pray and worship, God doesn’t see just that act of worship, but He sees what has led up to that point as well.
The non-church bit of our life is just as important to God as the church bit.
Jesus said:
If you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar.
Matthew 5:23 NIV
First go, and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.”
We mustn’t fall into the trap that worship is only for Sunday services and mid-week meetings.
Let’s look at the place where Job worshipped, and take note of the circumstances of this worship.
Some messengers came to Job to tell him that;
- The Sabeans attacked and carried off his ploughing oxen, and his donkeys.
- The fire of God fell and burned up his sheep, and servants.
- The Chaldeans attacked and carried off his camels.
- A mighty wind devastated the house where his sons and daughters were feasting and they all died.
At this, Job got up, and tore his robe, and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in..”
Job 1:20 NIV
In what? In despair? In anger? No:
in worship”
Job 1:20 NIV
And he said:
Naked I came from my mothers womb, and naked I shall depart.
Job 1:21 NIV
The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; may the Name of the Lord be praised.
In all this, Job did not sin, by charging God with wrongdoing.”
What a sweet fragrance that would have been for the Lord!
6. Obedience, true worship and pleasing God can’t be done in our natural strength.
Our old fleshly life would rather shout, behave badly, or grumble when we hit problems.
We need the power and fruit of the Holy Spirit to overcome our troubles.
We need to see our difficulties as opportunities to worship the Lord, like Job.
It is encouraging to see, that when we obey God it is like a sweet fragrance rising up to Him.
So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his son’s wives.
Genesis 8:18-22 NIV
All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds – everything that moves on the earth – came out of the ark, one kind after another.
Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it.
The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in His heart:
‘Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood.
And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.
As long as the earth endures, seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.’ “
God loves us, and because he does, he disciplines us for our good and that might include difficult situations.
When our life is easy or hard, God never leaves us.
When we hit hard times it can be for the proving of our faith.
7. A modern parable on a way to please God
Cruel sneers to a single flower
(A modern parable written by Jon Howe)
Through a grimy, stained glass window she appeared again to laughs and sneers from the kids outside on the street.
Silly old Mrs Millar was poking her nose out again.
Insults and cruel accusations were thrown at her window like stones, only stones don′t do as much damage as cruel words can.
The old lady sat down again in her chair and hoped they would go away soon.
Why were they like this? What had she done?
If only her dear husband was alive, he would know how to sort them out.
But would he?
How would he have coped with such a crowd of unruly teenagers?
Perhaps he was better off where he was.
Today’s world wasn’t the world that Ted knew when he was here, it had changed so much and not for the better, he wouldn’t have liked it.
She would have to endure this by herself.
Suddenly an egg shattered on the window pane.
The noise of the impact stopped her heart in fear, and then it decided to carry on beating again, Mrs Millar wouldn’t die just yet, not like this.
Their sport was over now, for a while anyway.
They had grown tired of insulting her, it wasn’t the same fun when they couldn’t get any response, so they made their way to another street corner and maybe another helpless victim.
Shivering in fear and cold, Mrs Millar’s world slowly returned to its lonely routine.
She sat and watched as the remains of the egg made its way down her window, a testament to the cruelty of those children outside.
Not that she felt any anger towards them, she felt only confusion and helplessness.
When she was young, all those years ago, people had respect for the elderly, but it was not so now.
How will a generation have respect for others when it has no respect for itself?
Memories are strange things, they will either lift you up and make your spirits soar, or they will entwine themselves around you and suffocate the last breath of happiness from you.
As Mrs Millar sat down to a calming cup of tea, her thoughts turned to memories of her youth, the young girl who was independent and free to live and love.
And how she loved, she thought of her late husband
After she had met her Ted her life was never the same again, and for over fifty years she had stood beside him through the good and sometimes the bad times, but time and love bring two souls together in a way that cannot be expressed in words or pictures.
As she remembered him, young and strong in their early years, her spirit began to fly higher and higher into the air and for a few moments, she was with him again, not as the old woman who sat lonely and helpless in her front room, but young and alive, embracing him with something stronger and more solid than arms.
She closed her eyes and thought that she could taste him, but it was only salt water and she was only in her front room if only she could stay there with him, even if it was only for a moment longer.
A knock at the front door snatched her back to reality again and as she wiped away her tears she wondered who it could be at the door, visitors to this house had long since forgotten her door.
Gingerly she peered through her window, hoping those teenagers weren’t back to worry her again, hoping against hope that a long-lost friend had remembered her and come to see her for a few minutes, but there was no one there.
As the anticipation began to leave her, she noticed something lying on her front doorstep but couldn’t quite see what it was.
She would have to go and open her door, the prospect frightened her a little but her inquisitive nature was too strong not to go and see.
Unlocking the door was a long and painful process, so many chains and locks, reaching down so far wasn’t as easy as it was.
Eventually, the door swung open and for a second the bright sunshine blinded her eyes, when she could see properly again she saw that the street was almost empty, only a few people hurried past, too busy to notice her.
Below her, on her doorstep, was the strangest of things, a single flower.
A small piece of paper with the words ‘Mrs Millar’ scrawled in somewhat childish writing, sat underneath it.
Back inside, in the security and comfort of her house, she sat and contemplated the flower before her.
It was the most beautiful flower she had ever seen.
Truth be known, she hadn’t seen one since Ted died years ago.
This was a special flower, someone had given it to her as a gift, someone had thought enough about her to give her a precious thing of beauty.
Maybe this world wasn’t so bad after all, maybe as long as there was the simplicity of generosity in the world there would be hope.
That afternoon, after she had placed it on her sideboard in a vase of water, she sat and wondered who had sent it.
Maybe she would never know the person, maybe this was all the contact she would ever have with them.
She didn’t know, but she did know that the flower thrilled her.
The bloom filled her somewhat drab front room with colour and a wonderful aroma that chased away the damp dusty smell that often comes to lonely homes.
As she sat, she closed her eyes and smiled, someone, somewhere, cared.
This flower wasn’t a particularly unusual specimen, it was as beautiful and colourful as any other, but it was special.
It was special because the person that had given it, gave it in love.
In actual fact, they had given it in an act of repentance for treating her so badly, animosity and hatred had given way to compassion and tenderness, and although the giver hadn’t realised the importance of it, it was maybe the most profound thing they would ever do.
Mrs Millar could see past the flower and see the love and affection that was the gift.
The flower itself was really unimportant, though there was much beauty in it, but the true value of a gift isn’t what the object is worth, its value is in what it costs.
Love, pure and undefiled, costs the giver because he gives from himself.
Maybe she saw something that she thought had died years ago, maybe for her, it had.
As the flower slowly dropped its first petal and began to bow its head to the ground, Mrs Millar met Ted for the last time.
Her spirit met with his, and now, for eternity, they would be together, their spirits embracing and becoming one, old age and loneliness left behind.
Why Mrs Millar died that afternoon I will never really know for sure.
Maybe it was because that single act of love released her from a world she thought had long forgotten her, maybe, I don′t know.
One thing I do know, there are many, many flowers growing in gardens waiting to be picked for reasons such as this.
There are many lonely people watching and needing to receive them and there is a love waiting to embrace and be embraced.
A flower is only a flower, a gift is only a gift, and all the material things in the world are only material things until love tells us to take them from one place, and give them to another.
That’s who my God is, He is the one that asks this of me, to take from myself, and give to another, for He has done the same.
Like the world around me, I had forgotten love, and forgotten the source of love.
I had forsaken Mrs. Millar and people like her, I had forsaken God in all His richness and His beauty.
I had stood outside the house of the widow and hurled my stones until I found the source of the gift, the reason behind it.
That source and reason is a man called Jesus.
[1] Does God change His mind?
[2] Are we born good or bad?
[3] Toil and tedium, drudgery and hard work
[12] Being consistent, no problem!
References – open in new tabs:
Drawings thanks to The Pictorial Dictionary published by The Educational Book Company, London.
Kids images: thanks to Serif PagePlus Resource CD
Woman, Romance & Rose images: thanks to Serif ART Gallery CD
Photo Credit opens in a new window: Grant Baldwin Photography at Flickr via Compfight cc ↩