January 29, 2011: Make God Happy

In recent days I have had the joy of sharing in a small group and in a nursing home chapel service my favorite Bible verse. It's John 3:30: He must become greater; I must become less. I selected it as my life verse when I was in college more than 25 years ago. John the Baptist said it when asked (you have to read between the lines) if he was jealous of Jesus. Friends had come to him and said, "Rabbi, that man who was with you on the other side of the Jordan - the one you testified about - well, he is baptizing, and everyone is going to him." (John 3:26)

John was used to commanding the attention of thousands, but now his crowds (his crowds?) were all following Jesus. Did that bother him? Did he feel a bit pushed to the side, under-appreciated, out of the loop? His quiet answer reveals a heart of perfect humility:

A man can receive only what is given him from heaven. You yourselves can testify that I said, 'I am not the Christ but am sent ahead of him.' The bride belongs to the groom. The friend who attends the groom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the groom's voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. He must become greater; I must become less.

John's selflessness compels my admiration. He lived and worked only for the sake of Jesus Christ. The glory and honor and delight that Jesus experienced mattered more to John than anything, and he found his joy in the exaltation of his Lord. John considered himself a mere best man at a wedding between Jesus and all who would yield to him. Any attention John drew to himself would necessarily be siphoned off from Christ - abominable thought! Let all glory and honor be Christ's. Let him become greater and greater, and I less and less.

The other day my heart sank as I heard a preacher explain from the pulpit, "I don't read my Bible every day because it makes God happy." God's happiness was an irrelevance to him. He explained how he engaged in spiritual discipline for his own sake, for his own spiritual development and need: "I read my Bible every day because I need more of Jesus."

I certainly recommend acknowledging a need for Jesus, and I agree that one of the best ways to draw near to the Incarnate Word is through the Written Word. But to value one's own enrichment - even spiritual enrichment - over the pleasure of God is to invert the biblical order of priorities that must motivate our goodness! As Calvin wrote, "zeal [for God's glory] ought to exceed all thought and care for our own good and advantage."

After dismissing God's happiness as a motive for Bible reading, the preacher then went on to dismiss God's wrath as a motive for prayer. "I don't pray every day because I'm afraid of God," he said. What motivated his prayer (rather than a fear of the Lord) was the benefit he received personally: prayer helped him to be a better husband and a more godly leader.

We stand on dangerous ground when the prospect of God's pleasure does not inspire us and the prospect of his wrath does not frighten us. We tread the road toward corruption when we stop asking, "How will this action affect God?" and ask only, "How will this affect me?"

I confess to a growing hunger for preaching that places God rather than ourselves at the center of every thought and act and word and motive. Goodness must be practiced because it pleases God, because it makes God happy, because it delights the heart of God, because it brings greater honor and glory and pleasure to God. And sin must be shunned because God hates it, because God judges it, because God is provoked to wrath and displeasure because of it. Value his pleasure and fear his wrath! When you eliminate from your consideration the pleasures and displeasures of God ("I don't do this in order to make God happy"; "I don't shun this because I'm afraid of God") you risk making your faith a self-centered monstrosity where God's honor is an afterthought.

In the humility of John the Baptist I find blessed refuge from the self-centered inward gaze to which I myself am relentlessly tempted. Let Christ become greater. So what if I become less? Let the motivation for my actions and thoughts be the happiness, pleasure, honor and glory of Christ. And let the prospect of angering or displeasing him - diminishing his glory, staining his honor - cause me to tremble with shame, and fill me with righteous fear.