Jesus God's Total Delight - By Bracy Greer

In Matthew 3:17, right after Jesus was baptized, a voice from heaven said, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Jesus was now 30 years old and had yet to embark on His public ministry. But He had faced temptation growing up in his little house in Nazareth and at the carpenter's shop, and before his life was over he would be "tempted in all points as we are," yet remain without sin. God was "well pleased" with His Son.

I once spent six hours in flight from Amsterdam to Toronto with a Greek woman from Athens. She had a Greek Bible in her lap, and I learned that she had prayed earlier that a man of God would sit beside her on the plane because she was hungry to know the Lord. She had just begun learning about the Lord and was going to Toronto to spend her vacation at a Greek colony that had been "fulfilled with the Spirit," as she put it. She asked question after question, literally, for six hours, and for the entire six hours I managed never to say "the Greek says." No, I asked her "What does the Greek say?"

This verse in Matthew is one I asked her about. "I don't want to know just the grammar or the transliteration," I said, "but please think about it a minute and give me the full flavor of it." So she thought a minute and then smiled a revelation smile. "The Father is saying 'This is my beloved Son in whom is my total delight,'" she said.

What an impact that had on me. "This is my beloved Son. In Him is my total delight." This Redeemer, this Lamb of God who came to be our substitute sufferer for the penalty of the laws that we have broken, is God's total delight.

What that means to me is that apart from Him, God has no delight. I have read similar translations since my flight with the Greek woman that bear out this meaning. If it is not Jesus, God doesn't delight in it. It can be very religious, it can be full of scripture verses, it can be fasting or prayer or all kinds of good things, but if it isn't Jesus, God doesn't delight in it.

I was already a veteran missionary when the Greek woman gave me this phrase, and the Lord said very clearly to me that God has no delight in any missionary work that's not of Jesus. What about the sacrifice? What about the inconvenience? No, if it's not of Jesus--not for Him, by Him, and through Him--God has no delight in it. There is no middle ground, no gray area. If it's Jesus, He delights in it "totally." If it's not Jesus, He has no place for it.

Everybody today wants a gray area. The modern church lives in the gray area. But God calls the gray area "vomit." He is going to vomit that mess out of His mouth because it is full of substitutes for what He delights in. It is counterfeit. It is flesh. It is strange fire. God has always hated what man can produce, and He still hates it. If it is not Jesus, He hates it.

This is a marvelous truth to get hold of because it will save us a lot of wasted energy and needless sacrifice. To obey is better than sacrifice, because if we are obeying God He is conforming us to the image of His Son, in whom He delights. He determined to do that before we were even created. He pre-determined and predestined a people to be conformed into the image of His Son, in whom He delights. He will have a whole kingdom of people as an eternal companion for His Son.

If there is anything you want more than you want Jesus, God will let you have it--and that is the worst thing that could ever happen to you. I believe a large part of what calls itself the church today is a church in deception, a church that clings to its own agenda instead of to Jesus.There is still preaching here and there that declares the intention, will, and purpose of God, but people don't want to hear it because their own agenda is so precious to them.

That selfish agenda is always birthed in insecurity. Many want to follow Christ, but when they find out they have to leave everything, they run back to what makes them secure.

God's warning about the peril of wanting anything more than Jesus is found in Ezekiel 14: "Then came certain elders of Israel unto me (Ezekiel) and sat before me. And the Word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, these men have set up their idols in their heart, and put the stumbling block of their iniquity before their face: should I be inquired of at all by them?"

Every time you read the word "iniquity," think of "willfully." There is sin and there is iniquity. Sin is missing the mark and can be unintentional. Iniquity is never unintentional. Iniquity is willful. Remember how Christ Himself used the word in Matthew: "Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, didn't we prophesy in your Name? Didn't we do many wonderful works in your Name? Didn't we cast out devils in your Name? And then I will say to them, depart from me, I never knew you, you workers of iniquity. You did it all for self. You used holy things to reach your agenda. You used Me to reach your goal."

The idolatry of the elders of Israel in Ezekiel's day is like the idolatry of us today, the idolatry of using the things of God to meet our own goals. Idolatry can take two forms: worshiping anything that is meant to be used, as we usually think of it; but it is also using anything that is meant to be worshiped. What great iniquity we commit when we use holy things for our own agenda!

Look out for iniquity in the church, but especially look out for it in your own life. When you see it, be ruthless with it. Get it out. Iniquities separate us from God. Iniquities caused God not to hear the Psalmist's prayer. God told Ezekiel, "These men have put the stumbling block of their iniquity before their face: should I be inquired of at all by them?"

God continues, "Therefore speak unto them, and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God; Every man of the house of Israel that setteth up his idols in his heart, and putteth the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face, and cometh to the prophet; I the Lord will answer him that cometh according to the multitude of his idols; That I may take the house of Israel in their own heart, because they are estranged from me through their idols."

The Israelites were coming to the prophet to hear the word of the Lord, but meanwhile they were setting up idols or stumbling blocks of iniquity. One time the Israelites went to Jeremiah and said, "If you will just pray and tell us what God wants us to do, we will do it." Jeremiah prayed and said, "You are not to go to Egypt." Then they went anyway. That's the kind of duplicity God hates. We make a great show of asking God what He wants us to do, and then we go ahead with our own agenda.

"I the Lord will answer him that cometh according to the multitude of his idols." God will not be fooled by our pretending to follow Him. He will answer us according to what's in our hearts, the idolatry and iniquity He sees there. Our idolatry is anything we want more than we want Jesus. Jesus is God's total delight, and God doesn't recognize anything apart from Him.

When God's revelation doesn't square with our own plans, we simply water it down or rationalize it, mixing it with human reasoning until it becomes palatable to us. Much of that kind of revelation works its way into the church, and people call it God's blessing, because it sounds so good. But God calls it making light of His word. Whenever we begin to mix His revelation with our own concoctions, we make light of it. His Word is perfect as it is; we don't need to tamper with it. Hebrews 2 talks about the word we have heard, and verse 3 says, "How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation." The word "neglect" is the same word used in Matthew 22 of the people who made light of the wedding invitation. We are too busy with our own plans to take seriously the revelation and salvation of God.

Brother Ravenhill lies dying tonight in Lyndale. This is his 51st day without nourishment, for he is unable to eat. He often said to me, "Son, you never know if Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have." The first time I heard that chills went up my back, because the flesh part of me didn't want to hear it. In the flesh man recoils from that kind of utter dependence on Jesus. But immediately the man birthed in me by the will of God thought, "What kind of man would I be to recoil from that? God is all-wise, all-knowing, all-loving, and all-powerful, and He has a plan for me and has scheduled my life according to His purpose. What could I want more than all-wisdom deciding for me? Than all-love choosing for me?"

Yes, how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? How can we neglect our salvation for temporal things? How can we put anything before Jesus, or mix that pure wisdom and goodness with the wretchedness of our own endeavor?

Hebrews is rich with proclamation about God's total delight with His Son. Jesus is called "the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person," who, having purged our sins, sat down "on the right hand of the Majesty on high." Chapter 1, verse 9: "Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows."

In chapter 2 we see Jesus stooping to suffer death, tasting death for every man, and being crowned with glory and honor. Verse 10: "For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings." The verse doesn't suggest that Jesus had imperfections that needed to be perfected; rather it demonstrates that there is no such thing as an untested virtue. We can know virtuous things and have virtuous capacities and capabilities, but there is no virtue itself until the testing, until the virtue can be acted on. Just knowing isn't virtuous. With all that Christ was, what made Him perfect was His sufferings.

Jesus now reigns in heaven as an unfallen man. He remained virtuous through all trials because He emptied Himself of all self, laying aside every advantage, living wholly dependent on the Holy Spirit, as Phillippians 2 teaches. He would do nothing that He wasn't told to do by the Father. He never acted independently and wouldn't heed Satan's temptation to satisfy his hunger apart from God's will. He never mixed his own agenda or ambition with the will of the Father. He calls us to that same purity of thought and motive.

We as church leaders especially need to understand such pure dependence on God. We rob God of opportunities to fully glorify His name through our lives, because we use our own strength to deliver ourselves from inconveniences or to meet our needs, even very legitimate needs. It was legitimate for Jesus to be hungry after a 40-day fast. But Jesus would not satisfy such a very legitimate need apart from the will of God. It was the will of God that put Him in the wilderness and put Him on a fast and subjected Him to temptation. And it would be the will of God that would give Him bread.

In Hebrews 2:10 we see Jesus called the "Captain of our salvation." A captain is meant to be followed; we must follow Him and empty ourselves and live in utter dependence, just as He did. His being was perfected through tribulation, by being meek toward the Father, dependent on the Father, and submissive to the Father. Every man who follows Him must walk the same path. There is no other path, no twentieth-century convenient way toward knowing the delight of Jesus. We cannot mix a delight in Him with a delight in our world. We must do as our Captain did. Hebrews 2 closes with the wonderful truth that because Christ suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. He will walk with us on the path that we must walk.

That path will lead through tribulation, to be sure. This world is the place of Christ's rejection. If Christ had come in Ezekiel's time, He would have been rejected. If He were to come to Holmes County, as moral as it seems to be, He would be rejected. There is no corner of the earth, no remote village, no culture anywhere ready to accept Christ. He would be rejected everywhere. We are as He is, and we are in the place of His rejection. Yet we can draw great strength from that truth, for our trials are not some accident. God is not up there wringing His hands over them. He remains firmly in control. He has his appointed times and is working out His will in our lives.

As Christ is, so are we. God's total delight in His son will be His total delight in us as we walk in the path of Jesus. Revelation 4:11 says all things were made for God's pleasure. When we make choices the please Him, it gives Him pleasure. But how are we able to make such choices? That is the real pleasure of God-- providing us the actual enablement to live righteous lives in Christ Jesus. When we empty ourselves as Christ did, the Father can live through us.

Does that mean He needs us, that He is lacking and we make Him complete? That when He gathers a multitude of redeemed people He will really be a great God? No, there is nothing lacking Him; He chose to create us for His pleasure. He takes pleasure in giving to us. He created us to give Him something to give to. He loves to enable us, to make a promise that causes us to go to the lions' den and then deliver us out of the lions' den in front of everyone who is watching. But we won't trust Him long enough to even let the lions get hungry. We try constantly, though human reasoning, to figure out and finagle a way out of what God wants to do to show forth His glory.

The three Hebrew youth said, "Our God can deliver us, but if He doesn't, we won't bow. Stoke your furnace; we won't bow." But today we don't want to get close to the fire. We work out little compromises to save our neck, or even just to save our reputation. Remember Haman? He made a gallows for Mordecai, for Mordecai followed God and wouldn't turn to the right or the left, gallows or no gallows. But who died on Haman's gallows? Haman himself. More Hamans would die if more Hamans got to build gallows in the first place--if more Mordecais would stick to their commitment to the righteous processes of God. We would see more demonstrations of God's glory.

Who died in the fiery furnace? The men who threw in the Hebrews, not the Hebrews. We rob God of His glory by distrust, by not giving ourselves over wholly to His care as Jesus did.

"I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I but Christ lives in me." Christ is our life. We live Christ out in the arena of His rejection. Do you think there suddenly is going to be a new attitude in the culture and people are going to say, "I'm glad you have come to live out Christ"? No. John 3:19 says "Men love darkness rather than light." The first time I saw a concordance on the computer I was looking up the word "love." For John 3:19 it said "Agape." I said, "It can't be agape in that verse." So I looked it up in the Greek, and indeed it says "agape." Men have an agape love for darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil. So when we live out Christ's life in this arena we will be rejected. "They who live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution."

But here is the glorious part--at the same time the world is rejecting us, we are living out that holy life that delights God. Christ is not ashamed to be called our brother. He is the Captain of our salvation; He leads us into that place of delight. Jesus is crowned with glory and honor because He lived His whole life in meekness to the Father, in dependence upon the Holy Spirit. He was God's perfect sacrifice, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. His resurrection says to the world that this is God's man, this is what God approves of, this is what God delights in--and there will never by anybody else or anything else that God delights in. Jesus is God's total delight. He is accepted at the Father's right hand, the place of exultation. And now He lives out His live through each of us willing to let Him. We represent Him here in this world. While we are representing Him here in the place of His rejection, He is representing us there in the place of His acceptance. He is a faithful and merciful High Priest, touched with the feeling of our infirmities.

Let's quit walking in our own effort and let God make us the people He has purposed to make us, a people in the image of His Son, a people in whom He delights, a kingdom of eternal companions for the Captain of our salvation.

I John 4:17 continues the hope: "Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world." As He is, so are we. Our love will be made perfect the same way Jesus' was--through the indwelling of the Spirit and through the testing and molding of Almighty God.