You can use a microphone to hammer in a nail, but that is not its designed purpose. Microphones were made to electronically capture sound waves and feed them to recording or amplifying devices. But you could use a microphone to stir the soup at home, to play ‘fetch’ with your dog, to dig holes in the garden. The fact that you can use a microphone that way does not mean you should use it that way, because when you use a microphone for something other than its designed purpose, you will probably end up breaking it.

And you know, you were created for a specific purpose. Just like that microphone, you can do things with yourself other than what you were designed for. The fact that you are able to do them, does not mean you should do them, because just like that microphone, if you do things with yourself other than what you were created to do, you will destroy yourself.

So what is your created purpose? What is my created purpose? The Bible tells us very clearly in Revelation 4:11: “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.”

Here the heavenly beings cry out in praise to God and ascribe glory to Him. They then give the reason why such praise belongs to Him alone: God has created all things, and for His pleasure, they are and were created. All things, including you and I, were made to please God. That is your design instruction.

1. You were created to please God.

Every living thing was made by God, by His will. He wanted them to exist. Even those who never repent of evil, God wanted them to exist. I once had a conversation with an avowed atheist. He insisted that God’s existence was irrelevant to him. All that mattered was his everyday activities, making money, being respectful to other people and enjoying himself. As far as he was concerned, if God did exist it made no difference to him, although he insisted that he could guarantee there was no God.

I pointed out to him that if he drove his car backwards all the time, it would eventually break. In the same way, if you were designed to please God, and you do everything but please God, you too will break. Life will malfunction, and most importantly, eternity will be spent in agony. It is not a peripheral issue, because the Creator of the universe cannot be pushed to the periphery. He is the centre of all things, regardless of what self-centred humans think.

A man can stand on his head and shout, “I am the sun, I am the sun,” but it doesn’t change the fact that he is a little upside down man on a planet that revolves around the sun. Man can insist that he is the centre and that his own wants, wishes and desires are the centre-point of all reality, but it doesn’t change the objective fact that God is the core, the heart, the hub of reality – and it is His desires, His wishes, His wants, that are in fact the priority of every created being.

God has a right to be pleased – He is First. He made everything, and He made it for Himself. It belongs to Him, and He has every right to expect from His creation the pleasure for which He created. To argue this is to imagine the absurd situation of a man building a house for himself, and then someone insisting that the house now had equal rights with its maker. Obviously the thing which is made will always be submissive to its Maker. He has the priority and therefore the authority.

Since God was before anyone, all that exists, exists for Him. That includes you! You exist for God, God does not exist for you.

For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen.
Romans 11:36

This is why God governs the universe the way He does. He is guiding it according to an ultimate plan to bring Himself maximum glory and pleasure.

We read in Psalm 115:3: “But our God is in heaven; He does whatever He pleases” and in Isaiah 46:10, God says, “… My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure…” If God created everything for His pleasure – then the fundamental reason for the created universe is to please God. That is why we are here.

But you may ask, “What’s in it for me? If I am to live to please someone else, what about my pleasure, my joy, my happiness?” Is this the arrangement of the tribal people with their unknowable angry volcano god, where we present fruit, berries and some sort of sacrifice to hopefully please him, though there is no joy in it for us? In fact, the very first sin and every sin after that began with the suspicion – ‘God seems to just want to use you for His own pleasure, while you are missing out. You can’t trust God. You need to please yourself.’

But that is a lie, because the second great truth about pleasing God is this:

2. You will find your highest pleasure in pleasing God.

The Bible does not describe pleasing God as a burden, but as a joy:

I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart.
Psalm 40:8

For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.
1 John 5:3

Our sinful nature suspects that pleasing anyone other than ourselves must be burdensome. Our selfishness is so entrenched in our natures, that the notion of pleasing another person can seem quite distasteful to us. We suspect it will be costly to us, with no returns. While our sinful selfishness must be denied, our desire for joy must not. And pleasing God is in fact that highest joy.

There are at least three reasons why pleasing God is ultimately the highest pleasure:

• a) You are meeting your design instructions because you were created to please God. It becomes a joy to please God.
• b) When you please God, He reveals Himself to you, and He is always the highest satisfaction of your soul.

In Exodus 21:2-6 we read the following account:

When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing. If he comes in single, he shall go out single; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out alone. But if the slave plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,’ then his master shall bring him to God, and he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost. And his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall be his slave forever.

There a Hebrew slave who voluntarily wished to remain on with his master after his six-year term could do so by making a public statement, together with the boring through of his ear by his master in public. Here’s the principle: a slave who had no desire to please his master, would probably hate his six years of service and long for release.

On the other hand, a slave who sought to please his master, no doubt in the case of a good master, came to enjoy and trust and delight in his master. His seeking to please the master brought about a closer acquaintance with him, and this brought great joy. That slave would end up saying, “I don’t want to leave this master. Pleasing him is my pleasure! I love to do it!”

The Bible is no doubt teaching us that the one who seeks to please God, ends up delighting in His God, and voluntarily continues to do so. Those who seek to please the Lord, find out what a wonderful Master He is, and seek to keep pleasing Him.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Matthew 5:8

When Abraham by faith obeyed God and sought to sacrifice Isaac, his trust and obedience so pleased God that God revealed himself to him even more. Abraham called the place Jehovah Jireh – meaning, God provides.

When Moses pleased God, he said, ‘Lord, I beg You, show me Your glory,’ and God later passed before him, revealing just the back parts of His glory. Don’t you want to know God in a real way? Don’t you wish to see Him in your life? Then please Him. As you please Him, you will experience the pleasure of seeing God.

• c) Righteousness always works better, and does not have painful consequences and penalties.

Oh that there were such a heart in them, that they would fear Me, and keep all My commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever!
Deuteronomy 5:29

And you shall do what is right and good in the sight of the LORD, that it may go well with you, and that you may go in and take possession of the good land that the LORD swore to give to your fathers.
Deuteronomy 6:18

Holiness is happiness. Righteousness is a reward. Sanctification is satisfaction. Sin is the product of believing that pleasing self is better than pleasing God. To go my own way will be more beneficial for me.

Every decision we make is made with a concern for what we will gain or lose. We are always weighing up what we will gain or lose. When we choose sin, we assume that the pleasure outweighs the suffering. But it is a mistaken assumption. Sin is short-term pleasure and long-term suffering. Often, we look at righteousness and do not see that it is short-term self-denial or suffering, if necessary, and long-term pleasure.

You see, the very first sin, where Satan tempted Eve, was based upon Satan’s suggestion that Adam and Eve were not finding maximum joy in life by pleasing God. Satan suggested that God was just pleasing Himself by withholding the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, so as to hold Adam and Eve at a disadvantage.

Therefore, Satan argued, ‘Since you cannot trust God to find your joy, you need to please yourself in a way that He forbade. He is lying to you about the suffering of displeasing Him, He is just pleasing Himself at your expense. Go ahead, eat the fruit. If God is pleasing Himself, why shouldn’t you?’

But Jesus stands in contrast:

For even Christ pleased not Himself; but, as it is written, the reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me.
Romans 15:3

How ironic, that in our pursuit of joy and meaning, we believe Satan the liar, disbelieve God, and thereby deny ourselves the greatest joy possible – that of pleasing God.

So, you may ask, ‘How do I please God? He is God and has a right to be pleased, but it is also the path to glorifying Him and finding my meaning and happiness. So how do I do it?”

3. You will only please God when you are found in Christ (positionally)

Without Christ, we cannot please God – those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Romans 8:8

Before a person is found in Christ – nothing he or she does can please God. “God is angry with the wicked every day,” says Psalm 7:11. God will not be pleased with what you do if He is displeased with what you are. And before you turn to Jesus Christ to save you from your sins, you are a rebel – a God-rejecting, self-pleasing rebel. All your good works are like filthy rags to God, says Isaiah 64:6.

Man has the idea that he is somehow pleasing to God for just being a human. He figures that he sometimes does some things that are displeasing to God, but other times he does things that are pleasing to God. He concludes that a just and merciful God would tally up the good and bad in his life, and be favourable to him. After all, from his perspective, he did more that was pleasing to God than displeasing to God.

The man has two problems. One, he has a very narrow and limited view of what pleases and displeases God. Two, he thinks that there is nothing in him intrinsically that would displease God. And there is his fatal error, and there is the reason why unsaved people cannot believe in the reality of hell. They do not see that unsaved man is detestable to God in his nature, in what he is, not just in what he does.

To God, he is a defiant, stubborn rebel, who knowingly rejects the glory of God in favour of his own way, who accepts the gifts and life God gives without gratitude and attributes it to his own abilities, who daily pays no heed to the authority and Person of God. This person is as attractive to God as a walking corpse would be to us. It is a stench.

But in contrast, Jesus was pleasing to the Father. Both at His baptism, and on the Mount of Transfiguration, God said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” So when we are in Him, we are pleasing to the Father. The Bible calls this ‘justification.’ When you see the word ‘justify’ you can read ‘make God-pleasing.’ God now covers us with a garment. That garment pleases God – it is the garment of His Son’s righteousness.

Once saved, whenever God looks at us, He sees His Son’s submission, His Son’s love, His Son’s life. So when we are in Christ, God looks at us and is pleased with what He sees. This will never change – less or more. Once we have been justified, we cannot lose the garment of Christ’s righteousness.

The LORD takes pleasure in those who fear Him; in those who hope in His mercy.
Psalm 147:11

For the LORD takes pleasure in His people; He will beautify the humble with salvation.
Psalm 149:4

The situation is now reversed. An unbeliever is displeasing to God in what he is; therefore nothing he does can please God. A believer has become pleasing to God in what he is, and now what he does can become pleasing to God. While he may do things that displease God, God will never be displeased with him as a person, in totality, because that believer is wrapped up in the garment of Christ’s righteousness.

This justification is by faith alone. It is to those who forsake their own attempts to please God. It is for those who repent of being so God-displeasing, and fall entirely on the perfect life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. They cry out, ‘God, make me pleasing to yourself, through your Son Jesus Christ.’

4. You will please God when you seek to be like Christ (practically)

Since Jesus is the delight of the Father, as we grow to resemble Him in our thoughts, actions, attitudes, words, deeds, what we don’t do, and what we do instead – that is, as we are changed into His image – we please God, and are pleased as well.

God works in you to desire and to do what pleases Him.
Philippians 2:13

Make you perfect in every good work to do His will, working in you that which is well-pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Hebrews 13:21

But how? In two ways:

• a) You must seek to know what Christlikeness is from the Word of God, so as to please Him.

For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God;
Colossians 1:9-10

Love includes the idea of growing in the knowledge of what pleases someone. When I got married, my wife and I began a journey of learning what pleases the other person. We cannot claim to love God, if we keep it so abstract as to never find out practically what pleases God. We need to search the Word and find out – what pleases God in my thoughts, speech, attitudes, action, motives, relationships.

• b) You must make all of life a decision to please God, or please yourself.

Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him.
2 Corinthians 5:9

And He who sent Me is with Me. The Father has not left Me alone, for I always do those things that please Him.
John 8:29

Everything, as a believer, can be boiled down to this simple formula: please God, or please self.

Pleasing oneself entails avoiding the hard thing and seeking the easy way out. A person who seeks to please self is concerned only with how they feel right now, without regard for future consequences of actions. Pleasing self focuses on present pleasure and forgets long-term suffering. When pleasing self, the key question is, ‘What do I want?’ When I please myself, I assert my will against God. Pleasing self is feeling-oriented. I do only what I feel like doing.

But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.
James 1:14-15

When pleasing self, the concern is: pleasure, possession, prestige.

When pleasing God, the concern is: God’s approval, God’s fellowship, God’s power. A believer seeking to please God is willing to do the hard thing now, and wait for the benefits and rewards that come later.

But without faith, it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.
Hebrews 11:6

Pleasing God will accept present suffering or self-denial if necessary to receive long-term pleasure. The fundamental question in the mind of the believer set on pleasing God is, ‘What does God want?’ When I am seeking to please God, I surrender my will to God. Pleasing God is command-oriented, as opposed to feeling oriented. Test everything in your life by the question, ‘What does God want?’ ‘What is the loss and gain I embrace as opposed to that of pleasing self?’

Everyone has a pleasure theory. Everyone has a belief as to what will bring them happiness, joy, contentment, peace, and satisfaction in life. The key is – does your belief square with the Bible’s? The Bible says you were created to please God, and your greatest fulfilment, your greatest joy, comes as you do that.

So the joy is in your hands: Please God as your pleasure, or please yourself, and end up losing it all.