Mark Huey of Outreach Israel Ministries delivers the following message, “Delighting Our Heavenly Father: Become a Soothing Aroma,” focusing on the theme of how we as Messiah followers can best please God.
I recall how during a past trip to Dallas, in 2008, to visit friends and family, and meet some new brothers in the Messiah, I was reinvigorated by some of the conversations I had which centered around the Holy One of Israel. First let me admit that after many years of walking with the Lord, I am confident that my knowledge and understanding of Him are still limited by my human liabilities and frailty. I am always open to listen to other spiritual perspectives, and at times gain insight from others who are struggling through victory on the same journey I am treading. After all, we are each “works in progress” who continually strive for greater perfection via His work in us!
As a result of multiple interactions, a confluence of comments and actions by my brethren actually inspired me to reflect upon some of my previous spiritual encounters experienced during my two decades of being a Christian in Dallas, in the 1980s and 1990s. Coupling them with a Messianic perspective since 1995, of studying and applying the Torah to my walk of faith, prompted me to consider just what it is that actually delights or brings joy to our Heavenly Father. So if you will bear with me, I am going to try and relate how a few Spirit-motivated actions and statements were used to pull together the following thoughts.
Just the thought of pleasing or delighting our Heavenly Father brings this verse to mind, emphasizing the requirement of faith in the formula:
“And 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 seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6, NASU).
Let us always remember that without faith in Yeshua’s accomplished work for us, by challenging or denying its significance, you cannot please God. But when you do exhibit faith and walk by faith, there is the strong possibility that God will reward you for your faithful actions.
On the other hand, the Apostle Paul should remind us that fallen human flesh cannot please God. As he summarizes the difference between walking by the flesh versus walking by the Spirit, he teaches that in faithfully walking by the Spirit, we evidence our status as sons and daughters of the Living God:
“For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Messiah, he does not belong to Him. If Messiah is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Yeshua from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Messiah Yeshua from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh—for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God” (Romans 8:5-14, NASU).
With these two passages, we must recognize that pleasing God or bringing Him joy or delight can only be achieved by faithfully walking by His indwelling Spirit. In order to do just this, every one of us has to put the deeds of the flesh to death. Each one of us is required to willfully choose to let the Holy Spirit guide us and use us for the glory of the Father. Now this is where the proverbial rubber meets the road—because it takes a volitional decision on our parts to submit our wills to the will of the Father. John the Immerser understood this principle when he recognized that he had to decrease so that Yeshua could increase (John 3:30). In certain respects, this is what all of us must do.
Back in February of 1992 while living in Dallas, I was given the opportunity to do this by making a written covenant with the Lord, which to this day has had profound consequences in my life and the direction He has taken me. After several years of struggling with my first marriage and through the godly counsel of a particular ministry, I was presented with the opportunity to sign a document, which in essence, committed me to totally surrendering my will to the will of the Almighty. For the past sixteen years I have carried this written contract around in my wallet, having signed it in red ink (representing a blood covenant) on 02-12-92, after two days of contemplating the consequences of an unconditional surrender to the will and purposes of God for my life. The challenging verse that established the basis for giving up all of your “rights” came from the urging of Paul, as he understood what is required to be all that the Father has created us to be:
“Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith” (Romans 12:1-3, NASU).
If you would like a copy of the document I signed for your own consideration, please let me know. However, as I performed this exercise, I knew that the consequences of it for me would bring the full and complete death of my own self and fleshly desires. It was by no means something to be done on a whim, but had some severe repercussions. In fact, to a certain extent, this document is like a death certificate that one willingly signs in order to submit his or her will to the Father’s will.
Prior to originally working through this article, I was reading out loud the fifteenth chapter of Proverbs with my Messianic Jewish brother, who has followed the daily discipline of reading a chapter of Proverbs corresponding to each day of the month. As Proverbs 15 tells us,
“The lips of the wise spread knowledge, but the hearts of fools are not so. The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD, but the prayer of the upright is His delight. The way of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD, but He loves one who pursues righteousness. Grievous punishment is for him who forsakes the way; he who hates reproof will die. Sheol and Abaddon lie open before the LORD, how much more the hearts of men!” (Proverbs 15:7-11, NASU).
In particular, it was Proverbs 15:8-9 that hit me like a proverbial ton of bricks: “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD, but the prayer of the upright is His delight. The way of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD, but He loves him who follows righteousness” (NKJV).
These verses have caused me to think about not only the sacrifices and the ways of the wicked, but both being an abomination to the Lord. In a religious environment like Dallas, I thought about all of the people who are truly trying to appease God with their offerings, tithes, gifts, or whatever, thinking that they might be pleasing God in order to incur His favor. However, I quickly realized that the omniscient One sees right through all of the facades that human beings—in any location on Earth—might try to offer Him. He looks at the heart of each person who is making any kind of sacrifice. My mind flashed on some contemplations that I had a few weeks earlier, when I dealt with the accountability each of us has for not only our deeds and words, but also our very thoughts. I recognized that God looks at and tests the heart, to determine exactly what the motivation is for a person making any kind of sacrifice. Is it unto Him? Or is the person simply trying to purchase His favor?
In this proverb we are told that God simply delights in the prayers of the upright, and loves those who are pursuing righteousness. He is not impressed by those who try to bribe or buy Him off! The juxtaposition between His way of wanting to be pleased, and human means of wanting to be pleased, cannot be any clearer. My heart truly goes out to those in the religious world who are trying to fool God with various “sacrificial” actions, not realizing that God sees right through to what the true motivation is for making any kind of sacrifice—be it the giving of your time, talents, or treasure. God sees to the heart of the matter, be the person a fool or a wise person before Him.
On the other hand, the Prophet Samuel’s words to King Saul tell us that obeying the Lord with proper motives is more important than any kind of sacrifice that we can offer before Him:
“Samuel said, ‘Has the LORD as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and insubordination is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, He has also rejected you from being king” (1 Samuel 15:22-23, NASU).
King Saul had disobeyed the word of the Lord, by failing to eliminate the Amalekites and their livestock. Even though in Saul’s own mind, he was ready, willing, and able to offer up all of these sacrifices to the Lord, it is obvious from what Samuel says that the Lord was not pleased with disobedience to the command He delivered to him. In fact, Samuel compares Saul’s disobedience to rebellion, the sin of divination, insubordination, iniquity, and idolatry. We see that God was very upset when Saul thought that mere burnt offerings and sacrifices could appease Him.
The more I contemplate the common dilemma of obedience versus sacrifice, given that He does desire that we place ourselves on the altar daily as our spiritual service of worship (Romans 12:1), the more I understand that our obedient actions are to become a pleasing or soothing aroma to the Lord. Is it possible that the smell of the “burning flesh” of our submitted wills, is a blessing to Him? Throughout Scripture, we do frequently see that when God commanded a burnt offering to be presented before Him that it pleased Him with a soothing aroma. Noah discovered this after coming through the deluge:
“Then Noah built an altar to the LORD, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. The LORD smelled the soothing aroma; and the LORD said to Himself, ‘I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease’” (Genesis 8:20-22, NASU).
The Prophet Ezekiel states that a day is coming when all Israel will be gathered back to the Promised Land, and through their contributions, choice gifts, and holy offerings, God will be pleased:
“‘As for you, O house of Israel,’ thus says the Lord GOD, ‘Go, serve everyone his idols; but later you will surely listen to Me, and My holy name you will profane no longer with your gifts and with your idols. For on My holy mountain, on the high mountain of Israel,’ declares the Lord GOD, ‘there the whole house of Israel, all of them, will serve Me in the land; there I will accept them and there I will seek your contributions and the choicest of your gifts, with all your holy things. As a soothing aroma I will accept you when I bring you out from the peoples and gather you from the lands where you are scattered; and I will prove Myself holy among you in the sight of the nations. And you will know that I am the LORD, when I bring you into the land of Israel, into the land which I swore to give to your forefathers. There you will remember your ways and all your deeds with which you have defiled yourselves; and you will loathe yourselves in your own sight for all the evil things that you have done. Then you will know that I am the LORD when I have dealt with you for My name’s sake, not according to your evil ways or according to your corrupt deeds, O house of Israel,’ declares the Lord GOD” (Ezekiel 20:39-44, NASU).
There is hope for the future that the people of God will wholeheartedly offer up sacrifices of praise and worship through obedience to His Word. And, not only will they do this properly, but they will be rewarded for their choice to serve, honor, and obey Him. No doubt this is why Paul commends His disciples with words of encouragement, which evoke the image of a fragrant sacrificial aroma that actually pleases or delights our Heavenly Father:
“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Messiah also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma” (Ephesians 5:1-2, NASU).
Notice that Yeshua’s sacrificial offering up of Himself is something that we are to emulate in order to be imitators of God, being a fragrant aroma.
What does all of this mean for you and me in the here and now? For me it means offering up my will daily before Him so that the will of God, via the power of the Holy Spirit, can operate through me. Obedience actually requires recognizing when the flesh starts to get active, and willfully placing it on the altar of sacrifice. Somehow I believe that when one volitionally does this, the Father is well pleased with the aroma of death to self.
Finally, let us be reminded of Paul’s greeting to the Believers in Colossae, where he describes ways to please God with one’s walk of faith that bears fruit of the Spirit—as opposed to the stench of flesh-derived sacrifices which are an abomination to Him:
“For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience; joyously giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light” (Colossians 1:9-12, NASU).
When you consider all of the potentially spiritual activities you are involved with, are you a pleasant aroma to Him? Surely, if various things are done in the proper spirit, whereby we seek to offer of ourselves and commune with the Lord, they will be pleasing to Him. But if these things are remembered for no other reason than to prove ourselves better than others—then it is no better than just burning an animal before Him with a wicked heart and wicked motives. As the proverb says, this type of sacrifice is an abomination and probably a stench in the Father’s nostrils!
Dying to self requires that we each walk by and be led by God’s Spirit—but death to self will is never easy. Nevertheless, the Scriptures give us an analogous agrarian example of dying to self by describing the death of a grain of wheat that must die in order to bear fruit:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal. If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him” (John 12:24-26, NASU).
Therefore, choose to lose your life. Obediently sacrifice your will to His will, so that you will be a pleasant aroma unto Him. And never forget that if you love Him, you will obey His commandments via what that love has brought to your heart! In so doing, your daily sacrifice will be your spiritual service of worship. You will be a soothing aroma to Him and be His delight. What are you waiting for? Why not start today?
