Worship

Jesus is worth listening to because His Father is pleased with Him : “While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”- Matthew 17:5. The Greek word for pleased can mean delight, pleasure, and also consent. God the Father, delights in His Son and authorizes His Son to carry out His Father’s will. The Greek for listen is not our modern idea of listening. When we talk about listening, we think hearing with our ears things like music, or instructions from our spouse. Biblically, listening means to obey. When Peter and John were before the Sanhedrin, they proclaimed it was better “to listen to God rather than man.”-Acts 4:19. In Matthew 18:5, Jesus teaches that if a brother offends you, go and tell Him so that forgiveness can happen and the relationship can be mended. Here is the Good News in this text: God invites the disciples to obey Jesus because His Father delights in Him. 

That brings up an interesting set of questions, do you believe God delights in you? Does his delight in you make you a delight to be around? In your day to day life, are you someone who inspires others around you? For the audience of Matthew’s Gospel in the 1st century, the answer for those questions was a no. Remember, Christian teaching in the Bible always addressed a need. Why record the Father saying “Listen to Him” to the disciples, and the first century audience, when both have already proclaimed faith in Him? They believed in Jesus, they just weren’t being obedient to Him, their posture was not one of delight, it was bitterness in the room with other Christian’s, they were ugly to one another, and argumentative, etc. Matthew invites us, to listen to Jesus once again! The more you live like Jesus delights in you, the more you will increase in patience, and decrease in bitterness and anger. Our Lord’s Prayer we recite every week is done in part because Jesus knew our baseline is not to be a delight, but resentful: that is why he taught us to pray “Forgive us of our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The Apostle Paul tells the fruit of listening to Jesus in Colossians 4: 5-6, “Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” Being a delight for Jesus is not winning every argument, or always being right, but living in such a way that others can’t help but ask why you live the way you do.

The Bible illustrates a great principle: delight in Christ is relational. There are many ways to keep bitterness at bay and cultivate the spirit of Christ-like delight in your life. Sorry to disappoint some people in modern society: Being a “straight shooter”, and sharing your opinion on everything you see as wrong, isn’t always a good thing. Proverbs 13:3 “He who keeps His mouth keeps his life” is a is a great place to start being a delight for others. Is it really important to respond or get angry at every single act of controversy you see on social media, your family, or your church? I long for the days we could go back to talking about and posting food, scripture, and vacation spots. Or if you see something you don’t like in your family, home, or community, or if chaos is in the room, be like John Bunyan in his classic book Pilgrims Progress “Eternal life, eternal life, Lord Jesus give me eternal life!

I know in my own life, I posted ALOT throughout the day. Lately, my motivation has been to post in the morning before my day starts, then just leave it alone and connect with as many people in person as possible. The more you positivly engage family, your church family, even take risks and meet and help new people, the more God will delight in you, and you will be perceived as someone positive to be around by others.For example, Instead of getting angry at a person, why cant you pray for them? Anytime chaos is in the room, you find one person and bring peace to their world, even with chaos around them. Don’t get me wrong, being a Christ like delight takes work, and we fail to be a delightful person for others often.What we are saying is, Jesus is worth listening to because His Father delights in Him, and His delight is what I want for your life and mine.

Christ is also worth listening to because of what He’s done: “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”-Romans 5:6-8. Don’t get me wrong, Jesus teachings carry a lot of merit. His teachings have made a difference in the lives of many. His Sermon on the Mount is a monument on ethical living for anyone seeking to live a flourshing life. Yet the New Testament clearly holds Jesus up as worth listening to because of what He has done on the cross for sinners. If we count places where the cross, crucifixion, or Jesus being “crucified” is directly named, there are about 50–60 explicit references in the New Testament. If we expand to passages that explain the purpose or theology of the cross(atonement, sacrifice, reconciliation, redemption), the number rises to well over 100 passages, especially in Romans, 1–2 Corinthians, Galatians, Hebrews, and 1 Peter.

For the late Nabeel Qureshi, the cross of Christ made Him worth listening to, and changed his life. In 2012, 5 years before he passed away from a rare form of stomach cancer, he documents in his bestselling autobiography “Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus” his life changed in a way he never saw coming. In a quiet room after years of debate, prayer, and inner conflict, finally admitting something he had resisted with all his strength: the cross mattered more than he wanted it to. Raised in a devout Muslim home in the United States, Nabeel was taught from childhood that Jesus was a prophet, not crucified, and certainly not God. The idea that salvation could come through a crucified man felt offensive and illogical. To him, the cross symbolized weakness and failure. Why would God go this low to save? While studying medicine, Nabeel formed close friendships with committed Christians who challenged him—not with pressure, but with patience. They encouraged him to examine historical evidence, early sources, and Scripture about why Jesus was worth listening to. Nabeel expected Christianity as a faith to collapse under scrutiny. Instead, one fact refused to go away: the crucifixion of Jesus was one of the most historically attested events of the ancient world. Even non-Christian sources said the cross happened. If the cross happened, then the cross demanded an explanation. What troubled Nabeel most was not the history, but the meaning. As he read the Gospels, he saw that the cross was not an accident or tragedy Jesus tried to avoid. Jesus walked toward the cross! He spoke of it ahead of time. He framed it as love, sacrifice, and purpose. The cross confronted Nabeel with a God who did not remain distant or untouched by suffering, but entered it. The turning point came when Nabeel realized that the cross answered a question he had carried silently for years: how can a holy God truly understand human pain? The cross showed a God who did not merely demand obedience, but absorbed injustice, betrayal, and violence into Himself. Jesus did not conquer sin by force; He loved sinners, and His love cost His life. For Nabeel, that changed everything. Nabeel eventually placed his faith in Christ, it was not because the cross made sense, far from it! His faith in Christ was because the love of Jesus was too profound to dismiss, and empowered Him to listen to Jesus alone for the rest of his life.

Here are some invitations this week. I invite Dad’s (and all of you!!) to remember how much God delights in you. That will in turn make you delightful not only to be around, but others will want to be as delightful as you are, and will give a great opportunity to have conversations “seasoned with salt.” I invite you to reflect on what Christ has done for you. Be thinking now of how you will reflect on Jesus death on the cross this week, have a plan, be ready. Christ is worth listening to. May we listen again, for His sake, for others gain, and all for the sake of His glory. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.