With You I Am Well Pleased

Genesis 5:24

Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.

Matthew 3:16-17

As soon as Jesus was baptized…heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove…. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” 

Do you want to please God? Do you want to really please him? Walk faithfully with God. Draw close to him. Love him as he loves you. Like a friend. Enoch loved God so much, they talked their way to heaven. At a certain point, God decided to take him up with him. The friendship must’ve been that good. But really, Enoch points to a Way to God. A way for all of us to be taken up. Enoch points to the bridge from humankind to God. He points to a Messiah.

There’s only one person who pleased God on his own. Only one who was perfect.

He is the reason you can walk with God. And here’s the connection to help you see it — he was taken up in the Ascension.

There is a reason you can walk with God despite your nakedness and humanity. The sin that started with Adam and Eve was washed away in a perfect Man who became perfection for you. Jesus came to earth to pay the penalty for your and my sin and let us walk and talk with God forever. He let us be taken up with him.

John 3.16 says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him would not perish but have eternal life.”

Romans 6.23 says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

And just like Daddy God showed with his Son Jesus, you are baptized — God cleanses you of sin so you can walk with him — and as you come up out of the water, the Holy Spirit fills you. Daddy God comes to walk with you in your heart. And someday the conversation will be so good, the friendship so close, that he’ll say I want you to stay here with me. In a way, he’ll take you up.

You can walk with God forever. But I want you to remember why. Jesus washed your sin away. When he died and rose again on the cross, shown here by coming up out of the water, the Holy Spirit asked in your heart if you’d like to take a walk with God forever. Will you walk with God?

It only comes through Jesus, who was well pleasing to his Father. Not you, not Enoch or Eve. The one Enoch was pointing to. One who would take away the sin of the world. In him the Father was well pleased.

My daughter, I tell you often. I whisper it in your ear as I pull you close.

“This is my daughter, whom I love. With you I am well pleased.”

Nothing will change that. It is the reflection of a Father in heaven. It was what life was always going to be for you from the beginning, from chatting in the cool of the garden to strolling with Enoch to heaven opening and this is my son — you walking with Daddy God as you walk with your Daddy now.

This is my daughter.

He bought that life for you. Because walking with you was worth it.

It is to me, too.