‘Hear him.’ These words speak of the sufficiency of Scripture. Hear everything he says. The Holy Spirit will in due course inspire the apostles to write down all the things that he said and did, and will inspire the New Testament epistles in due course. They will be his word; a new period of revelation is coming. Listen to him. Hear him, not only to learn the doctrines but to learn your instructions too and what he would have you do. It means listen to his teachings and obey his commands. He is your King. This is something many people have lost sight of today, even Christians. They say, ‘I love the word and I’ll preach the doctrines of the word’ but they don’t do much about listening to the instructions and you have got today something that hasn’t happened to the same extent in church history in the past, as it happens today. A division, a gulf between teaching the right things and doing the right things.
In Matthew’s Gospel we read ‘In whom [in him] I am well pleased.’ The modern translations fall down very badly here. Is it ‘in whom I am well pleased?’ Or is it, as the modern translations have it, ‘with whom I am well pleased?’ ‘In him’ is correct; ‘with him’ is an interpretation. ‘Oh,’ say the modern versions, ‘That’s old-fashioned English – “in whom I am well pleased.” You can’t say that today, so we will say, “with whom I am well pleased.”’ But doing that has changed the meaning. Here is the difference. First of all, ‘in him’ tells you something about God. God looks upon a sinful, human race and he is holy and he is just and he will express his holiness and his justice in punishment. But God is also loving and kind and forgiving. Can he express that? Can he perfectly express his whole range of attributes? No, he can’t, not towards fallen mankind, because we are sinful and foul and his holiness and perfection and justice must eradicate us, so God cannot express those other aspects of his infinite, divine character: his love and his mercy. But in Christ he can! Because the second person of the Godhead comes to earth, suffers and dies, makes an atonement, dies our death for us, and takes our sin for us. Now the whole Godhead can express his mercy and love and kindness and forgiveness as well. So God is delighted. He expresses all his attributes – his holiness and justice and his mercy and love and forgiveness and the voice from heaven looks upon Christ and says, ‘In whom I am delighted to express all my attributes. In whom I am well pleased, in whom my soul delighteth.’ That is the sense. ‘With whom I am well pleased’ is a much more limited statement.