Title: Well Pleasing in His Sight
Speaker: Pastor Phil Haddad
Date: 15th March 2026
Location: Adelaide, Australia
Summary:
“The Lord is not asking us to bring a perfect work. What he’s asked us to do was already perfect.”
This episode looks at a question that sits underneath almost every decision we make: who are we actually trying to please? It opens with Caleb and Joshua, the two men who came back from the promised land with a good report and then waited forty years in the wilderness before they ever set foot in it again. They held onto God’s promise while everyone around them let fear win, and God said of Caleb that he had another spirit in him and followed fully.
From there the teaching turns to three moments in the life of Jesus that show us what pleases the Father: his obedience in baptism, his answers to temptation in the wilderness, and his willingness to lay down his rights at the cross. Each one is simple rather than impressive. The picture is drawn using a child running up the aisle with a coloured-in page, scribbled well outside the lines, desperate to hear a parent say they’re proud. God is not grading the artwork. He is looking at the attitude behind it.
There’s a practical edge here too. Pleasing God often costs us popularity, and there are moments when the right thing and the easy thing part company. The episode closes with a list of eighteen things that please God, and a reminder that what we bring him each day is no longer a piece of paper but our decisions, our conversations and our attitudes.
Key Points:
- God responds to attitude and obedience, not to polish, performance or impressive results.
- Caleb and Joshua held faith through a forty year delay, showing that waiting well is part of believing God’s promise.
- At his baptism Jesus had performed no miracle and taught no crowd, yet the Father said he was well pleased, because obedience alone was enough.
- The three temptations in the wilderness each offered a shortcut to satisfaction, authority or attention, and each was answered with Scripture rather than argument.
- Seeking to please people and seeking to please God will sometimes pull in opposite directions, and popularity is the cost we may have to pay.
- Being falsely accused and taking it patiently, rather than defending ourselves, is described as acceptable to God.
- Simple daily practices please God: faith, obedience, humility, repentance, love, mercy, prayer, thanksgiving, serving others, endurance, truth telling, forgiveness, generosity, faithfulness and walking in the Spirit.
Reference Scriptures:
- Numbers 14:24
- Galatians 1:10
- Matthew 3:13-17
- Isaiah 9:6
- Matthew 4:1-11
- Philippians 2:6-8
- Isaiah 53:7
- Isaiah 53:10
- 1 Peter 2:19-25
- John 4:34
- John 5:19
- John 5:30
- John 8:29
- John 8:50
- John 18:11
- Ecclesiastes 7:20
- Ecclesiastes 12:13
- Matthew 25:21