What pleases God?

A Friend

Hello Everyone,

I'm preaching Jonah 4 this week. One clear point that arises from the text is the difference between Jonah's pleasure and God's. What pleases God, displeases Jonah. It seems to me, that the right way to do things is to align our pleasures with God's and not try to make Him align His pleasures with ours. I'd like to make that point this Sunday, but would like to be able to find a few more supporting references. So, would you be so kind as to design for me an ESV search that will bring up a relevant verse list where

subject: God, LORD, (etc)  Verb: delights, takes pleasure in, (etc)?

This should answer the question: "What does God delight in?"

I tried, but it came back with no hits. I know that's false and that the lack of hits has to do with user error rather than lack of Biblical data. Would you be so kind as to design for me the proper search parameters to bring back some good (relevant) hits?

Thank you.
IN Him,
Jeremy

Graham Criddle

This should answer the question: "What does God delight in?"

I tried, but it came back with no hits. I know that's false and that the lack of hits has to do with user error rather than lack of Biblical data. Would you be so kind as to design for me the proper search parameters to bring back some good (relevant) hits?

I would start from a verse where you know there is an occurrence - such as Isaiah 42:21. Right-click on the word "pleased" and run a BWS on the underlying lemma. Then scroll  down to the "Clause Participants" section and choose the cases where God is the "Experiencer"

At the bottom of the section you can run a Clause Search to show all of them

You can do something similar for the NT and try it with different verbs

There are other options - such as using the BSL - but hopefully that will give you somewhere to start.