I live in a town called Pleasanton. In certain ways, the town is truly ‘pleasant.’ It has places like this, a beautiful trail overlooking the whole town. It has a quaint downtown with ‘cute shops.’ It has a mall with many cool stores. It also has mutli-million dollar homes, cookie-cutter homes, town homes, and apartments. It also boasts one of the best school districts in Northern California. It is truly a ‘pleasant town,’ or is it? I guess that depends on what you understand the word ‘pleasant’ to mean.

According to Dictionary.com, ‘pleasant’ means ‘giving pleasure.’ And yes, according to the raw definition of the word, the things I listed to give a certain amount of pleasure, but only temporarily. And perhaps what is even more telling is the fact that this pleasure is so limited in its scope and can even backfire. I don’t know what those people in those homes are like, but I am sure of one thing: they, like people who are poor, struggle with sin and its consequences. And when a person struggles with sin, a person will eventually succumb to the power of death. It is an inescapable destiny for all living things. So yes, this might seem a bit morbid and bleak, but death is the outcome of all who live and therefore, the pleasures that one experiences is utterly and drastically temporary.

The malls of today that sells the latest clothing fads will be nothing more than thrift store fodder 50 years from today. These houses, during the next earthquake, might be no more. Pleasanton, booming today, could be a ghost town then as industry and technology find a more suitable home. But even more stark is the fact that the residents of today will return to the dust some day. That is not a pleasant thought…unless you consider what is truly pleasant, everlastingly pleasant, God delighted in bruising His Son.

What?!!!! That seems crazy, masochistic almost, if it weren’t Scriptural. Isaiah 53:10 says:

Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him;
he has put him to grief;
when his soul makes an offering for sin,
he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;
the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.

Wow, it was God’s will to crush His Son? Why would this be good and even give us eternal pleasure? Because sinners that deserve condemnation (Romans 3:23) are saved by God’s rich mercy and grace (Romans 6:23). And for this, God bruised His own Beloved Son, for me, and for all who trust in Him. John Piper describes this so well when He says:

But I think another part of the answer must also be that the depth of the Son’s suffering was the measure of his love for the Father’s glory. It was the Father’s righteous allegiance to his own name that made recompense for sin necessary. And so when the Son willingly took the suffering of that recompense on himself every footfall on the way to Calvary echoed through the universe with this message: the glory of God is of infinite value!

And so when the Father forsook the Son and handed him over to the curse of the cross and lifted not a finger to spare him pain, he had not ceased to love the Son. In that very moment when the Son was taking upon himself everything that God hates in us, and God was forsaking him to death, even then the Father knew that the measure of his Son’s suffering was the depth of his Son’s love for the Father’s glory, and in that love the Father took deepest pleasure.

Jesus said in John 10:15,17, “I lay down my life for the sheep. . . For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again.” And he prayed in John 17:4, “Father, I glorified thee on earth, having accomplished work which thou gavest me to do.”

In other words, when Jesus died he glorified the Father’s name and saved his Father’s people. And does not the Father have pleasure in his name? And does he not rejoice over his people with loud singing? How then shall he not delight in the resolution of these two joys in the bruising of his Son?

This makes my heart sing and my soul leap for joy, that God would love me so much. And to hear such things gives me pleasure. There are many things in this world that tickly my pleasure feelers: a juicy steak, a sporting event, a beautiful scene, a night on the town with my gorgeous wife, the birth of my children, and the list goes on. But all of these are fail to compare with the pleasure that I have in God’s love revealed to me by, yes…the bruising of His own Son. This pleasure is indescribable and no Pleasant[on] town could ever come close to matching the eternal pleasure of God. Or as the psalmist puts it in Psalm 16:11

You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.