Is Oprah Right on Psalm 37:4?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Okay, mine is Psalms 37, four.
00:00:07.240 | Delight thyself.
00:00:08.960 | - Oh.
00:00:09.800 | - I love the word delight, don't you?
00:00:11.080 | And I'm so--
00:00:11.920 | (audience laughing)
00:00:12.740 | - Last fall, Oprah appeared on The Late Show
00:00:14.120 | with Stephen Colbert,
00:00:15.000 | and they exchanged favorite Bible verses.
00:00:17.320 | And Oprah chose Psalm 37, verse four,
00:00:20.960 | prompting podcast listener, Gavin Thompson,
00:00:23.000 | to write us this.
00:00:23.920 | Hello, Pastor John, I'm a long-time listener,
00:00:25.480 | and I've read many of your books, including Desiring God.
00:00:28.320 | I know well that God is most glorified,
00:00:29.920 | and us, when we are most satisfied in Him.
00:00:32.320 | I wanted to ask you about this interview in October,
00:00:35.160 | where Oprah talks about Psalm 37, verse four,
00:00:37.680 | and delighting in God.
00:00:39.080 | I know her interpretation is not biblical,
00:00:40.960 | but I was hoping you could teach us
00:00:42.440 | the true meaning of the verse.
00:00:44.320 | When we delight ourselves in the Lord,
00:00:46.480 | what exactly does that mean?
00:00:47.920 | - Well, I went and listened to the segment
00:00:53.320 | where she spoke on this,
00:00:55.040 | and whenever I listen to Oprah,
00:00:57.680 | which isn't very often,
00:00:58.960 | I come away with amazement at how amazingly gifted she is.
00:01:04.800 | And I wish she would recover more of her gospel roots
00:01:09.800 | and find her way back to the particularities
00:01:16.800 | of the Christian faith,
00:01:18.120 | rather than distancing herself from them
00:01:22.280 | in order to pull all the religions into the same orbit,
00:01:27.120 | which is what it seems to me she's regularly trying to do.
00:01:30.440 | So Stephen Colbert asked her
00:01:33.920 | if she had a favorite Bible verse,
00:01:37.880 | and she said, "Yes, Psalm 37, four.
00:01:41.040 | "Delight yourself in the Lord,
00:01:42.620 | "and He will give you the desires of your heart."
00:01:45.560 | So to get at the meaning,
00:01:48.560 | let me describe four differences
00:01:52.360 | between the way Oprah handled the verse
00:01:55.520 | and the way I handle the verse.
00:01:58.880 | The first thing she did was to move
00:02:02.700 | from the specific person of Yahweh,
00:02:06.440 | you know, whenever you see the all caps L-O-R-D
00:02:10.400 | in the English version,
00:02:11.640 | that means it's a reference
00:02:14.200 | to the particular personal name of the God of Israel,
00:02:19.200 | not to a generic proper name
00:02:22.240 | or not to a generic name of God.
00:02:24.680 | And that's what's here.
00:02:27.360 | Delight yourself in Yahweh, the God of Israel,
00:02:31.160 | the God and Father of the Messiah, Jesus Christ,
00:02:34.800 | who ascended into the world to die for sinners
00:02:36.680 | and rise again and establish an eternal kingdom.
00:02:39.640 | That's the God that's being known and delighted in here.
00:02:44.000 | But what Oprah does is to say that,
00:02:47.840 | here's a direct quote,
00:02:48.740 | "Lord has a wide range,
00:02:51.880 | "compassion, love, forgiveness, kindness,
00:02:56.840 | "so you delight yourself in those virtues
00:03:01.100 | "where the character of the Lord is revealed."
00:03:04.240 | So she's moving from specificity in a person
00:03:08.160 | to generic character traits
00:03:10.360 | that everybody can be happy about.
00:03:12.720 | Now, my approach is to move in exactly
00:03:16.000 | the opposite direction when I read that verse
00:03:18.920 | or anywhere else in the Bible.
00:03:20.960 | I think the emphasis here falls not on aspects
00:03:25.440 | of virtue or character,
00:03:26.720 | but on the person of the Lord himself.
00:03:29.760 | So my mind is always moving from the things we know
00:03:33.840 | about God toward the person of God himself.
00:03:38.680 | So I'm always thinking that when God reveals
00:03:41.120 | a particular thing about himself,
00:03:44.240 | he's helping me know him.
00:03:46.320 | That's the point of saying things about himself
00:03:48.520 | or doing particular things in the world.
00:03:50.680 | He's helping me know him, the true God, a person,
00:03:54.400 | so that my delight can be in him
00:03:57.000 | and not in anything abstracted from him
00:04:00.160 | that could somehow be united then to another religion.
00:04:03.160 | So on this first point, our minds,
00:04:05.840 | Oprah's mind and my mind,
00:04:06.960 | are moving in two opposite directions as we read the text.
00:04:11.400 | That's the first difference.
00:04:12.280 | The second difference,
00:04:13.600 | and it's the reason why the first one really matters,
00:04:18.280 | is because of what she does with her direction in this text.
00:04:23.280 | She says that the point of the text is the principle,
00:04:29.200 | quote, "If you focus on being a force for good,
00:04:34.200 | "then good will come," period.
00:04:37.360 | Now, then she generalizes by saying this.
00:04:39.960 | This is her real agenda.
00:04:42.240 | She says, "That's the same as, one,
00:04:46.200 | "the third law of motion, two, karma,
00:04:50.800 | "three, the golden rule."
00:04:53.320 | And so you can see what moving away
00:04:56.360 | from the specificities of the name of the God of Israel
00:05:01.200 | to generalizations about compassion, love, forgiveness,
00:05:03.800 | and kindness leads to.
00:05:05.340 | It enables her to say what this text is really saying
00:05:09.520 | is really the same thing you find in high-level physics,
00:05:13.080 | Eastern religions, teachings of Jesus.
00:05:15.160 | So by moving away from the specificity of Yahweh,
00:05:19.760 | she's able to move toward the unification of all religions
00:05:23.200 | and all science as having the same basic message.
00:05:26.960 | And of course, that's the opposite
00:05:29.120 | of what I think the Psalms are doing.
00:05:31.720 | I think the psalmist is intensifying
00:05:36.720 | the specificity of the unique name of God, namely Yahweh,
00:05:41.400 | and seeking to capture our affections, our delight,
00:05:45.400 | for a very personal relationship
00:05:48.280 | to a specifically personal deity
00:05:51.320 | whose character is revealed in the way he works
00:05:55.520 | in history and in Jesus Christ.
00:05:57.840 | That's the second difference.
00:05:59.040 | The third difference is that Oprah does not connect
00:06:03.640 | this verse with Jesus Christ at all,
00:06:06.360 | except as Jesus lines up with the principles of physics
00:06:10.860 | and the Eastern religions.
00:06:13.040 | And I would relate this to Jesus in another way.
00:06:16.360 | I think delighting yourself in the Lord
00:06:19.200 | is another way of saying,
00:06:22.000 | love the Lord your God with all your heart,
00:06:25.040 | Jesus' words in Matthew 22, 36.
00:06:27.920 | And then I would point out that Jesus taught
00:06:31.780 | that no one can truly love the Lord God.
00:06:36.520 | No one can truly delight in the Lord God of Israel
00:06:40.460 | who does not receive Jesus himself as the Son of God
00:06:45.200 | and the Redeemer of the world,
00:06:46.640 | sent into the world by Yahweh.
00:06:49.000 | And the reason I say that is because Jesus says this,
00:06:53.320 | I know, he says to the Jewish leaders,
00:06:56.400 | I know that you do not have the love of God within you.
00:07:01.400 | Now, how do I know that?
00:07:04.160 | Next verse, verse 43.
00:07:05.360 | This is John 5, 42 and 43.
00:07:08.520 | I have come in my Father's name and you do not receive me.
00:07:13.520 | So if you don't receive Jesus, you don't love God.
00:07:19.060 | - Amen.
00:07:19.900 | - That's what he's saying.
00:07:20.720 | So receiving Jesus is, as he's presented,
00:07:23.620 | especially there in the Gospel of John
00:07:25.540 | and throughout that whole Gospel and the New Testament,
00:07:28.460 | receiving Jesus is the litmus test
00:07:31.980 | of whether anyone's claim to love God
00:07:35.900 | or delight in God is authentic.
00:07:38.500 | Which means that Oprah's effort to make this text
00:07:42.140 | serve the unification of religions
00:07:44.420 | is the opposite of its biblical intent.
00:07:48.260 | And here's the last difference
00:07:50.280 | between her way of going at this text
00:07:52.980 | and my way of going at this text.
00:07:55.580 | Her way of handling the relationship
00:07:57.800 | between the two halves of the verse
00:08:01.540 | is to simply say it's cause effect.
00:08:04.120 | If you delight, then you get your desires.
00:08:07.060 | Or if you devote yourself to good, then you get good.
00:08:11.540 | Now I think the relationship is, yes, cause effect,
00:08:15.700 | but more than cause effect.
00:08:17.220 | I think delighting yourself in the Lord
00:08:20.500 | is what shapes the desires of your heart
00:08:25.300 | so that it will be good for you for God to grant them.
00:08:30.300 | In other words, there are a lot of desires in our hearts
00:08:35.020 | that are impure and unwise, and this is not a promise
00:08:39.900 | that if you delight in God,
00:08:42.100 | then you get all those evil desires in your heart.
00:08:46.680 | And the best way to bring the desires of our hearts
00:08:50.280 | into conformity with God is to put all of our energy
00:08:54.860 | and all of our effort into enjoying God himself.
00:08:59.540 | When we enjoy God, not just his gifts, but God himself,
00:09:03.980 | then the desires of our heart are shaped,
00:09:07.060 | are defined and created in accord with our delight in him.
00:09:12.060 | So when he gives us our desires,
00:09:17.820 | he will not be contradicting his own supreme value
00:09:21.660 | in our lives as our supreme delight.
00:09:24.900 | It's very similar to what Jesus said in John 15, 7.
00:09:29.500 | He said, "If you abide in me and my words abide in you,
00:09:32.780 | ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you."
00:09:36.180 | So there's this condition of words abiding in you,
00:09:39.980 | presumably because when words of Jesus really abide
00:09:44.660 | and take root in our passion and our satisfaction,
00:09:48.300 | that shapes what we pray for
00:09:50.140 | so that the answers come more surely, more regularly.
00:09:55.140 | So the reason those who delight themselves in the Lord
00:09:59.300 | receive the desires of their heart
00:10:02.020 | is not just because one causes the other,
00:10:05.140 | but because one shapes the other.
00:10:07.340 | Delighting in God supremely determines, shapes,
00:10:11.620 | the kinds of desires that we have in our heart.
00:10:15.460 | - Brilliant.
00:10:16.300 | - So I think the root of the matter is
00:10:19.740 | that Oprah in general leans away
00:10:24.020 | from the specific, particular,
00:10:26.100 | distinct dimensions of biblical reality
00:10:29.300 | and leans toward abstractions from those specific realities
00:10:34.300 | so that she can pursue her goal of finding unity
00:10:39.940 | among the religions and the sciences of the world.
00:10:44.620 | Now, I think that's the opposite
00:10:47.100 | of what the Bible was written to do,
00:10:50.260 | and I think it's the opposite
00:10:51.580 | of why Jesus came into the world.
00:10:53.860 | - It's hard to make it more clear than that.
00:10:55.020 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:10:56.360 | Delighting in God is what we are all about
00:10:58.820 | at Desiring God, that God is most glorified in us
00:11:01.660 | when we are most satisfied in him,
00:11:03.780 | and that delight changes everything,
00:11:06.860 | and it shapes everything that we do.
00:11:08.620 | For more information about John Piper and his writings
00:11:11.180 | and the writings of others who cherish this truth,
00:11:14.100 | you can find us online at desiringgod.org.
00:11:17.120 | Well, Jesus is alive.
00:11:19.380 | Amen, he is alive.
00:11:20.580 | He is not dead, he is not absent,
00:11:22.820 | he is not boring, and he is not predictable,
00:11:25.740 | and the book of Acts proves it,
00:11:27.220 | as we'll see tomorrow.
00:11:28.820 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:11:29.660 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John Podcast.
00:11:32.160 | (upbeat music)
00:11:34.740 | (upbeat music)
00:11:37.320 | [BLANK_AUDIO]