Tandy in Alabama writes in to ask, "In your book Desiring God, you quote Psalm 37, 4 many times. Most of these references are to support the idea that joy is a command. What does 'delight yourself in the Lord' mean practically?" It means first, Tandy, seeing Him as the most admirable person and reality in the universe.

Ironically, Ayn Rand, who was an atheist and wrote Atlas Shrugged, said something I think stunningly true. She said, "Admiration is the rarest of pleasures." Now in her mouth, I think that was pure cynicism, meaning she's already rejected God, the source of all admiration and all admirability, and she can't see many people that she admires, and so she's a cynic.

But oh, how right she is that admiration is one of our greatest pleasures. We love to admire sports figures and music figures and acting figures and admire beauty and admire sunsets and sunrises and mountains and rivers. We are admiring creatures to the core, and I think we're wired to be satisfied by admiring the most admirable, and the most admirable is God, and therefore, "Delight yourself in the Lord" means delight yourself in seeing His infinite admirableness.

For me, Jonathan Edwards has been a huge help here. He has observed that the beauty of Christ, the excellencies of Christ that satisfy the human longing for ultimate excellence and ultimate beauty and in them ultimate satisfaction, those, he said, are seen most clearly when you observe the diverse excellencies or the surprising juxtaposition of seeming opposites in Christ.

So I jotted down a little section from his sermon, "The Excellencies of Christ," to give to Andy a flavor of what I see when I'm delighting in Jesus. The person of Christ, he wrote, brings together infinite highness and infinite condescension, infinite justice and infinite grace, infinite glory and lowest humility, infinite majesty and transcendent meekness, deepest reverence towards God and equality with God, infinite worthiness of good and greatest patience under suffering evil, exceeding spirit of obedience with supreme dominion over heaven and earth, absolute sovereignty and perfect resignation, self-sufficiency and entire trust and reliance upon God.

And he's right. I mean, Edwards is right. When Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4 that the devil keeps us from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God, he means the devil is in the business of killing our enjoyment of the beauty of Christ in the gospel.

And the gospel is the place where the cross brings those diverse excellencies together most clearly. So that's number one. Delighting in God practically means seeing and savoring the diverse excellencies of God, especially as they are manifest in Christ, especially as he brings them to fulfillment at the cross. But here's the second thing I'd say, and I think I only have two more.

Know this God as your intimate, caring savior and friend. And here's why I say that. I have often said in many contexts, no one goes to the Grand Canyon to increase his self-esteem. We go to the Grand Canyon. Why? People do. They go to the Grand Canyon. And if they can't go there, they buy a big glossy book and put it on their coffee table.

Why? Because standing at a Grand Canyon and watching this vast, cavernous, open space that goes down a mile into the ground with a tiny little river down there at the bottom, which is a massive river, it does something to our souls because God made us to know him as the great Grand Canyon.

Tony, what happened when I've told that? A woman said to me one time that was so illuminating to me. She said, "Well, yes, but it's hard to enjoy the Grand Canyon if you feel you might fall over the edge and be killed by the Grand Canyon." I thought, "That's right.

She's absolutely right. If we don't have, in addition to seeing and savoring the Grand Canyon, a sweet sense that the Canyon's not going to kill us..." I'll shift my metaphor off the Canyon onto Jesus. If God and Jesus are not for us, if they're not in love with us, if they're not our friend, if they're not our savior, if they're not kind to us and caring for us and protecting us, we won't have the capacity to see the Grand Canyon as beautiful.

We'll just be terrified. We will be locked up inside our fears and we won't be able to know him and enjoy him. From the time I was a sophomore in college, Galatians 2.20 has served me like that. I am crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

In the life that I now live, in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God. Then I pause, I take a deep breath, "Who loved me, who loved me." It's one of the few places where Paul uses the singular personal pronoun for how Jesus relates to him and not just us.

"He loved me and gave himself for me." That's what Paul said. So I just transfer that over onto me. And just recently, Tony, in my devotions, just I think maybe two days ago it was, I read in Revelation 2. No, it was more than two days ago because I'm at Revelation 11 now.

So it was nine days ago. I read chapter 2 verse 17 where Jesus says, "I will give him," so I'm reading John Piper. He says, "John, I will give you a white stone someday with a new name written on it that no one knows except the one who receives it." Why does he say that, Tony?

Why does he say that? He says it because he wants to assure me you're not a number in the system. You're not a cog in the great wheel of providence. I have you in mind. I have a name for you, and I want you and me to have the kind of relationship that there are things about it nobody else knows.

That is simply breathtaking. So my second thing for Tandy is to say that delighting in God means delighting in his love for me and delighting in the fact that he cares for me and will protect me and means to have that kind of intimate personal relationship with me. And I suppose I shouldn't stop without saying we delight in God through what he's made.

The heavens are telling the glory of God, and we did a podcast about food and sex and said they're really God's gifts, and we're supposed to receive them with thanksgiving and turn them into an occasion of worship. And so all through the day, every good thing that gives us pleasure should be an instance of delighting in God.

So let me say those three again. Seeing and savoring him is infinitely admirable. Embracing him as your dearest friend, Savior, caring protector, provider, and thirdly, receive with thanks and worship everything he gives you. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Please email your questions to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.

At desiringgod.org, you'll find thousands of other free books, articles, sermons, and other resources from John Piper. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening. Desiring God.org Desiring God.org Desiring God.org