How Do I Delight Myself in the Lord?

00:00:00.000 | Tandy in Alabama writes in to ask, "In your book Desiring God, you quote Psalm 37, 4

00:00:09.680 | many times. Most of these references are to support the idea that joy is a command.

00:00:14.240 | What does 'delight yourself in the Lord' mean practically?"

00:00:18.880 | It means first, Tandy, seeing Him as the most admirable person and reality in the universe.

00:00:30.480 | Ironically, Ayn Rand, who was an atheist and wrote Atlas Shrugged, said something

00:00:39.120 | I think stunningly true. She said, "Admiration is the rarest of pleasures."

00:00:48.400 | Now in her mouth, I think that was pure cynicism, meaning she's already rejected God,

00:00:57.120 | the source of all admiration and all admirability, and she can't see many people that she admires,

00:01:03.680 | and so she's a cynic. But oh, how right she is that admiration is one of our greatest pleasures.

00:01:13.280 | We love to admire sports figures and music figures and acting figures and admire beauty

00:01:21.360 | and admire sunsets and sunrises and mountains and rivers. We are admiring creatures to the core,

00:01:30.320 | and I think we're wired to be satisfied by admiring the most admirable, and the most

00:01:37.280 | admirable is God, and therefore, "Delight yourself in the Lord" means delight yourself in seeing His

00:01:46.720 | infinite admirableness. For me, Jonathan Edwards has been a huge help here. He has observed that

00:01:57.840 | the beauty of Christ, the excellencies of Christ that satisfy the human longing for

00:02:09.760 | ultimate excellence and ultimate beauty and in them ultimate satisfaction,

00:02:15.280 | those, he said, are seen most clearly when you observe the diverse excellencies or the

00:02:26.480 | surprising juxtaposition of seeming opposites in Christ. So I jotted down

00:02:36.240 | a little section from his sermon, "The Excellencies of Christ," to give to Andy a flavor

00:02:43.120 | of what I see when I'm delighting in Jesus. The person of Christ, he wrote, brings together

00:02:50.960 | infinite highness and infinite condescension, infinite justice and infinite grace,

00:02:59.840 | infinite glory and lowest humility, infinite majesty and transcendent meekness,

00:03:07.600 | deepest reverence towards God and equality with God, infinite worthiness of good and greatest

00:03:17.760 | patience under suffering evil, exceeding spirit of obedience with supreme dominion over heaven

00:03:25.680 | and earth, absolute sovereignty and perfect resignation, self-sufficiency and entire trust

00:03:34.880 | and reliance upon God. And he's right. I mean, Edwards is right. When Paul says in 2 Corinthians

00:03:43.120 | 4 that the devil keeps us from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the

00:03:49.600 | image of God, he means the devil is in the business of killing our enjoyment of the beauty of Christ

00:03:57.840 | in the gospel. And the gospel is the place where the cross brings those diverse excellencies

00:04:04.320 | together most clearly. So that's number one. Delighting in God practically means

00:04:13.120 | seeing and savoring the diverse excellencies of God, especially as they are manifest in Christ,

00:04:21.840 | especially as he brings them to fulfillment at the cross. But here's the second thing I'd say,

00:04:29.680 | and I think I only have two more. Know this God as your intimate, caring savior and friend.

00:04:40.960 | And here's why I say that. I have often said in many contexts, no one goes to the Grand Canyon

00:04:48.480 | to increase his self-esteem. We go to the Grand Canyon. Why? People do. They go to the Grand

00:04:54.880 | Canyon. And if they can't go there, they buy a big glossy book and put it on their coffee table.

00:04:59.680 | Why? Because standing at a Grand Canyon and watching this vast, cavernous,

00:05:08.800 | open space that goes down a mile into the ground with a tiny little river down there at the bottom,

00:05:14.960 | which is a massive river, it does something to our souls because God made us to know him as the

00:05:21.760 | great Grand Canyon. Tony, what happened when I've told that? A woman said to me one time that was

00:05:30.160 | so illuminating to me. She said, "Well, yes, but it's hard to enjoy the Grand Canyon if you feel

00:05:39.600 | you might fall over the edge and be killed by the Grand Canyon." I thought, "That's right.

00:05:49.920 | She's absolutely right. If we don't have, in addition to seeing and savoring the Grand Canyon,

00:05:59.840 | a sweet sense that the Canyon's not going to kill us..." I'll shift my metaphor off the Canyon

00:06:08.000 | onto Jesus. If God and Jesus are not for us, if they're not in love with us, if they're not our

00:06:14.880 | friend, if they're not our savior, if they're not kind to us and caring for us and protecting us,

00:06:21.120 | we won't have the capacity to see the Grand Canyon as beautiful. We'll just be terrified.

00:06:28.320 | We will be locked up inside our fears and we won't be able to know him and enjoy him.

00:06:34.080 | From the time I was a sophomore in college, Galatians 2.20 has served me like that.

00:06:42.080 | I am crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. In the life that

00:06:47.280 | I now live, in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God. Then I pause, I take a deep breath,

00:06:53.840 | "Who loved me, who loved me." It's one of the few places where Paul uses the singular personal

00:07:02.480 | pronoun for how Jesus relates to him and not just us. "He loved me and gave himself for me." That's

00:07:10.400 | what Paul said. So I just transfer that over onto me. And just recently, Tony, in my devotions,

00:07:15.600 | just I think maybe two days ago it was, I read in Revelation 2. No, it was more than two days ago

00:07:20.720 | because I'm at Revelation 11 now. So it was nine days ago. I read chapter 2 verse 17 where Jesus

00:07:29.360 | says, "I will give him," so I'm reading John Piper. He says, "John, I will give you a white stone

00:07:38.320 | someday with a new name written on it that no one knows except the one who receives it." Why does he

00:07:46.480 | say that, Tony? Why does he say that? He says it because he wants to assure me you're not a number

00:07:56.480 | in the system. You're not a cog in the great wheel of providence. I have you in mind. I have a name

00:08:04.080 | for you, and I want you and me to have the kind of relationship that there are things about it

00:08:10.400 | nobody else knows. That is simply breathtaking. So my second thing for Tandy is to say that

00:08:19.440 | delighting in God means delighting in his love for me and delighting in the fact that he cares

00:08:26.160 | for me and will protect me and means to have that kind of intimate personal relationship with me.

00:08:31.520 | And I suppose I shouldn't stop without saying we delight in God through what he's made.

00:08:40.880 | The heavens are telling the glory of God, and we did a podcast about food and sex and said they're

00:08:47.120 | really God's gifts, and we're supposed to receive them with thanksgiving and turn them into an

00:08:52.480 | occasion of worship. And so all through the day, every good thing that gives us pleasure should be

00:08:59.680 | an instance of delighting in God. So let me say those three again. Seeing and savoring him is

00:09:07.200 | infinitely admirable. Embracing him as your dearest friend, Savior, caring protector, provider,

00:09:16.080 | and thirdly, receive with thanks and worship everything he gives you.

00:09:22.000 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Please email your

00:09:26.400 | questions to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. At desiringgod.org, you'll find thousands of other

00:09:31.360 | free books, articles, sermons, and other resources from John Piper. I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:09:35.280 | Thanks for listening.

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How Do I Delight Myself in the Lord?

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