Delight In The Lord

Delight in the Lord

Psalm 37:1-37:8

Good morning everyone, welcome. God is so good!

If you would turn to Psalms 37:1-8

This morning we will look at what it means to delight ourselves in the Lord.

You remember as a kid the excitement of receiving presents?

Truth is all of us enjoy presents. As a kid you didn’t do anything to earn them, they were given to you to show you how much you are appreciated and loved.

Presents uplift us, fill us with happiness and assure us we are important to others.

I think God enjoys getting gifts from us. (He would be hard to buy for)

I think He gets joy in some of the things we would give Him.

I believe He gets joy when we give Him our time. Talents, treasures, and we give him ourselves and desire to have and keep an intimate relationship with Him.

He gets joy when we tangibly show Him that we love Him and He delights to give us gifts as His children.

Psalms 37:1-37:8 Read from Bible clearly

Quick look at this passage

Do not fret- or do not worry about wicked people succeeding.

Trust in the Lord, and enjoy safety.

Commit your ways to the Lord.

Be still and wait on God for those things we do not understand.

Right in the middle of these verses (4) Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart (repeat)

2 questions come to mind

What does it mean to delight in the Lord?

What does it take for God to give you the desires of your heart?

If you would read all of this long Psalm- you would see that the theme is the contrast between the righteousness of God and the wicked. Who will inherit the land and who will enjoy the blessings of God?

I want you to see something here that is important. You may want to write this down.

When the lord is delighted with us, He will help us and keep us.

(23) “If the Lord delights in a man’s way, he makes his steps firm, though he stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with his hand.”

“The steps of the godly are directed by the Lord, He delights in every detail of our lives.”

Giving is what God does and giving is what God expects out of us.

There is a covenant between God and us.

God delights to give to His children, and His children should delight to give back to God.

A covenant is a binding agreement between God and God’s people.

Giving is an act of Christian Community.

We cannot say we love God without loving others and modeling Christ. Christ loved and Christ gave to others.

Let’s go back to one of the first questions I asked you this morning.

What does it mean to delight yourself in the Lord?

To be delighted is to be joyful- joyful in the Lord and finding joy in pleasing and being in God’s presence.

We see in (v1) that;

If we fret about what others have compared to us, we will be worrying instead of joyful.

If we are always fretting about the unrighteous getting more than what we have- we will be worrying instead of joyful.

If we think life is fair, and every time wrong is done to us, we blow a casket- we will be worrying instead of being joyful.

Psalm 37:4 says, “Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Taking delight in the Lord means that our hearts truly find peace and fulfillment in Him. If we truly find satisfaction and worth in Christ, Scripture says He will give us the longings of our hearts. Does that mean, if we go to church every Sunday, God will give us a new Rolls Royce? No. The idea behind this verse and others like it is that, when we truly rejoice or “delight” in the eternal things of God, our desires will begin to parallel His and we will never go unfulfilled.

Matthew 6:33 says, “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things [the necessities of life] will be given to you as well.”

Many delight in wealth, status, material possessions, and other temporary things of this world, but they are never satisfied. They never truly get what they want, hence the reason they are always wanting more.

This is the lesson King Solomon learned in his pursuit of earthly treasure:

Ecclesiastes 1:2.

“Everything is meaningless!”

On the other hand, delighting in the Lord is true treasure indeed: “Godliness with contentment is great gain” 1Timothy 6:6.

The key to be delighted in the Lord is to be trusting in the Lord.