Delight Yourself In The Lord Series

Introduction

Turn with me to Psalm 37. We are in the second week examining the four statements that David made to do in/to the Lord. Last week we discussed trusting in the Lord. Now we move on to the second point that David makes. We read Verse 4 were David writes, “Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart.” What do you think of when you think of delight? Is it something that you feel, something you do, or something that just happens? What can get in the way of delighting in the Lord? What is there about the Lord to delight in? These are the questions I want to answer this morning. Let’s begin.

I. Define delight.

The first thing that we need to do when we are discussing how to “delight ourselves in the Lord” is to define what the word delight means. I think the word delight gets mixed up with other words far too often. To ascertain the meaning, I went to dictionary.com. According to the folks at dictionary.com, to delight means “to have great pleasure; take pleasure.”

This definitions has a few major implications. The first being that delight is not an emotion. Emotions are something completely different. Emotions are things that you feel inwardly. When something is going right, you feel happy. When something is going wrong, you may feel sad or angry. You may feel uneasy about certain things or you may feel excited about other things. These things are controlled by the situation that you are in. You don’t necessarily play a role in the split second emotions that you feel.

To take delight in something is a conscious choice that you have to make. It isn’t an emotion like happy, sad, angry, or confused. You are the one that makes the choice as to whether or not you delight in something. To delight in something takes effort. It is something you have to work for. You have to learn how to appreciate something before you can take pleasure from it. If you receive a flower from someone, it makes you happy, but it isn’t something that you necessarily delight in. However, when you plant a seed, you put effort into making it grow. You may fertilize it, you water it, you nurture it. My grandfather used to grow roses. He would sit outside and actually talk to the roses because he believed that it helped them to grow. When you go through effort like that, it makes you appreciate the flower. You appreciate the effort it took to grow it. You appreciate the process that the flower has gone through starting as a seed until now as the beautiful mature plant sits before you. You see the flower in a different light than you do the one given to you. You now take delight in the flower.

Just like the roses my grandfather grew, in order to delight in the Lord, we must work on our relationship with Him. We must tend to it. We must communicate with the Lord daily. We must put work and effort into it. If we don’t do that, we cannot possibly take delight in the Lord. We cannot appreciate and have pleasure in God.

II. We cannot delight in the Lord, if we love the world.

Now that we have defined delight, I want to bring to light is something that makes it impossible to delight in the Lord. You cannot delight in the Lord if you love the word. These two things do not go together. It’s like trying to mix oil and water. Have you ever done that? Have you ever tried to mix oil and water. They separate and refuse to combine. The same is true of delight in the Lord and love of the world. They cannot be mixed.

Turn to 1st John chapter 2. Up to this point in the chapter, John is discussing how to know the Lord and our spiritual state. He then sets aside some space in his letter about loving the world. John writes starting in verse 15, “Do not love the world or he things of the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world - the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life – is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.”

John saw the difference between the things of the world and the things of God. He knew that loving one makes it impossible to truly love the other. How many times do we compromise our love of God for the love of worldly things? It’s very tempting, isn’t it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, “well yeah, I know the Bible says that, but…” It breaks my heart when I hear things like that. The person knows what God says. He knows what God desires, but instead of choosing those things, he chooses the things of the world. Can this person truly delight in the Lord, or does he just like to pretend to feel safe?