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?
Like I said before, it takes work in order to delight in the Lord. If we are always working for worldly things instead of the things of God, which do we really love? I know a man who loves stuff. He always wants the latest and greatest of everything. New cars, new phones, new computer; you name it, he has it. He works 6 days a week 12 a day in order to be able to get all this stuff. He only takes Tuesdays off since it tends to be a pretty slow day where he works. He doesn’t come to church, doesn’t spend time with other believers, never reads his Bible, but thinks he and God are “on good terms.” The sad fact is that he doesn’t really love God. He loves stuff. He loves stuff so much that he has fooled himself into believing that his relationship with
God is good, even though he does nothing the Lord expects of him. He works for, and therefore, delights in the world, not in God. I want to quote Bob Dylan in the song where he states: But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes
Indeed you're gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody
III. What can we delight “in the Lord”
Now we must make a choice and make the effort to delight in the Lord! As Bob Dylan said, “It may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” I choose to serve the Lord! When we choose to serve the Lord, there are many different things about God that we can delight in.
The first thing that we can delight in is God’s love. We can take great pleasure just from the simple idea that God loves each and every one of us. Jesus proved that love for us on the cross. Do you want to know how much Jesus loves you? Look to the cross and see. The prophet Isaiah told all about the love of God in sending Jesus to die for us. He states in Isaiah 53:4-6, “Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, everyone, to his own way; And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”
Jesus loved us enough to do that for us. Surely we can take pleasure (delight) in that love.
The next thing about the Lord that we can delight in is His faithfulness. God is completely faithful to us all the time. I just want to mention different scriptures that show the faithfulness of God:
1 Corinthians 1:9 God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleans us from all unrighteousness.
2 Thessalonians 3:3 But the Lord is faithful, who will establish you and guard you from the evil one.
2 Timothy 2:13 If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself.
We can see many different ways that God is faithful in the scriptures. There are many more, but I just wanted to give you a taste of the faithfulness of God. Just these four scriptures show that He is faithful to call us into fellowship with Jesus, cleanse us from sin, establish us, guard us from evil, and never give up on us even when we falter. This is something we can take great delight in.
The next thing that we can take delight in are the laws of God. I’m not talking about the Mosaic law, although we can all appreciate the fact that we no longer live under that. I am talking about the new covenant in Jesus. Paul certainly took delight in the law freeing him from sin when he said in Romans 7:22, “For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man.” Up to that point He was talking about being captive to sin, but here he notes that the “law” (the commands of Jesus Christ and what He did for us) set him free from that sin and death. We can do the same. Take the advice of the Psalmist where he says in Psalm 1, “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly. Nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and he meditates on it day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water. That brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; And whatever he does shall prosper.”
Finally, we can take great delight in God’s plan. From the very beginning in Genesis, we can see God’s plan for salvation of mankind. He shows the coming of the Messiah in Genesis 3 where He tells the devil that while he may “bruise the heel” of the Messiah, He will crush the devils head. We see God’s plan when he brought the Israelites out of Egypt. We see it when He sent numerous prophets in the Old Testament to warn Israel about it’s wandering from God. We see God’s plan when we see Jesus on the cross, dying a horrific death to take away the sins of the world. We see God’s plan in the great commission in Matthew 28 where Jesus tells us to preach, baptize, and teach the world about Him. If we look closely and we make the effort to serve God, we will see His plan in our lives today.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I want to urge you all to delight in the Lord. Forget the things of the world, and take great appreciation, pleasure, and delight in the things of God. Someone once said, “This world can never satisfy our deepest longings, but if we chose to delight in Go’s way, He will always provide above and beyond our expectations.” Let us live, delighting in the Lord.
