Delight in God

Series: Emotions: Getting a Grip of Your Heart & Mind

August 22, 2021

JRCC In-person/Online

Emotions: Getting a Grip of Your Heart & Mind

“Delight in God”

Text: Psalm 73:25-28

Focus: The Psalms command us to delight in God. Why?

Welcome to our teaching time, friends. My name is Wally and I am on the Pastoral leadership team here at Jericho Ridge.

  • Our current teaching series is called Emotions: Getting a Grip on Your Heart & Mind.
  • And in case you haven’t figured it out yet, your emotions matter to God.
  • He created you to be an emotional being in his image.
  • Throughout the Bible, but perhaps no more than in the Book of the Psalms, which is the largest portion of the Scriptures, emotions are central to who we are and how we relate to God.

For example, the Psalms give us testimonies, personal stories of our emotions in relation to God:

  • “I love the Lord…” Psalm 116:1
  • “I desire you/God more than anything on earth…” Psalm 73:25
  • “How sweet your words taste to me…” Psalm 119:103

And the Psalms give us plenty of promises about our emotions:

  • “For God satisfies the thirsty soul…” Psalm 107:9
  • “The humble will see their God at work and be glad…” Psalm 69:32
  • “The godly will rejoice when they see injustice avenged…” Psalm 58:10

The Psalms also focus on prayers for our emotions:

  • “Oh give me back joy again; you have broken me – now let me rejoice.” Psalm 51:8
  • “Give me happiness, O Lord…” Psalm 86:4
  • “Now hear my prayer; listen to my cry. For my life is full of troubles…” Psalm 88:2-3

And then there are commands directed to our emotions:

  • Psalm 31:23, “Love the Lord, all you godly ones!”
  • Psalm 97:12, “All who are godly, rejoice in the Lord.”
  • Psalm 32:11, “Be glad in the Lord.”
  • Psalm 33:2, “Give thanks to the Lord.”
  • Psalm 33:8, “Let the whole world stand in awe of him.”
  • Psalm 37:4, “Delight in the Lord…”

 Love, rejoice, be glad, give thanks, stand in awe, delight … these are all related emotional states.

  • And these are all commands … commands directed toward our emotions that primarily express delight.
  • But not just commands to delight in anything … specifically to delight in God.
  • To “delight,” says the dictionary, is to experience pleasure, to take pleasure in, or to give joy or satisfaction toward.”

Think of what it means to delight in something or someone.

  • When you delight in something or someone, you are all in.
  • That amazing chocolate mousse at your favourite restaurant … oh, you would go back to the restaurant and skip the main course just to have that chocolate mousse.
    • In fact, on our honeymoon, Sylvia and I went to a remote restaurant in Belize that you could only access by boat and we had the chocolate mousse for desert.
    • To this day, we still talk about going back to Belize just for that chocolate mousse … yes Belize has the 2nd largest barrier reef in the world and amazing scenery, but we’d go just for the chocolate mousse (lol).
  • Or perhaps you are into art … you’d travel to Europe or New York to see your favourite piece of art.
    • You could stand there for hours taking it in, seeing aspects you had never noticed before, imagining Picasso or Van Goh moving their brushes across the canvass.
  • What about the first moment you knew the person looking back at you was the one you wanted to spend the rest of your life with.
  • Or the first time you held your child in your arms.
  • “All in!” … to delight in something or someone is to be all in with them … it’s a no-brainer kind of choice.

 So why do the Scriptures command us to delight in the Lord?

  • Why are the Psalms punctuated with so many commands directed at our emotion of delight toward God?
  • If delighting in someone is experiencing and taking pleasure in them, shouldn’t that be an option or a natural choice we make, as opposed to being commanded to do so?
  • Let’s be honest, none of us really like being commanded to do anything…
  • Well, when it comes to chocolate mousse or works of art that should be true … but what if our lives depended on it?

 If delighting in something or someone is to be “all in,” what does it mean to be all in with God?

  • To be all in with God is to stand in awe of his glory, to be radically stopped in your life-tracks and come face to face with God’s glory in the presence and person of Jesus Christ.
  • To delight in the Lord is to know and immerse yourself in the grace of healing salvation that Jesus offers us.
  • The emotion of delighting is a command in Scripture because it’s God’s best/ultimate calling on our lives … above all else, he wants us to receive salvation, eternal life.
  • God wants us to have life and not die.
  • He wants us to be all in with him, as he is all in for us.

Think of what differentiates the person who puts their trust in God as Saviour and Lord versus the one who does not?

  • The Apostle Paul, in 1 Cor. 16:22 says,

“If anyone does not love the Lord, that person is cursed.”

  • In Psalm 1 the godly and the wicked are compared: the godly love the law of the Lord and are fruitful as a result … while the wicked will be condemned at the time of judgment.
  • The godly delight in God, Psalm 19:10, they taste and see that the Lord is good, more desired than silver or gold … they take delight in God and his Word.
  • But the wicked don’t and the Bible says that they will be condemned in the final days.
  • And so God commands us over and over again to delight in him above everything else, to delight as an indicator that we are following him, as a reminder that we have placed our salvation in him and plan to live forever with him.
  • It’s not that he’s some General or Dictator demanding or commanding us how to feel or act for his own egotistical distorted purposes.
  • We are so important to him that he states it emphatically to implore us … delight in me for your sake … delight in me so that you may have eternal life!

 

Friends, what’s at stake in our human emotion and our expression of delight is our salvation, as well as the glory of God.

  • John Piper says that if we do not give thanks and delight in God, we dishonour him.”
  • In other words, God is supremely valuable … he is supremely precious … he alone is to be delighted in.
  • Psalm 36:7, “How precious is your steadfast love, O God!”
  • Whether people experience him as such or not, the reality is that no one else is like God … God is the greatest treasure we can know and experience.
  • No one else compares/ no one is worthy of our thanks and delight as God is.
  • And for any who deny God that, they forfeit their right to be in God’s presence.

 

Friends, the glory of God will not be quashed.

  • For any who try, or for any who dismiss it, Scripture is clear, doom and death will be their end.
  • In other words, ultimately, we perish if we do not cherish God above all else.
  • That’s why God commands us over and over again to delight in him, to be glad in him, to rejoice in him and give thanks.
  • To do so acknowledges God’s glory.
  • To do so glorifies God and says we are all in because he is worthy!
  • Listen to the cry of Asaph in Psalm 73:21-28,

21 Then I realized that my heart was bitter,
    and I was all torn up inside.
22 I was so foolish and ignorant—
    I must have seemed like a senseless animal to you.
23 Yet I still belong to you;
    you hold my right hand.
24 You guide me with your counsel,
    leading me to a glorious destiny.
25 Whom have I in heaven but you?
    I desire you more than anything on earth.
26 My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak,
    but God remains the strength of my heart; he is mine forever.

27 Those who desert him will perish,
    for you destroy those who abandon you.
28 But as for me, how good it is to be near God!
    I have made the Sovereign Lord my shelter,
    and I will tell everyone about the wonderful things you do.

  • There are no words that could glorify God more than these.
  • Asaph says that God is his desired end, “I desire you more than anything on earth… I will tell everyone about the wonderful things you do.”
  • And the outcome is God leading him to a glorious destiny.

 

What’s at stake in our emotion and the expression of our emotion, is the glory of God.

  • If we do not delight in God, we dishonour him.
  • But the more we are satisfied in him, the more he is glorified in us.
  • That’s why the Psalms command us to stand in awe of and delight in God… as an indicator of our salvation/our relationship with him, and as an indicator of his divine glory.
  • The ultimate reason God created the emotion of delight was so that we have the ultimate way of expressing relationship with him.
    • And in doing so, those around us are unmistakably pointed in his direction and given a powerful image of who he is.
    • As we taste and see, as we experience God’s glory, we naturally share that with others.
    • In fact, we often do so with a command, “You have to meet Jesus! He’s my Saviour, he’s changed my life, and I know He’ll do that for you…”
    • The command is a natural outpouring of invitational significance and transformative power in meeting and knowing God.

Now, the Scriptures also do something else for us that is utterly crucial.

  • The Psalms, for example, also protect us from naïve optimism about the emotional possibilities of fallen, sinful, finite human beings.
  • And they help us navigate the challenges that would otherwise encumber our emotions.

 

When we first choose to follow Jesus and he makes us a new creation, the Holy Spirit opens the eyes of our hearts to see God as more valuable/precious/satisfying than anything else.

  • But it would be naïve to think that our spiritual gaze on that glory can remain so clear, and our hearts remain so responsive, that for the rest of our lives in this broken world we would have unclouded vision, always delighting in God.
  • That simply doesn’t happen for any of us.
  • And the Psalms, more than any other book in the Bible, validate this fact.

 

The writers of the Psalms are often looking through obscured lenses and validating our corresponding emotions.

  • The delight of the psalmist is often conflicted and hindered.
  • Psalm 38:17, “I am on the verge of collapse,facing constant pain.”
  • Psalm 25:16-17, “Turn to me and have mercy, for I am alone and in deep distress. 17 My problems go from bad to worse. Oh, save me from them all!”
  • Psalm 38:4, “My guilt overwhelms me—it is a burden too heavy to bear.”
  • Psalm 42:5, “Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad?”
  • Psalm 6:6-7, “I am worn out from sobbing. All night I flood my bed with weeping,drenching it with my tears. My vision is blurred by grief; my eyes are worn out because of all my enemies.
  • This is why I love the Psalms … they are us.
  • They embody our pain, loneliness, trouble, guilt, burdens.
  • They are real life: no health, cast down, turmoil, shame, moaning, nights flooded with tears.

 

And if some health & wealth teacher wants to object and say, “All those miseries and all that conflict was before Jesus and before the Holy Spirit was poured out. Now, Christians live in a different reality.”

  • The appropriate response is, no we don’t … we do not escape the miseries, the conflict, or the consequences of a broken world.
  • The Apostle Paul, filled with the HS, wrote the following:
    • Romans 9:2, “My heart is filled with bitter sorrow and unending grief…”
    • 2 Cor. 6:8-10, “We serve God whether people honor us or despise us, whether they slander us or praise us. We are honest, but they call us impostors. We are ignored, even though we are well known. We live close to death, but we are still alive. We have been beaten, but we have not been killed. 10 Our hearts ache, but we always have joy. We are poor, but we give spiritual riches to others. We own nothing, and yet we have everything.”
    • Romans 8:23, “And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering.”

 

  • Friends, the emotional realism of the Scriptures is present in the Old and New Testaments … before and after Jesus, without and with the personal indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
  • Our delight in God is always conflicted and in a battle with our present reality.
  • But as the Apostle said, we persevere and fight, and the Psalms are particularly there to help us do that as well.

 

Make no mistake about it, the Bible reminds us that it’s a battle to delight, to experience delight in God.

  • Life is a battle against delighting in other things more than we delight in God.
  • The Psalms show us over and over, not how easy the emotion of delight toward God is, but how embattled it is, often due to impossible obstacles.
  • The Psalms show us how to fight for our ability to delight in the Lord … it sounds counter-intuitive, but listen to the voices in the Psalms:
    • how they “looked” to the Lord… Psalm 34:5
    • how they “remembered” his wonderous works… Psalm 105:5
    • how they “meditated” in the watches of the night… Psalm 63:6
    • how they “confessed” their sins and received forgiveness… Psalm 130:3-4
    • how they “gathered” in worship… Psalm 42:4
    • how they “cried” to the Lord in prayer… Psalm 51:8-12
    • how they “waited” on the Lord… Psalm 130:5
    • and how they put their “hope” in God… Psalm 39:7

 

To enter into the grace of salvation that is offered in Jesus Christ and be filled with the Holy Spirit means that we have seen and embraced God as our all-satisfying treasure.

  • We were all in and we experienced great delight in God.
  • And the rest of our life is a challenge and discipline to retain and grow in that delight of our God … to exercise our emotion of delight.
  • The enemy and our broken world pummel us and often require us to stand firm, to make a stand, to persevere … with all the strategies we just read in the Psalms.
  • We look, we remember, we meditate, confess, gather, cry out, wait and hope in the Lord so that our delight in his glory does not diminish, but grows even stronger.
  • We face the realities of life until we can say with Asaph in Psalm 73,

25 Whom have I in heaven but you?
    I desire you more than anything on earth.
26 My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak,
    but God remains the strength of my heart; he is mine forever.

 

  • And once again we experience our delight in God.
  • And then life hits back and we persevere again, until we can again say, “my delight” is in you, O God.
  • Our emotion of delight is not a one and done, nor is it some romantic ideal.
  • God has given you the capacity to delight in him; he has created you with this emotion as an avenue, as a sign-post toward eternal life with him.
  • And in our access to this emotion, we remind those around us of God’s glory and we point them toward the One who alone is worthy of our delight.

 

25 Whom have I in heaven but God?
    I desire you more than anything on earth, O God.
26 My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak,
    but you, God, remain the strength of my heart; he is mine forever.

  • And his response to our delight in him,

24 I am leading you to a glorious destiny.

 

Friends, as we move into a time of singing and response, let’s personally and corporately remind ourselves of all the reasons we have to delight in the Lord.

  • And if you are in challenging place right now and delighting in the Lord isn’t on the tip of your tongue, then we want to come alongside you and pray with you.
  • If you are watching live, you can click on the Request Prayer button and one of our Pastoral staff is ready to talk with you.
  • If you are watching this recorded on our YouTube channel or on Telus TV, please email us at
  • Let’s join with one another in response to our glorious God.

 

Benediction

Our benediction today is adapted from Carol Penner’s, Leading in Worship website.

God of all creation, 
our chief end is to glorify you,
and enjoy you forever.

Our deep delight is in your presence,
our fondest thoughts are of you,
our strongest longing is for your house.

As we leave this worship gathering,
help us to become who we are meant to be–
a community that breathes delight in you,
voicing your praise in all we do.  

 Amen.

You would think that delighting in something would be a personal choice. So why do the Scriptures command us to delight in God?

Speaker: Wally Nickel

August 22, 2021
Psalms 73:21-28

Wally Nickel

Transitional Pastor

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