Delight Yourself in the Lord
The Ultimate Pleasure in Life
Psalm 37:4
One of the most fascination verses in all the Bible to me is found in Psalm 37:4 where David writes,
“Delight yourself in the Lord; and he will give you the desires of your heart”.
That is not the only place in Scripture where we find that kind of language. For instance, in Psalm 42, the sons of Korah express this deep desire to be with God when they say,
“As a deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God”.
Read verses 24 to 26 of the 11th chapter of Hebrews and you will find Moses rejected the “passing pleasures of sin,” because he was looking for something better than the treasures in Egypt.
Jesus Christ Himself, who, according to Isaiah 11:3 found His delight in the fear of the Lord, for the "joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God”.
Those verses, and many more like them, offer us a valuable insight that many people never realize and that is that the desire to be happy is God-given and should not be denied or resisted but directed to God for satisfaction.
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perhaps more than any other aspect of our human existence, and in particular, our Christian experience, has been exploited and twisted by Satan. On the one hand, there are those who say you shouldn't deny yourself any pleasure. Whatever you enjoy is good. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you die.
On the other hand, there is that camp that says any pleasure or happiness is wrong or immoral, therefore the goal of our faith is to deny ourselves any good think. Go around with a frown and make life miserable for everyone around you!
And finding the balance between those is difficult. So what is the solution? The solution is found in our relationship with God. Or to say it as David said it, "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart."
Now let me suggest a rather novel idea that is worthy of your consideration: Would you agree that doing the will of God is the way to experience the fullness of joy? If so, if you abandon the pursuit of joy, you will never fulfill the will of God.
How else can we explain the dichotomy of hearing Paul say, on the one hand, “We are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered” (Romans 8:36), and on the other hand, “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I will say, rejoice” (Philippians 4:4)?
So what does it mean to "delight ourselves in the Lord? Or to ask it another way, what does true happiness look like? The answer is found by exploring the happiness of God Himself.
I don't know if you've ever thought about that or not, but God has chosen to express to us His character and conduct through emotions and actions that we can understand.
We certainly have no problem conceptualizing God's anger or justice or love. But ironically, I'm not sure we ever give much thought to God's happiness. But our God is a happy God and shares that happiness with us. Let me show you what I mean through three simple, yet profound statements.
First of all, I would suggest
1. God is happy because He delights in Himself
Think about this: A part of God's perfection is found in the value that He places on things. So what is the most valuable thing in the universe? God is! Therefore, God's judgment and justice would be
skewed if he valued anything more than Himself.
God is the most valuable thing in the universe and to assign more value to anything else is to blaspheme God. So in what would God find more value than Himself? If he did not take infinite delight in his own glory, he would be unrighteous, because it is right to take delight in a person in proportion to the excellence of his glory.
The Scriptures are saturated with texts showing how God unwaveringly acts out of a love for his own glory. Listen to
Isaiah 48:11
There is nothing God values any more than His glory!
The same thing appears when we ponder the relationship of God the Father to God the Son. There is a mystery here beyond all human comprehension. And I admit that our efforts to describe God's awareness of Himself and the relationship that exists in the Trinity always falls short.
But there are aspects of that relationship we can glean if we follow Scripture. For instance, Scripture teaches that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God (John 1:1). And in Hebrews 1:3 it says that “he reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature.” 2 Corinthians 4:4 speaks of the glory of Christ who is the image of God. From these passages we learn that from all eternity God the Father beheld the image of his own glory perfectly represented in the person of his Son.
Therefore, one of the best ways to think about God’s immense happiness in his own glory is to think of it as the delight he has in his Son who is the image of that glory.
When Jesus entered the world, God the Father said, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). When God the Father beholds the glory of his own essence in the person of his Son, he is infinitely happy. “Behold my servant whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights” (Isaiah 42:1). So the first observation is that God is happy because he delights in himself, especially as his nature is reflected in his beloved Son.
Here's the second thing. God is happy because
2. He Is Sovereign
Listen to
Psalm 115:3
Now, what this verse implies is that God’s sovereignty is His right and power to do whatever makes him happy. Our God is in heaven — he is over all things and subject to none. Therefore, he does whatever he pleases — he always acts to preserve his maximum happiness.
God is happy because his righteous acts, which are always done out of love to his own glory, can never be frustrated beyond his will.
Isaiah 43:13, “I am God, and also henceforth I am he; there is none who can deliver from my hand; I work and who can hinder it?”
Isaiah 46:10: “My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.”
Daniel 4:35: “He does according to his will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, ‘What doest thou?’”
I am absolutely convinced God is infinitely happy because he has absolute right and power as Creator to overcome every obstacle to his joy.
By the way, it’s worth asking as a parenthesis here how a good God can be happy when the world is shot through with suffering and evil. It’s a huge and hard question. Two things help me.
One is that it doesn’t help much to save God’s reputation by saying that he is not really in charge. If someone tries to comfort you by saying it wasn't God's will that something bad happened in your life and you can still trust Him because He's a good God, you need to answer by saying, “It doesn't help to think that God is too weak to deal with the problems I face."
Instead, learn to rest in the sovereignty of God. When good things or bad happen, they happen in His appointed time, and nothing, but nothing happens that He is not in charge of, or He is not sovereign.
I trust Him now, and someday I will understand more fully what was happening, but in the meantime I will not rob God of His sovereignty in a feeble attempt to help His reputation.
The other thing to keep in mind in regard to bad things that happen is to remember that God is seeing more than we are. His vision is not limited to the single set of circumstances or limited exposure that we have.
Therefore,, He can delight in His sovereignty because He sees things start to finish, and even into eternity. For example, we know the death of Christ was the work of God the Father. Isaiah wrote, “We esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted . . . It was the will of the Lord to bruise him and he has put him to grief” (Isaiah 53:4, 10).
And in fact, the great heart of God must have been broken through the experiences of Calvary, and no doubt, God did not delight in what happened at the cross.
But according to Hebrews 2:10 God the Father thought it was fitting to perfect the Pioneer of our salvation through suffering. God willed what he saw in the close up details because in the larger setting of eternity, it was a fitting way to demonstrate his righteousness and bring his people to glory.
And when God, in his omniscience surveys the sweep of redemptive history from beginning to end, he rejoices in what he sees. Therefore, I conclude that nothing in all the world can frustrate the ultimate happiness of God. He delights infinitely in his own glory; and in his sovereignty he does whatever he pleases.
Here's the third thing:
3. God's Shares His Happiness with Us
And aren't you thankful He does? It is seen in His mercy, His grace, His goodness, His comfort, His care and on and on the list goes!
By the way, can you imagine what it would be like if the God who ruled the world were not happy? Someone has rightly observed, "If mama ain't happy aint nobody happy!"
Just try that with God! What if God were given to grumbling and pouting and depression like some of you are? What if God were depressed and gloomy and frustrated and aggravated? What if God got up on the wrong side of the bed?
I dare say we wouldn't have heard David saying, O God, thou art my God, I seek thee, my soul thirsts for thee; my flesh faints for thee, as in a dry and weary land where no water is” (Psalm 63:1)?
We would all relate to God like little children do to a gloomy and frustrated father. They can’t enjoy him. They can only try to avoid him and maybe try to work for him to make him feel better.
Therefore, the root of true pleasure and happiness for the child of God is that God is infinitely happy. That means the aim of our existence as Christians is to be happy in God, to delight in God, to cherish and enjoy fellowship with God. But children cannot enjoy the company of their father if he is gloomy and dismal and frustrated. And so the basis and foundation of that delight is that God is the happiest of all beings.
Here is another way to say it. In order for a sinner to pursue joy in God, he must be confident that God will not shut him out when he comes seeking forgiveness and fellowship.
How can we be sure God will treat us with mercy when we repent from our sin and come seeking joy in him? Jeremiah tells us why:
Jeremiah 9:24
God shows mercy because he delights in showing mercy! God is not saving people because He promised He would and now He can't go back on His word! He is so full of life and joy in his own glory that He can't wait to share that joy with others!
He delights above all things in his divine excellence, and his happiness is so full that it expresses itself in the pleasure he has in sharing it with others.
If there is any verse in Scripture that shares the heartbeat of God, it is
Jeremiah 32:40–41
Why does God do good? Why does He love you so much? God does good to you because he enjoys it so much! He eagerly pursues the opportunity to love you with all his heart and with all his soul. And what we enjoy in salvation is nothing other than the happiness of God spilling over in joyful love into our life every day!
I close with this reminder. These precious and astonishing promises of God’s favor come with a condition and that is that we seek with all our heart the incomparable joy of fellowship with the living God. As the Psalmist put it in the 147th,
Psalm 147:10–11
In other words, if you want the Lord to delight in you, you've got to delight in Him! After all,
“The Lord takes pleasure in those who hope in his mercy", therefore, “Delight yourself in the Lord; and he will give you the desires of your heart”.
Let's pray.
