Delight in the Lord
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Introduction:
What things do you delight in? It is spring time and the last few days have been beautiful days. It’s been wonderful to get outside and feel the breeze and smell the fresh air....unless you have allergies, and then you can strike everything I just said.
Maybe you are an outdoor person and you delight to go for walks or plant a garden or mess around in the yard.
Maybe you aren’t an outside person and you love to stay indoors and read a book or watch a movie or do some sort of craft.
What are the things in your life that you delight in the most?
What if the things that we delighted in the most, the “one thing” that we delighted in the most was the Lord? How would that change our lives?
That’s what we will be looking at tonight from our text in Psalm 16:11. We are only going to look at one verse from this Psalm, but this one verse holds the key to delighting in the Lord.
11 You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
1. God makes known to us the path of life
1. God makes known to us the path of life
“The Path of Life” is a metaphor for how we live.
The path is a rich metaphor for one’s actions in life. It implies a current point of origin (where you are in life now), a destination, and key transitional moments (forks in the road).
Tremper Longman III
It’s used often in the Proverbs.
17 Whoever heeds instruction is on the path to life, but he who rejects reproof leads others astray.
Jesus even references it in terms of the way of salvation.
14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.
John Gill said,
Life is a path trodden by all men, and but once.
John Gill
What is the tragectory of your life?
2. There is fullness of joy in the fellowship of the Lord
2. There is fullness of joy in the fellowship of the Lord
David said in Psalm 21:1-7
1 O Lord, in your strength the king rejoices, and in your salvation how greatly he exults!
2 You have given him his heart’s desire and have not withheld the request of his lips. Selah
3 For you meet him with rich blessings; you set a crown of fine gold upon his head.
4 He asked life of you; you gave it to him, length of days forever and ever.
5 His glory is great through your salvation; splendor and majesty you bestow on him.
6 For you make him most blessed forever; you make him glad with the joy of your presence.
7 For the king trusts in the Lord, and through the steadfast love of the Most High he shall not be moved.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism begins the first question by asking,
“What is the chief end of man?”
The answer,
“Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Hi for ever.”
It’s this second part that we learn of the joy of fellowship with God. The Scripture proof for the question comes from Psalm 73.
25 Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
27 For behold, those who are far from you shall perish; you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you.
28 But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all your works.
This idea of the presence of God is sometimes summed up in an expression “face to face.” It is to be in intimate communion with God.
3. True pleasures are given to us by the Lord
3. True pleasures are given to us by the Lord
Earlier in verse 16, David has used the imagery of a surveyor of land or that of receiving an inheritance.
6 The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.
Some of you have gone through the process of having to settle an estate. Even though you knew where the property boundaries might have been, you had to call and settle the estate. In some cases there might be a dispute about the boundary of the property that requires a land surveyor to come out and redraw the lines.
The terminology David uses is like that of a surveyor. When the Israelites came into the promised land, Joshua divided up the land according to the tribes and clans of Israel.
David uses this language to describe His inheritance in the Lord. David does not envision a physical inheritance, though anything we have in this life is from the Lord. Instead he describes his spiritual inheritance using terms like a surveyor.
Friend, you may not have a lot in this life. You may not be rich by the world’s standards or own a great big estate, but if you are faithfully delighting in the Lord, you are building an inheritance in heaven that cannot be taken from you.
I worked as an intern in Athens when I was in college and the internship was with an estate planning attorney’s office. One of the attorneys was actually one of my teachers and he told us about many farmers in a nearby county that would come to him to settle their estates toward the end of their lives. They had inherited their lands or purchased them over the years and they didn’t think they had a whole lot of value, but the value of their area had shot up and they were now worth quite a bit.
Some of their families inheriting the land could find themselves in difficult circumstances trying to hold on to the land that was now worth significantly more than their family originally paid for it and often the family members might still have to sell the land to pay the taxes on it.
You know in this life there are a lot of things that can take away our earthly pleasures. We can loose or bank account or portfolio in an economic collapse. We can lose our property in a fire or natural disaster. We can lose our health and our reputation.
All of these pleasures that we seek out are not really very good investments for us to delight in. We must learn to long for the good things that the Father wants to give us.
The blessings in His hand are true pleasure. When we delight in God, we find the things that matter most.
Conclusion
If our joy is to be summed up in the things we can obtain in this life, we are setting ourselves up for a letdown.
Verse 4 says,
4 The sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply; their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names on my lips.
Other gods can never satisfy. We are too sophisticated today to worship an idol, but we still have gods. They are the gods of material things or the god of our self.
We will grow tired of things, but we can never grow tired of God. Things can be taken or lost, but our joy in the Lord will stand forever.
If we delight in the Lord, we will experience joy in this life, but even more that joy will continue into eternity.
Do you delight in the Lord?
Do you really long for the Lord?