Everybody delights in good things.
A cup of java and a good book. A twelve-point buck at twenty yards. A long talk with an old friend. A little boy with sticky hands and muddy feet. The arms of the one you love. Whatever. Our hearts are full of sweet memories of past delights, and keen hopes for delights yet to come. When it all comes down, human beings live for delight. And that’s exactly as it should be.
Even the drunk in the gutter is driven by the delight he thinks he remembers finding in the bottle, and so he keeps helplessly hoping he’ll somehow find it there again. That’s not how things should be, but it’s how they are.
The point is, delight is what we all want.
Our Creator commands us to be delighted.
Take delight in the Lord. (Psalm 37:4)
It’s true! Many people imagine that God’s first intention for us is that we be disciplined in our lifestyle, or dedicated to our families, or devoted to some religious group. But none of those things — as right and good as they all are — is God’s top priority for our lives. His highest purpose in creating us was… true delight.
God created us for his own delight, and for ours.
You are worthy, O Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power. For You created everything, and it is for Your pleasure that they exist and were created. (Revelation 4:11)
God made humans to be exquisitely delighted in him, like the worshipers in the song we just quoted. God created us to be dazzled by his holiness, his perfection, his generosity, his justice, his beauty — in short, by his glory. God’s glory is his utter excellence and infinite importance on display, and he is intensely interested in it. In fact it’s his highest priority, and deepest delight.
Every human being ought to find his purest delight in God’s glory.
Whatever you eat or drink or whatever you do, you must do all for the glory of God. (1 Corinthians 10:31)
Our commitment to delight in God’s glory should touch every part of our lives — even the smallest. This is because we best exhibit God’s glory when we are gladly, fully preoccupied with him. We were made for joy and blessedness. But our only shot at experiencing it is by loving and delighting in our Maker with every fiber of our being. And that’s also his great desire for us. Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.” (Matthew 22:37-38)
None of us delights in God’s glory as we should.
All have sinned; all fall short of God’s glorious standard. (Romans 3:23)
What is God’s glorious standard? It is that we love him supremely, that we delight in his glory above all else. Yet we do not. We delight in the things we see around us, and treat them as if they counted for more than he. Worse yet, we imagine him to be something like all these things are. And so in our minds, we make him something far less than he actually is. This is rank thanklessness, and the soul of idol-worship. Yet it is quite characteristic of us. But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who push the truth away from themselves. For the truth about God is known to them instinctively. God has put this knowledge in their hearts. From the time the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky and all that God made. They can clearly see his invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse whatsoever for not knowing God. Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. The result was that their minds became dark and confused. Claiming to be wise, they became utter fools instead. And instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people, or birds and animals and snakes. (Romans 1:18-23) We desire and delight in everything under the stars, but not in the one true God, the God of the Bible. We are ungrateful, unsubmissive, and unbelieving. By our own nature and as a result of our own choices, we find ourselves utterly numb to our only Source of real delight. In our sin, we are dead to God and to his glory.
That’s certainly not a feel-good message!
Not at all. In fact, it’s deeply offensive to the natural human mind. Nobody would ever want to hear this stuff about himself. Yet it is only precisely what the Bible teaches about us. No one is good, not even one. No one has real understanding; no one is seeking God. All have turned away from God; all have gone wrong. No one does good, not even one. (Romans 3:10-13)
So it’s only right that we all stand condemned to death.
For the wages of sin is death. (Romans 3:23)
Death has always been the penalty for traitors. And our refusal to love God and delight in his glory is the lowest treason of all. So God is right to condemn us to death.
This death which is the just payment for sin is threefold. It involves physical death, which is the fate of every human because of that first sin committed by our race so long ago. Spiritual death, or our souls’ natural rebellion against and alienation from God, is also the lot of every human being; spiritually, we’re all stillborn. And then there is a third kind of death, reserved for every one who chooses to live for anything other than the glory of the one true, living God. Eternal death means being separated from the delights of God’s presence forever in a horrible place known as hell. Hell is not a gruesome fairy tale made up to scare naughty children. It is a grave reality, one about which Jesus spoke often — more often than he did about heaven, in fact.
The bad news is really bad.
But the good news is wonderful! God wasn’t content to leave sinners like us alone to struggle and die alone in our condemnation.
God sent his only son Jesus to give us forgiveness, life, and delight.
This is a true saying, and everyone should believe it: Christ came into the world to save sinners. (1 Timothy 1:15)
The good news is that Jesus endured the death penalty for sinners like us. He actually died in their place! What is more, he rose from the grave to prove that his death had power to wash away our guilt, and to open up to us the delight for which we were created. Now God can consider the guilty to be innocent without compromising his own justice in the least. For God sent Jesus to take the punishment for our sins and to satisfy God’s anger against us. We are made right with God when we believe that Jesus shed His blood, sacrificing his life for us. God was being entirely fair and just when he did not punish those who sinned in former times. And he is entirely fair and just in this present time when he declares sinners to be right in his sight because they believe in Jesus. (Romans 3:25-26)
Now sinners like us, cut off from our Maker by our own sin and rebellion, can run to him for the forgiveness and true delight that he alone can give. Christ also suffered when he died for our sins once for all time. He never sinned, but he died for sinners that he might bring us safely home to God. (1 Peter 3:18)
The benefits of the death of Christ belong to those who turn from sin and trust in him.
Now turn from your sins and turn to God, so you can be cleansed of your sins. (Acts 3:19) Believe on the Lord Jesus and you will be saved. (Acts 16:31)
Sin promises delight, but delivers death. Repenting, or turning from sin, means resolving not to believe sin’s lies any more, and deciding to delight in living for God’s glory instead. Trusting in Jesus means depending on him to make you acceptable to God by his death on the cross, and to usher you into the delights of a new life now and a forever life in heaven one day.
When a sinner turns from his sin and trusts in the Savior, his delight in God has begun to be restored, and God’s original purpose for creating him has begun to be reclaimed. And the reclamation of sinners utterly delights the heart of God — perhaps more than anything else on earth!
None of this means that the Christian life is just one great painless garden of delights.
Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will suffer. (2 Timothy 3:12)
When you stop delighting in the empty things that people all around you care about, they rarely react well. They might even hate you. Although living for God’s delight is far better than living for anything else, it’s not necessarily easier. If you’re going to live this new life, you shouldn’t be surprised if it’s hard. Jesus put it this way: “You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose the easy way. But the gateway to life is small, and the road is narrow, and only a few ever find it.” (Matthew 7:13-14)
Does all this make sense to you?
Do you want the kind of purpose and pleasure that come from delighting supremely in all that God is for sinners in Jesus? If you genuinely do, then the Spirit of God is already working in you, to bring you to Jesus. And Jesus will bring you to all the delights of God.
What should you do about it?
Repent. Believe. Turn from all the lying promises of self-delighting, self-directed living. Resolve instead to find your direction and delight in God. Call upon Jesus to save you from the guilt and punishment and bondage and disillusionment of sin. Anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. (Romans 10:13) Begin resting your hope squarely on, and seeking your delight solely in, all that God is for you in Jesus Christ.
Read the Bible to discover God’s truth, God’s ways, God’s purposes, and God’s promises. All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It straightens us out and teaches us to do what is right. It is God’s way of preparing us in every way, fully equipped for every good thing God wants us to do. (2 Timothy 3:16-17)
Find a Bible-believing church near you. Ask them to baptize you (that is, immerse you in water) as a witness to everyone that you have turned from sin and trusted in the Savior, and that now you have him as your chief delight. The Lord Jesus commands that you be baptized as the first step in your new life with him. Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given complete authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20)
Become a part of the church family that baptizes you, and begin to worship and grow together with those believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Glorify God, and delight in him forever.
You will show me the way of life,
granting me the joy of Your presence
and the pleasures of living with You forever.
(Psalm 16:11)
This tract was written by Christopher Gudmundsson, lead pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dundalk, MD. You can contact him at [email protected].
It was inspired by an article called “Quest for Joy,” written by John Piper. You can read it at http://www.desiringgod.org.
Scripture quotations are in italics, and were taken from The Holy Bible, New Living Translation (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1996).