Word of Salvation – July 2024

 

Enjoying God

 

Sermon by Harry Burggraaf B.D. on Psalm 37:4

Scripture Reading: Philippians 4:4-9, Psalm 34

Songs:          Morning by morning (BoW.421)
Rejoice, the Lord is King (BoW.332)
Hosanna (BoW,180)

TEXT: Psalm 37:4
“Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

Some time ago I was feeling pretty miserable and disaffected with life and a friend of mine said,
“Harry do you really enjoy God?”

Enjoy God?  That is a novel sort of an idea to some people!

If he had asked me: “Do you believe in God?” I could have handled the question.  Yes of course, well mostly, yes I do.

Or – “Do you worship God?” – not very well, but yes.

Or – “Do you pray to God?” – sometimes more than other.

Or – “Do you serve God?” – mostly, make a poor job of it; but I try.

Or even – “Do you feel close to God?” – sometimes yes, sometimes no.

But do you enjoy God?  What?  Like a friendship, or beautiful scenery, or a spectacular show, or a quiet evening with a book?

How do we enjoy God?

Enjoy doesn’t really belong to our normal language about God.

Yet when you look at the Scriptures they are packed with references about enjoying and finding pleasure in God.

* Philippians 4 – “Rejoice in the Lord, and I’ll say it again, rejoice!”

* Psalm 37 – “Delight yourself in the Lord and he’ll give you the desires of your heart.”

* Psalm 34 – “O taste and see that the Lord is good.” – savour him, enjoy him.

* Psalm 16 – “You have made known to me the path of life, you fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at you right hand.”

Jeremy Taylor, an author from an earlier century writes – “God threatens terrible things if we will not be happy and enjoy him”.

That raises a new thought: usually we see God’s displeasure in our disobedience, not in our lack of enjoyment of him

John Piper in “Desiring God” – suggests that at the core of the Christian life is the enjoyment of God.

He expounds the first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism as promoting a sort of ‘Christian Hedonism’.

“What is the chief end (purpose) of man?”

“To glorify God and enjoy him forever.”

How do we glorify God?  By enjoying him.

He argues that the longing to be happy is a universal human experience; everyone wants to be happy don’t they?  Do you want to be happy?

And this longing is good, not sinful.  God wants us to be happy – else what is heaven for?

We should never deny or resist this longing to be happy, as though it were a bad impulse.  We should nourish it, intensify it with whatever will provide the deepest and most enduring satisfaction.

And what is it that will really satisfy?  What will really give enduring wellbeing?  God…!  The enjoyment of God.

“Jesus priceless treasure, source of purest pleasure.”

Our problem is of course that we long for happiness and fulfilment, but we look for it in places where we won’t find it (well not in a really deep or enduring way):
– entertainment (our society is hot on that)
– our jobs; great gift of God, but not the place to find deep down peace and wellbeing
– house, car, holidays, family, sex, food…
…all terrific gifts from God; but they won’t nourish your deepest longings, this hunger to be at peace, to know that you’re alright and that the world is alright.

C.S. Lewis, that master story teller and writer, puts it so aptly – this hunger for happiness, but looking for it in the wrong places:

“We are half hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex, and ambition and power, when infinite joy is offered us – like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum, because he cannot imagine what is meant by an offer of a holiday by the sea.  We are far too easily pleased.”

Real pleasure and enjoyment comes from savouring those things which are most important to us, which are of greatest value – and so the most enduring satisfaction is found only in God.

We glorify God by enjoying him.

But how can we enjoy God?  What fosters and nurtures the enjoyment of God?  And what hinders or inhibits our enjoyment of God?

From the wisdom literature in the Bible (Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes) I suggest at least three areas.  The first is…

1.  SAVOURING OUR SALVATION.

* Psalm 34:8 – “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” – savour the Lord, luxuriate in his goodness, let your tastebuds delight in what he offers.

* Think here of the historical situation.  David is king elect.  He flees from a jealous King Saul.  He ends up in Gath, a Philistine city and enemy territory.  He’s hosted by Achish the king.  All goes well till some of the servants blow the whistle: Isn’t this the guy who is the pretender to the throne of Israel – the one to whom they’ve dedicated the latest hit song: “Saul has slain thousands and David his ten thousands” – Yeah, yeah, yeah.  You’re looking after him now, tomorrow as king of Israel he’ll be fighting

you.

And so David feigns madness and is thrown out.  He sees this as the saving act of God.

“Oh taste and see that the Lords is good”.  The way he saves people from sticky situations is terrific.

You really start enjoying God when you rehearse and value and reflect on what he’s done for you in Jesus Christ.

Those who’ve grown up in Christian families, and those who’ve known Jesus Christ for a long time can get very ‘ho-hum’ about this.  You know:- Ah yeah, another meal, spuds and vegies again.  All in a day’s work.  Jesus died for my sins and I belong to God.

You’re not savouring the meal, says David; you’re missing the flavour of God’s goodness.

* The testimony of new Christians often reminds us of the magnitude of our salvation and the miraculous beauty of God’s love.

I think of Ian McCormack testimony.  In New Zealand he drifted from faith, did the Asia and hippy thing, ended in Mauritius, stung by a box jellyfish and had a ‘near death experience; he sees himself in hell then in heaven, incredibly close to Jesus.  He has a taste of God.

* The Old Testament people, whenever they tended to forget the sweet joy of salvation and God’s goodness would have a covenant renewal celebration, or a festival where it would come alive again: the Festival of Tabernacles, the Day of Atonement, the day of blowing trumpets, the feast of Purim – all remembering aspects of God’s grace.

[Next week you have the opportunity also to get a first-hand taste of God and the goodness of his work again in the Lord’s Supper.]

So we nurture and stimulate our enjoyment of God by savouring our salvation.

But Scripture shows us a second way to enjoy God…

2.  PRACTISING GOD’S PRESENCE.

* Psalm 16 – “You have made known to me the path of life, you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.”

How do we enjoy someone?  Well by being with them of course.  It is as we’re in the presence of God that we enjoy him.

There’s a little children’s song that goes,
“Every day with Jesus is better than the day before,
every day with Jesus I love him more and more.”

Well I don’t think it’s true.  It’s sentimental nonsense.  As realists we know that some days with Jesus are ‘a real bummer’ (as kids at school would say), our dispositions are sour, in fact we can feel so depressed that we’d like to just sit down and cry.  And some days we don’t love him at all.

We know it from experience, and we know it from the Bible.  The number of times that David, great man of God, hero of the faith, talks about God reviving and restoring his soul are amazing:
– “He leads me besides still waters, he restores my soul”
Apparently life wasn’t terribly happy before.  He had his bad days.

There are many ways of being in the presence of God – in one way of course we always are – but in the sense of being intimately with him – prayer, meditation and reflection, song, the Holy Spirit just ministering to your mind and heart – but I think that at the centre of it all must be the Word of God.  It’s as he communicates that we enjoy him most.  Again and again in the Psalms we read that it is the law – the word of God – that revives and renews the soul.

George Mueller, famous for establishing orphanages in England during the depressing period of the industrial revolution, a terribly busy man, wrote:

“I saw more clearly than ever, that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day, was to have my soul happy in the Lord.  The first thing to be concerned about was not, how much I might serve the Lord, how much I might glorify the Lord; but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished…  I saw that the most important thing I had to do was give myself to the reading of the Word of God and to meditate on it.”

Counsellors tell us that the Achilles Heel of many marriages is lack of, or superficial, or destructive communication.  People don’t enjoy each other’s company or companionship anymore because they don’t really talk; well not heart to heart, mind to mind, soul to soul.

The times I have least enjoyed God, and have missed his presence are when the reading of his Word has been absent, or when it became a sort of ritual formality.

It’s a matter of really engaging, no superficial talk, listening, arguing with the word, responding to its promptings, being corrected by it, encouraged by it, overwhelmed by it – as if God is actually there speaking and you’re in his presence.

I must confess that my lack of enjoyment of God is often reflected in my lack of appetite for his word.  Just as marriages and friendships go cold because of the poverty of communication, so does our relationship with God.

A third way Scripture shows us how to enjoy God is…

3.  DELIGHTING IN THE DAILYNESS OF LIFE.

In some sectors of the church, and certainly in particular periods in the history of the church, there is the idea that the enjoyment of God comes in special places and special events – we enjoy God as we worship, or even worship God in a certain way (with or without an organ or drums), when we have Bible study, when we pray, as we participate in the Lord’s Supper.  The so-called ‘ascetic traditions’ of the church.  We enjoy God most when we deny ourselves all the pleasures that the world provides.

The Bible makes it plain (and the Reformation understanding has always been) that God is to be enjoyed in every dimension and every aspect of life.

* READ: Ecclesiastes 5:18-20

* Or there’s especially Ecclesiastes 8:15…

“So I commend the enjoyment of life, for nothing is better for a man under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad.  Then joy will accompany him in his work all the days of life God has given him under the sun.”

It is as we enjoy God’s world that we enjoy him in…
– a splendid sunset,
– a cooling breeze,
– the silly grin of a chimpanzee,
– the biting spiceyness of a Sri Lankan rice dish,
– a Beethoven symphony or even a Midnight Oil rock concert,
– passionate sex with your marriage partner,
– a moving drama that brings tears to your eyes,
– a quiet evening with friends…

….all fantastic gifts of God; where we enjoy the giver as we delight in the gift.

C.S.Lewis described this so powerfully in his ‘Screwtape Letters’:

“God is a hedonist (pleasure seeker at heart).  All those fasts and vigils, and stakes and crosses, are only a facade; only like foam on the seashore.  Out at sea, out in his sea there is pleasure and more pleasure.  He makes no secret of it.  At his right hand are pleasures evermore.  Uggh, he’s vulgar Wormwood, he has filled this world with pleasures.  There are things for humans to do all day long – sleeping, washing, eating, drinking, making love, playing, praying, working.  Everything has to be twisted before it is of any use to us.”

And of course that is what old Screwtape, the Devil, does all the time.  Things that are supposed to lead us to the enjoyment of God become ends in themselves.

So we lavish our affection and get our satisfaction from the gifts – clothes, holidays, bank account, a bottle of good wine, sex, you name it – and Wormwood will twist it – rather than give praise to the giver.

C.S. Lewis wrote to Malcolm, an avid bushwalker and nature lover: –

“Sure enjoy the sunlight in the wood, but these spontaneous pleasures are patches of God light and one must let one’s mind run back up the sunbeam to the sun”.

Harry, Judy, Jordan, Anne – do you really enjoy God, do you find delight and pleasure in him?

Taste and see that the Lord is good.

Savour his salvation.

Engage continually with his Word – practise the presence of God – and find pleasure in the everyday big and little things of life.

The chief purpose of our life is to glorify God by enjoying him, forever.