“O taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed (happy) is the man who takes refuge in Him.” Psalm 34:8
This verse has long been the banner I have tried to hang over my life. I have become convinced of the assertion that “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.” (John Piper) To say it another way, God’s worth is demonstrated in His people not only by His glory being seen, but by His glory being rejoiced in. This thought does not originate with me, and I learned it from several sources, most notably John Piper of Bethlehem Baptist Church. Through listening to his sermons (www.desiringGOD.org) and reading his books and considering older sources like C.S Lewis, Jonathan Edwards, St. Augustine and then further back, The Bible, I have become convinced that God is most honored by those who pursue Him, who seek their satisfaction, their joy, their pleasure, their delight in Him. I contend however that our churches have a lot of people who don’t agree, but don’t agree because they don’t know their Bibles very well, and so content themselves with periodic Christian fumes and as a consequence live as badgers. Not in the sense of cute, furry creatures, but in the sense of putting on the Christian badge on occasion, whether on Sundays, at weddings, funerals, Easter and Christmas, but who are then very quick to take those badges off, like a lapel pin, and return it to the drawer until the next time political correctness comes calling and its time to look good and shiny.
I don’t want to be that guy, I don’t want you to be that guy, and I want us to despise the very impulse in ourselves that leads us to seek satisfaction in a host of banalities, rather than in the living God who has given us access to Himself, the One who is totally able to satisfy us in and through Christ.
Let me go one step further; we demean His eternal value in our emotional deadness to Him. He is not much impressed with lips that acknowledge Him which are attached to hearts that are far from Him, and that, sadly, is what we see parading as Christian faith in many churches today, and it is why the western church is dying. (Matthew 15:8)
We will consider a number of scriptural texts over the course of this study, but will begin today with just four. Again, the question we want to answer is, is God more honored by our hearts’ engagement with Him, evidenced most obviously by our active pursuit of Him through pillar means like Bible reading, study, meditation, memorization, prayer, and the other spiritual disciplines, or is He just as honored when we have our facts straight about Him, but love, affection, desire for Him is largely absent.
Let’s begin to answer by considering an illustration. I have John Piper to thank for this. Imagine you go to your wife with a dozen roses and when she asks, “why did you bring me roses?” you reply with, “I am doing my duty. It is my understanding that a man is to give his wife gifts once in a while in order to show affection, and so that is what I am doing.” Would she feel much honored by your actions?! You did your “duty” but it’s a hollow act.
Let’s try again; “why did you bring me roses?” “I just couldn’t help myself. Of all that I hold dear in the world, you are miles above everything. I delight in you. You are the greatest earthly gift I have, and there’s nothing that gives me more pleasure than being with you. The babysitter will be here in ten minutes. Go get changed; I got us reservations.”
Who feels more honored? Wife one or wife two?! Easy answer. In the first example the man does his duty, but there is no heart in it. In the second example he is still doing the duty of honoring his wife, but his heart is really into it. He values her and expresses the highness of her value to him. Ought not we operate similarly in our relationship with God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit? Seems reasonable.
But what does scripture say about this. Let’s look at a few texts.
Psalm 34:8 “O taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man (or woman) who takes refuge in Him.”
Taste and eyesight are two common portals through which we engage with reality. When we hunger and meet our favorite food, we delight in that food. We want it and express satisfaction as we eat it with words like, ”ahhhhh, that’s good.” We are not indifferent to our joy. When we fix our eyes on something beautiful, we respond similarly by expressing in some way our heart’s valuing. As we do this all the time in daily life, so are we commanded in this verse to do so with respect to God, specifically in regard to valuing his goodness. God does not command us to do that which we cannot do, but a brief observation confirms for us that we cannot manufacture holy desires or affections for God, but He will build them into us as we ask. He’s the mountain mover afterall!
Psalm 37:4 “Delight yourself in the LORD and He will give you the desire of your heart.”
What a promise. Seek to be delighted in Him and not only do you get to experience delight in the greatest Being in the universe, you receive from Him pure and holy heaven-sent desires that will become a part of your very substance. What a deal! Note the wording; it does not say, “give your allegiance to God. Do your duty.” Why? Because God prizes devotion above mere duty. Duty can be willed, which makes much of man. Devotion is a gift from God and therefore gives glory to Him. So we must ask for the very delight He commands us to have.
63:3 “ Because Your steadfast love is better than life my lips will praise You.”
The context is King David in the wilderness of Judah being chased by his favorite son Absalom, who wants him dead so that he can be king. David is up in the night watches wondering if/when he will hear the thundering hoof beats that might signal his own death and the deaths of all those who have entrusted themselves to him. It’s a time of stress, and yet, “Because Your (God) steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.” How can you say that David?! He would answer, “Though I have known great power, pleasure and prestige, in comparison to the depth of intimacy I have known and know with my God, these other things (life) are truly small. Though I have a death sentence on my head (as we all do) the steadfast love of God is powerfully and sustainingly near, and it is O so good. I can taste it.” David was no badger, agreeing with truth but emotionally distant from it.
68:3 “But the righteous shall be glad; they shall exult before God; they shall be jubilant with joy.”
What a hedonistic text and what a series of promises. The righteous are glad, and who doesn’t want to be glad but those who are mentally diseased? These righteous people will exult, in other words be really happy before God. Their joy issues forth from their righteousness, a practical lived-out righteousness that God is ever feeding them with. They are people who fight in His grace to live morally and ethically upright lives, people who don’t live with skeletons in their closets, people who are not numb in the coal mines of unconfessed and unrepented-of sin. The writer is laboring to find words high enough to describe the beauty he sees, but he ends with “the righteous . . .shall be jubilant with joy.” These are the fields of intimacy that God is pointing every Christian to. He doesn’t want duty-driven but heartless allegiance to Him. “I believe in Him but I don’t like Him” won’t work.
Tbc . . .