You CAN Be Happy

Sermon Transcript

Delight yourself in the LORD,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Introduction

Good morning! I know what you’re all probably expecting. It’s our last week going through these popular verses in their context to understand them more fully. This is one of those staggering promises in the Bible – so staggering – that you might expect a hundred different qualifications this morning. How could this verse possibly be “better than we think”? This is the verse where God promises to literally give me everything that I want. This is Oprah’s favorite verse for a reason (it’s true, look it up!)

Maybe some of you grew up in circles or have heard something on TV and have been exposed to what’s called the prosperity gospel. This is a favorite verse for the charlatan preachers and those imposters trying to manipulate the church and get rich. You know – delight yourself in the Lord, and by that I mean give some $ to the church, and he’ll give you wealth and health and success in everything you endeavor.

Some of you, you’re mature enough to understand it would not be necessarily a good thing if God gave you everything you wanted. Maybe then you’re a little confused about what this verse could mean since it can’t mean that God will satisfy all my desires.. we can qualify it so much we go back to just being kind of sad moderates. Nothing to get excited about here…

I’m here to tell you, there is something to get excited about here. This is indeed an earth-shattering promise, and in its context it’s far better than anything Oprah or a prosperity preacher could promise you. It’s not less than what they promise, but far more than it. At the risk of sounding hyperbolic and losing credibility, I’ll say that I believe this verse gives us God’s perspective on how human beings can be happy. I’m not exaggerating.

Now let me define what I mean by happiness before we go too far. Some people think of happiness just as the “absence of pain” like, I had a really bad headache and now I don’t. Others think more of like constant bliss or pleasure – like the experience of the first taste of ice-cream, but just all the time. I’m pretty sure that’s my 4-year old’s definition.

For today, let’s use the Bible to define the term. Our passage uses the term “delight”. To delight is to be happy with something. If you’re delighted, you’re pleased, you’re happy about whatever it is that has made you delighted. You could say you’re overjoyed. So this morning, I’d like to define happiness as a state of contented and persistent joy, coupled with a feeling of security that nothing can threaten it. What do you think of that definition? Does that work for you? Happiness is a state of contented and persistent joy, coupled with a feeling of security that nothing can threaten it. It’s something we all want, and it’s elusive. Pursue it directly, and you’ll never find it.

If you’ll grant me that definition, I think today’s passage has wonderful news for all of us. The big idea is You can be happy. How? It’s all about the relationship between delight and desire. Proverbs 13:12 has something to say about the relationship between them: “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.” In other words, our happiness is directly impacted by our desires and what happens related to them. Do you know what is that you truly want? Are you aware of what you most delight in?

Our Psalm says, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” You can be happy. How do we find happiness? The verses around our Psalm contain an ascending series of commands to encourage us. We’ll walk through each of these commands as principles that can guide you toward happiness. You can be happy. How?

1. Don’t envy the wicked (v1-2)
2. Trust God with your desires (v3)
3. Delight in God (v4)

1) Don’t envy the wicked (v1-2)

Look at how the Psalmist begins:

[1] Fret not yourself because of evildoers;
be not envious of wrongdoers!
[2] For they will soon fade like the grass
and wither like the green herb.

The Psalmist says “Don’t get all upset because wicked people have something you want! It’s not worth your time. Everything they have will fade. It’s all going to be dust. It seems like a big deal now… but in time you’ll see.” This point he reiterates throughout the Psalm again and again… fret not… fret not…

You know what will kill your joy and happiness? Worrying about what others have that you don’t. In other words, Envy. Envy is wanting what someone else has coupled with (and this can be subtle) resentment that they have it and you don’t. Some examples of things that could lead to envy:
* A friend gets married before you do
* I’m second string and they’re first string
* A younger employee in my workplace got promoted over me
* They have had no difficulty starting their family

Now it’s not necessarily envy just to want something someone else has – it’s ok to want a promotion or want to start a family. It’s sometimes even virtuous to want to be as wise or godly as someone else. Where it becomes envy is that tinge of resentment that settles in. That sense that they don’t deserve it, I do. Or maybe it’s God-oriented “look how he takes care of them, and look how overlooked I am.” Whether you resent someone else or God, that’s the fruit of envy, and it will rob your happiness.

We can even envy those who have no thought of God in the pursuit of their desires. Our passage refers to them as “the wicked” or “evildoers”. You know their version of this Psalm is: Delight myself in me, and I will take for myself the desires of my heart”. We look and can be tempted to think “You know that seems kind of attractive. Those people seem to get everything they want.” Even the godly can look at all the accumulations of the wicked and begin to envy.

Sarah and I experienced this while we were in year 3 of a struggle with infertility, a kid from my former youth group got someone pregnant out of wedlock. I can remember finding out and just laying in bed and just lamenting together – “seriously God, HE gets a kid and WE don’t?”

The Bible prohibits envy. For the sake of time, I’ve listed some of the passages that prohibit envy on the screen behind me. This is because envy is a form of unbelief that leads to spiritual death. Galatians 5:19-21 lists envy as among the worst of the works that spring from ungodly desires — and says “those who do it will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

Envy will destroy your soul, because it’s unbelief. That is – it says untrue things about you, about others, and about God. Envy says “they have it all together’. Envy says “Look how well God takes care of them”. Envy says wickedness seems to be more profitable than righteousness. They want something, they go and get it. Now they have what I want. Envy paints God’s boundaries and commands that are meant for our good – as restrictive or repressive, and makes virtues like patience and temperance seem old fashioned.

The righteous Israelites had this temptation – they wanted something good – to dwell in the promised land – that land of milk and honey – but the wicked were prospering there instead. They’re there, enjoying its fruit while perhaps threatening and oppressing Israel.

In this difficulty, the Lord says to them “don’t envy the wicked” and he says the same to you and to me: you don’t need to envy someone else… turn away from that, there is a better way.

Apply: How do we avoid the destructive unbelief of envy?

First, the Holy Spirit has to bring conviction and understanding as to how this command applies to you in your circumstance. For me personally, of course I’m prone to envy anyone with a bigger platform, or who seems more fit, or more talented or successful than I am. I know many of us may envy those who have families or who found love before we did. I remember being SO envious of a classmate of mine who could just do everything I could a LITTLE better than me. If you’re not sure what it is for you, try to pay attention to what’s causing you to fret or become angry on a regular basis. These are little “clues” to your desires.

One thing that can cause me to “fret myself” because of evildoers is social media. The political conversations, the world news, the flaunting of wealth and success, hustle culture, influencer culture, and so on – these just stir up “fretting” and “anger” in my heart. My desires get out of control. I want peace over there, political progress here, to have a clean kitchen like her, to wake up at 4:30am every day like Jocko Willink. My contentment in the Lord is robbed by my focus on the present.

Whatever it is, try to identify it. Then, think of the future instead of the present. Don’t just think about your desires right now, but play it out for the future. Slow down and ask, “what is it I want right now?” Interrupt your fretting with that thought… and if you need to, maybe a second level question “why do I want that?” – and then consider what God says about your future and theirs. This works whether you are envying a wicked person or a righteous person. If you’re envying the wicked, you preach to yourself “they will soon fade like the grass.” If you’re envying the righteous, you drop your resentment of them because you say “I have the same future as they do. One day we will all prosper, and my present sufferings will become crowns for my head.”

Every reason our passage gives to ‘not envy’ is future oriented.
* V1 says “they will soon fade like the grass”
* V3 says “God will make sure you’re taken care of”
* V4 says he’ll give you the desires of you heart
* V9 says those who wait for the Lord will be secure
* V11 says God’s people will experience lasting prosperity and peace

Finally, to discard whatever envy remains, try to reflect on your identity as God’s child. The wicked don’t prosper long. What would cause me, one of God’s adopted children to look at those who live their lives with no thought of God whatsoever, no experience of his love and grace, and say, “I want what they have”.

Brothers and sisters who call yourselves Christians – you have tasted the tender love and forgiving mercy of Christ – you have had your eyes opened to your spiritual darkness and had the bliss of knowing your sins have been forgiven, your shame has been rolled away. You have future hope that dwarfs any earthly difficulty. What does someone without any of that have that you could possibly want?

You can be happy. Don’t desire what the wicked have.

Second, Trust God with your Desires

The Psalmist elevates his command for us who pursue happiness. He goes on to encourage us with what we should do instead of envy.
[3] Trust in the LORD, and do good;
dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.
Again in verse 5 he says “Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him, and he will act.” And in verse 7 “Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him”

Envy is unbelief. The antidote is belief. Faith. Envy is cross-eyed. Faith sees things as they truly are.

Oprah’s interpretation of this passage is “trust in the general good and good things will come to you.” She has completely missed how intimately personal the command is.

Any time you see LORD in all caps in the Bible – this should tip you off – this is the personal NAME of God. Yahweh. Trust in Yahweh. The very name brings up ancient stories of how Yahweh personally and fiercely protects his children. Of how intimately Yahweh knows them and favors them.

We don’t trust in a generic God, or in good vibes, but in Yahweh. He isn’t just any God. He’s the creator of all heaven and all earth. History attests to his mighty acts. He’s the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He sent his Son to die for us, take away our sins. For those here exploring Christianity — That happened by the way — just over 2000 years ago Jesus was born in Bethlehem, lived in Nazareth, performed many miracles, was hanged on a cross until he died, was buried in a tomb in Jerusalem. Three days later he rose from the dead. More than 500 people were eyewitnesses to this. These eyewitnesses founded the church in his name. All the apostles apart from John, who was exiled, lost their lives for their claim that he rose from the dead. Rome couldn’t squelch the movement because they couldn’t find the body of Jesus. Because he was no longer in the grave. Our faith is a historic faith. Investigate it for yourself!

Our God is real. And the great news, the best news, is that he is far from any generic God, he cares about and knows all the details of your life down to numbering the hairs on your head. Now that might cause you to fret and worry, if he were not so gracious and merciful. But he is full of mercy and abounding in steadfast love. You can trust him with your every desire.

As verse three indicates, trust in God naturally results in doing good. When we trust him, we by extension trust what he says in his word and obey him.

Trust can be hard when it seems like God isn’t taking care of your needs. But often times that’s just appearances. Israel’s deep desire was to dwell securely in the promised land. This is why the Psalmist encourages them to dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. Here’s the thing – they were already there! They were concerned about who was there with them and rather than trusting God, they worried about it. Trust God with your desires, and you’ll begin to appreciate all the provision he’s given you already and be content.

What about us? When you read “the land” in the Old Testament just know that’s Old Testament code for “in Christ” for you and me. When you dwell in Christ, you enjoy his faithful protection of you day in and day out.

“befriend faithfulness” literally means “feed on faithfulness” in the Hebrew. Your daily lot, daily provision will come from him. If you have unfulfilled desires, the hardest part can be the waiting. Trust empowers patience. We “feed” so to speak, on his daily faithfulness, on everything he’s already given us. Our eyes are opened to how our feet have always been secure. You’ll accept the lot you have presently, and you’ll wait patiently for him to resolve your current dilemmas.

He has acted greatly on your behalf already, and he will act in the future. Trust God with your desires.

Apply: How can we trust God with our desires?

First of all, you can’t trust God if you don’t know him. And you can’t know him if you don’t accept his Son Jesus by faith. Maybe you’ve never given your life to Jesus in faith. The very act of faith is saying, “I believe Jesus died to save me from my sins and rose again to deliver me from death.” And committing your life to him — “I’m done living for my own desires, I want to live for you.” You can do that by prayer right now if you’d like. There’s a connect card on your seat with a sample prayer on it.

Maybe you need to recommit yourself to him. Feel free to take a moment now and do that if so. He’s always ready for you to come back to him if you’ve wandered away.

On a practical level, even those of us who are walking with the Lord can struggle to trust in one area or another. This is my encouragement to you. It may sounds like a broken record here on Sundays – but I encourage to faithful and regular meditation on Scripture.

The Bible is chalk full of staggering promises just like ours today. Every promise to Old Testament Israel is yours today in Christ – either the same or better. If you struggle with trust – if you would take even only take 15 minutes each day to open up God’s word… to read asking God to open your eyes to savor all the promises in his word. You’ll find God meets you in that time and lifts ugly things like envy and discontentment off of you.

You can be happy. Don’t envy the wicked… trust God with your desires.. and

Finally, Delight in God

Check out the progression here. It goes from: “I want what they have” to “I trust God with my wants” to “I want God”. It goes from “they have what I need.” to “I trust you with my needs” to “You are all I need.” Don’t miss this – and here we find the most astonishing promise of the bunch.

[4] Delight yourself in the LORD,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Let’s talk a little about the word “delight.” I delight in my kids. I mean that I take relational joy in them. What do you delight in? You can delight in your work, in certain relationships, in video games, in comfort, you name it. I don’t think we need a lot of explanation to understand what it is to delight in something. We were created with so much capacity for delight and disappointment. Small things and big things – we are creatures with desires. Our desires are formed by those things we most delight in.

Delight is like the desire beneath the desire. It’s a strong desire coupled with a worshipful captivation. God created us for worship – and so we are skilled at “delighting ourselves” in things.

If I delight myself in career success, my strongest desires will be career oriented. Similarly, if what I delight most in is comfort, my strongest desires will orient around things that are comforting to me. The issue is that we delight ourselves in the gift more than the giver OF the gift.

In fact, that’s the essence of wickedness according to scripture. Romans 1:25 says the wicked have “exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.” The wicked delight in created things, and their greatest desires revolve around them.

The righteous delight in the Lord. Their strongest desires are conformed by that relationship. This is why worship is so essential to the Christian life. You can read all the right things, believe all the right things and still delight in the creation more than the creator. We have to train our hearts to worship.

Worshipers who delight in the Lord want his approval and his affection so they trust him. Worshipers want to please him, so we obey him. We want him to receive glory, so we pour our lives out for him. He is rightly the center of all things and when we delight in him, our desires become rightly ordered and our hearts can find happiness.

One of the most loving ways he delivers us from discontentment is to deliver us from our out of control desires. His commands, his boundaries for us, are tools he uses in this work.

You might think this leads to less desire, but it leads to more. As the Lord conforms your heart to his, you ask for bolder and bolder things in his name.

The problem we have is that we keep trying to fulfill our own desires, but really never stop to consider how powerless we are to do so. We tell ourselves “I have to take care of me” but in reality:
* we don’t know what we really want
* we don’t have the power to fulfill all our desires
* we can’t always separate our sinful desires from our godly ones
* we can’t predict unforeseen consequences if our desire was met
* We will go too far to get what we desire
* We won’t go far enough
* Every remedy we come up with will have diminishing returns
* When we succeed we’ll become prideful
* When we fail we’ll be full of shame
* So many of our desires require other people
* You can’t fill your need for love
* You can’t fill your need for acceptance
* You can’t fill your desire to be respected and seen
* You can’t fill your desire to be wanted and delighted in
* You can’t control others who you need and desire to love you – and if you could, it wouldn’t be love
* You can’t absolve yourself from your guilt
* You can’t atone for your past mistakes
* You can’t make yourself heal from your past wounds
* You can’t attain the dreams that have passed you by already
* You can’t free yourself from the prisons your sin has locked you in
* You don’t know the half of what you should be desiring
* Maybe your heart bleeds for others-you can’t help even a fraction of the people who are hurting
* You can’t right every wrong

The wicked don’t see that. They think they can take care of themselves. That’s why they fade like the grass.

What ultimately happens to those who live their lives with no thought of God? They pursue and gain whatever their heart desires, but they wear themselves out for it. Every form of earthly pleasure divorced from God is subject to a law of diminishing returns over time. We clearly see this in addictive pleasure pursuits – the pursuit of the high of drugs, or the buzz of alcohol, or food addiction, porn addiction, phone addiction, etc. Over time these build a tolerance and you need more of the pleasure to receive the same benefit.

You know someone who loved something so much and consumed something so much they became something of a connoisseur? The true connoisseur can’t really enjoy that box wine any longer. They know too much. The list of approved wines gets smaller and more exclusive the more the notes and nuances are explored. For me, I don’t know about you… ever since the pandemic… it’s sparkling water. I mean don’t came at me with that mid “Aha” or “Bubly” nonsense. But if you bust out a Spindrift… or maybe like the OG Pellegrino… now we’re talking. If you know, you know. Some of you are like “Pellegrino is mineral water.” Mmhmm. See… you know.

There’s something good about exploring the pleasures of God’s creation – something about the wine connoisseur reflects a good and right thing – we’ll explore more of this later — the problem is we all know the pleasure is limited. At some point, the coinnoisseur will truly taste the world’s best wine and it will be over.

Those who try to take care of themselves will get old. They’ll get bored. They’ll wear their bodies out for their desires. They’ll wear out their relationships. They are spiritually dead and they will soon face their maker. Their desires are actually too small.

C. S. Lewis says it this way: “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition 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 the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

In reality we’re all looking for someone much, much stronger than ourselves. Someone we can fully delight in. Someone who will never let us down. A delight that fills us with desires that can be fulfilled over and over again and never run out. Depths that can be explored and never exhausted. Christ Jesus is the only one worthy this description. He’s the only one worthy of our ultimate affection and delight. Delight in Christ is the only pleasure that is subject to the law of increasing returns.

Don’t you see that every delight just points to him anyway? The art we delight in points to a delightful artist. The food we delight in points to a delightful chef. All gifts we receive point to the giver of those gifts who is infinitely more surprising and wonderful than any gift we’re fixated on.

In Christ, our relationship with God is transformed into that of a child with a loving parent. Imagine a baby, nursing with her mother. She’s content. All her needs are met. Now the next day, dad comes in with a bottle. The baby just screams and screams.

She needs milk, why does she scream? Because she doesn’t just need the gift, but also the giver of the gift. She longs for her mother. She finds contentment and happiness in her mother’s arms. It’s not just that her needs are met. She delights in her mother. Her deepest needs are met in her mother’s arms. And after the baby is bottle trained and weaned, she’ll still need her mother’s embrace and she’ll continue to need the giver of the gift more than even the gift itself.

Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. It’s not this transaction where you delight in the Lord, and he gives you new desires which he then fulfills. That’s one way to describe it. But the process is one of relational transformation. Like the connoisseur is ruined for lesser wine, true delight in God, having our spiritual, relational and physical desires met by our loving Father, the abundant joy we can find in Christ – these ruin us for lesser delights.

As you delight in the Lord, he will fill your heart with dreams and prayers you could have never imagined – prayers he will delight to answer. As your desires are filled, he will be glorified and will draw you even closer.

Apply: How can we learn to delight in God?

My best advice for those of you who are Christians is to fight for joy in this life. If you want to delight in Star Wars, you shouldn’t hang around with people who are “meh” about Star Wars. Hang around with some real Star Wars nerds and watch the films with them – that will be your best bet! You won’t become a die hard Sixers fan hanging around with casuals – you know?

It’s the same with delight in the Lord. I encourage you in this season and every future season of your life, to commit yourself fully to fellowship with other believers in the church who are fighting to delight in the Lord together. Hang out with those who have been ruined for lesser delights. When God provides for your brother or sister – you can delight as well. When you’re burdened, they can lift you up.

We’re restarting citygroups this week. That is where you’re going to find a community who can help you delight.Worship together on Sundays – where we sing joyful songs together – these are the rhythms that encourage us to delight.

Yet, to close, I want to acknowledge that we’re often miserable are we not? As long as we have this life, we will struggle with misplaced delight and ungodly desire. Sin will always be crouching at our door. We’ll find ourselves chasing our wicked desires. We’ll fall back into telling ourselves “I have to take care of me”. We easily lose our joy and contentment in the process. Third and finally, persevere through temporary sorrow.

The apostle Paul says it this way: For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. ~ Romans 8:18 (ESV)

Some may live lives so broken by circumstance and sin and sorrow that delight and joy may feel fleeting. Some may even have minds so impacted by sin and brokenness that they may never feel all the joys of delighting in God in this life. Yet I know from personal experience that there is still a peace that passes understanding and a joy that cannot be explained – even in the midst of anxiety or depression.

If you feel that happiness is fleeting this morning, know this – the Bible describes Jesus as “the man of many sorrows” and yet we know he didn’t lack delight in the Lord or happiness in him. In this life, we will have unmet desires. Yet still, he will sustain you for all you were intended for in this life, and then the next life will one of never-ending joy and bliss. It’s said the angels will marvel at our scars and say “you truly do look like him”.

I pray you’ll delight in him and begin to look like him in your sorrows and your joys.

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