© 2009, The First Baptist Church of Dundalk, Maryland
Corner of Dundalk and Saint Helena Avenues
P. O. Box 8964 / Dundalk, MD 21222
Voice: 410.282.4256 / Fax: 410.282.4340
Email: dundalkfirst@dundalkfirst.org
Corner of Dundalk and Saint Helena Avenues
P. O. Box 8964 / Dundalk, MD 21222
Voice: 410.282.4256 / Fax: 410.282.4340
Email: dundalkfirst@dundalkfirst.org
TRUE DELIGHT
Everybody delights in good things.
A round of close-to-par golf. 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. 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.
Our Creator commands you and me 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 the vilest kind of unthankfulness, 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)
Because of this, 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 that is the fair 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.
Yet the good news is wonderful! God wasn't content to leave sinners like us alone to die in our condemnation.