Ps. 1:2
He Delights in the Law of God
Transitioning from the negative to the positive description of the blessed man, Pastor Martin expounds 'his delight is in the law of the Lord.' He defines delight as a spontaneous affinity rooted in one's nature, demonstrating that only the new birth can produce genuine delight in God's law. He explains four reasons why the regenerate man delights in Scripture: it reveals the Lord Himself, it is the truth by which he was born again, it reveals his duty, and it is the instrument of his sanctification. He closes with pastoral counsel on recovering lost delight.
Primary Texts
Topics
Outline 10 sections · 54 min
- Turning from the Negative to the Positive 0:00
- Structure of Verse 2: Delight Produces Meditation 5:20
- What Does It Mean to Delight? Definition by Nature and Affinity 6:59
- What Is the Law of the Lord? 11:46
- How Can a Fallen Man Delight in God's Law? The New Birth 16:43
- Reason 1: The Law Reveals the Lord Himself 23:32
- Reason 2: It Is the Truth by Which He Was Born Again 27:07
- Reason 3: It Reveals His Duty 30:28
- Reason 4: It Is the Instrument of Sanctification 33:38
- What to Do When Delight Wanes: Recovering Lost Love 36:39
Key Quotes
“If you don't delight in the law of God, you won't meditate in it. But if you delight in it, the proof will be you meditate in it.”
“We delight in that to which our nature and dispositions have a spontaneous and pleasurable affinity.”
“You can never be a blessed man or woman until God has wrought a fundamental change in your nature.”
“The only representation of Christ that a believer needs to deepen his faith, to strengthen his love is the picture of Christ in Holy Scripture.”
“Anyone who is careless and indifferent about hearing the word of truth has the earmarks of an unregenerate person.”
“Acknowledge that this is a symptom, not a cause, a symptom of spiritual declension.”
“You weren't made to be a turkey. You were made to delight in the law of God.”
Applications
All listeners
- Beware of becoming an 'all-negative' or 'all-positive' Christian — Scripture commands both mortification of sin and pursuit of new-life graces.
- If you have no spontaneous affinity for God's Word, do not paper it over — recognize the symptom and cry to God for the new heart promised in Ezekiel 36.
- Stop saying you want holiness while applying only 'six drops' of Scripture — apply the means God has appointed for sanctification with full intent.
- When you notice waning delight in Scripture, treat it as a symptom of spiritual declension and search for the unconfessed sin or neglected duty beneath it.
- Remember the love of your espousals — the times when you couldn't wait to come hear the Word — and let that memory drive you to repentance.
- Apply Revelation 2:5 — repent, AND do the first works. Read, hear, and obey God's Word in cold blood until appetite returns.
- Before you pillow your head tonight, force-feed yourself a stiff dose of Scripture asking the Holy Spirit to rekindle the dead embers of delight.
A full transcript is available on the tab. 117 paragraphs, roughly 54 minutes.
Turning from the Negative to the Positive
Let's turn this evening to the first psalm as we resume our studies in this portion of God's holy word, Psalm 1.
The theme of this psalm is introduced in the very first words, Blessed is the man, and therefore it is set before us under the general thought of the blessed man or the way of blessedness for any man. What does it mean to be blessed, to find true fulfillment and happiness both in life and time and in eternity? Well, the psalmist would tell us as he sets before us a description of the way of blessedness. As we have seen in our previous studies, he does this under the general form of a contrast.
He describes the blessed man in the first three verses, and then by contrast in verses 4 and 5, the man who is not blessed, indicating that all men seek blessedness. Some attain it because they seek it God's way. Some never attain it because they do not seek it God's way. Those who seek it God's way are the blessed, and he describes them.
Those who do not seek it God's way are the ungodly, and they never attain it, neither in this life or in the life to come. For we read in this passage that the way of the ungodly shall ultimately perish. We have spent a number of weeks studying the first verse, as we've considered the negative part of the way of blessedness, for it's introduced, first of all, under these three negatives, blessed is the man that walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. The blessed man is one who refuses to have his life shaped and molded by the advice of ungodly men.
And we've considered how that advice comes to us, what it says to us, how it would deceive us into thinking that the way of blessedness can come in the way of sensualism or materialism, in the way of ungodly intellectualism, trying to use our minds as the final court of appeal as to what is true and what is not true. No, the psalmist says, the blessed man is one who refuses to walk in the counsel of ungodliness. He refuses to stand in the way of sinners, that is, to identify himself with affection and delight in the course of life that marks sinful men, and he refuses to sit in the seat of the scoffers, those who set themselves up as a judge upon Scripture,
those who look at the Word of God with a jaundiced eye. No, the blessed man regards the words of God as the words of God and bows his mind in his judgments to the pronouncements of Holy Scripture. So much then for the negative description of the blessed man, we come now to verse 2 to consider the positive description, that which in a very real sense makes him a blessed man, which marks him as a blessed man. Namely, his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth he meditate day and night.
The blessed man is not only marked by the counsel that he refuses, but by the counsel that he embraces. He's not only marked by the ways in which he refuses to walk, but he's marked by the ways in which he delights to walk. And virtue, Christian virtue, will always have the negative and the positive. And all of us by nature either gravitate to one or the other at the exclusion of its counterpart.
But some people would conceive of the Christian life totally in terms of negatives. We must not do this. We must refuse this. We must resist this.
And they don't ever seem to turn to the positive virtues. Others, their disposition and background and temperament leads them to be all positive. We shouldn't even be concerned with negatives. You know the old illustration that the oak leaves don't drop off in the fall, but when the new life surges up in the springtime, then they drop off.
Shouldn't preach against things, shouldn't try to lop off sins, mortify the flesh. Just get so occupied with the new life in Christ and things will automatically drop off. Now there's only two problems with that. Number one, we aren't oak trees.
And number two, it's not scriptural. For the scripture says we are to mortify our members which are upon the earth. We are to reckon ourselves to be dead indeed unto sin as well as alive unto God through Jesus Christ. We're told to pluck out right eyes and cut off right hands.
That's pulling off oak leaves. And so the figure utterly breaks down. But God has in his word this beautiful balance. Having given us the negative and seen its proper place in the life of blessedness, we now come to the positive.
Structure of Verse 2: Delight Produces Meditation
his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth he meditate day and night. Now look at the structure of this verse. It's very simple. In a positive way, the blessed man is one who, first of all, delights in the law of the Lord, and as a consequence of that delighting in the law, he meditates in it day and night.
I say that the meditating is the consequence of the delighting. If you don't delight in the law of God, you won't meditate in it. But if you delight in it, the proof will be you meditate in it day and night. Notice how the psalmist ties those two things together in the 119th Psalm and verse 97.
So that you realize this is not an arbitrary judgment of my own.
Verse 97 of the 119th Psalm. O how love I thy law It is my meditation all the day The psalmist says because I love the law of God Therefore I meditate in the law of God The blessed man then is described as the one Who delights in the law of the Lord And consequently he meditates in it day and night So much for the general structure of the text Now let's look at the meaning of the words themselves. What did the psalmist mean when he said, The blessed man is a man who has his delight in the law of the Lord. His delight is in the law of the Lord.
What Does It Mean to Delight? Definition by Nature and Affinity
Now what does it mean to delight in something? If you were to write out a layman's definition of what it means to delight in something, what would you put in your definition?
Now if you just think for a moment, I delight in something. What do I mean when I say I delight in something?
I believe most of you would come up with an idea that at least was close to this, or mine would be close to yours, to be highly pleased in something, to be occupied with that which gives me great joy or pleasure. Isn't that what it means to delight in something? My delight is in this person. that person brings me pleasure.
That person brings me great joy. My delight is a certain sport or a certain hobby. I find in that sport or hobby that which is pleasurable to me, that which brings me joy, that which pleases me. Now, take the thought a little bit further.
Why do you delight in something? What makes something pleasurable to you?
I could mention some things and split the congregation probably right down the middle with thoughts of delight and others thoughts of revulsion. I might mention certain foods. It would make some of you sit there and begin to salivate. And others of you, the mention of those foods would make you feel kind of sick to your stomach.
To some of you, there would be a delighting in the mention of that food. Others of you, there would be a repulsion. Now, why? What makes us delight in something?
Well, I believe it's this, is it not? We delight in that to which our nature and dispositions have a spontaneous and pleasurable affinity. We delight in that which according to our nature and disposition we have a spontaneous and pleasurable affinity or attraction.
Why would the mention of asparagus cause some of you to lick your chops and others of you to go eat? Well, you see, some of you, either by nature or because of your training and upbringing, where you didn't cultivate a taste for asparagus, asparagus, the thought of asparagus and eating them, causes no spontaneous drawing toward that particular food. By virtue of your nature and disposition, you don't like the thought of asparagus, or you do. What makes a fish delight in water?
well the fact that it's made for water its nature and disposition has been created to make it at home in water I think of this as I was thinking of the message and trying to think of some homey illustrations when I've gone fishing occasionally even with some of you men and we get a bucket of minnows or some little herring and we're going to try to catch larger fish with the smaller fish and maybe there's a little minnow that's flopped out in the bottom of the boat and he kicks around for a while and then he begins to get kind of still and lifeless And the moment you pick him up and put him back in that can of cold water or happen to throw him overboard, why, you can almost hear him squealing for joy. He's back in his element in which he delights because his fish nature is at home in the water. You take a bird that's been held captive and turn it loose into the free air and it finds its delight in the open air.
Why? Because its bird nature is suited for the air. Now, why am I spending all this time just to define the concept of delight? Well, for the simple reason that we won't understand the text unless we understand this word.
For the blessed man is the person whose delight is in the law of the Lord, who is highly pleased and finds great pleasure in the law of the Lord. Why? because something has transpired in his nature and in his disposition that gives him a spontaneous and natural affinity and drawing for the word of the Lord. He does not impose this delight upon himself any more than a fish imposes upon itself its delight in the water or a bird imposes upon itself its delight in the air.
No, the nature given to it by another is what causes it to delight in the water or in the air. And so in a very real sense, the blessed man is the man who has a nature, a disposition imposed upon him from another that makes him delight in the realm and in the element of the law of the Lord. Now, just a few minutes on the little phrase, the law of the Lord. What does that mean?
What Is the Law of the Lord?
I hope we have now a somewhat adequate concept of what it means to delight in the law of the Lord. Now, what is this law of the Lord? Well, in Scripture, the term the law of the Lord is used in many ways. Sometimes it refers specifically and exclusively to the Ten Commandments.
When Paul says in Romans chapter 7 and verse 13 or 12, somewhere through there, that the law is holy and the commandment just and good, He is referring to the Ten Commandments. When Paul says in Timothy chapter 1 that the law is good if a man use it lawfully. He is referring to the Ten Commandments. Sometimes the word law refers to the whole section of Scripture, including the first five books of Moses.
Remember Christ spoke of all things that are written in the Psalms and in the prophets concerning me, and then another place in the law of Moses, Luke chapter 24. So this word is used many ways. What does it mean in this context? Well, after studying the phrase out, I'm convinced that in this context, the law of the Lord is used as a synonym for whatever existing portions of the word of God David had.
whatever God had revealed and embodied in Holy Scripture, which of course would be at least the first five books of Moses at the time of David, the law of the Lord is used as a synonym for the word of God in general It is in this way that we find it used in the 19th Psalm for instance In the first part of this Psalm, we have God revealing Himself in creation, natural revelation. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech. All the way through verse 6, you have God speaking through natural revelation, creation.
Then in verse 7, the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. Here you have these three words used to describe special revelation.
That is, God speaking in Holy Scripture. The law of the Lord, the testimony of the Lord, the statutes of the Lord. You have David using it in this sense throughout the 119th Psalm, when he says, Oh, how love I thy law, it is my meditation all the day. So, the blessed man is a man who has this tremendous pleasure, pleasure, this spontaneous joy and delight in all that God has revealed in Holy Scripture.
Now, if this was true of the blessed man, when Scripture only included about that much of our Bible, the first five books of Moses and maybe the book of Job and a few other things, much of which is type and shadow, much of which is speaking in veiled figures. How much more is it true now that light and immortality have been brought to light in the gospel and we have all the glorious light of the prophets, all of the tremendous picture of Christ in the gospels, and all of the glorious explanation of the person and work of Christ in the epistles, if ever it would be true that the blessed man delighted in the law of God, that is, the written revelation of the mind and will of God,
it should be true this side of the completed canon of Scripture, that is, the completed body of truth. Now it could be that David is thinking particularly in this portion of those parts of Scripture in which the will of God is clearly expressed. For remember there is a contrast. He says, the blessed man does not walk in the advice of the ungodly, but his delight is in the law of the Lord.
Perhaps he's thinking particularly of those portions of the law of God which tell him how to walk. And he's a blessed man because he will not govern his walk by the advice of ungodliness, but he governs his walk by the precepts of Holy Scripture. So, the broadest definition we can give to this phrase, the entire revelation of Holy Scripture, and the narrowest, the precept, the preceptual part of Holy Scripture, where God specifically gives direction for life and for conduct. Now, this creates a problem.
How Can a Fallen Man Delight in God's Law? The New Birth
Since we only delight in that for which we have a natural affinity, a spontaneous affinity. How can any man, a fallen son of Adam, whose heart rebels against the law of God, how can he ever be brought to delight in the law of God?
Scripture says in Romans 8, 7 that the carnal mind is enmity against God. It is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. Romans chapter 3, verses 10 and 11 declares that man by nature does not understand the ways of God. He doesn't seek after God.
There is no fear of God before his eyes. You see, this text is a wonderful springboard from which to preach and consider the tremendous doctrine of the new birth. There is only one way that a person is given a nature which naturally delights in the precepts of God. That is, to be a recipient of the renewing, transforming work of God the Holy Spirit in what we call regeneration.
That is, the new birth. God taking out the heart of stone and giving us a heart of flesh. Let's look at several passages that indicate that this is precisely what God does in order that we might be these blessed men and women who, refusing to walk in the counsel of ungodliness, delight to walk in the ways of God. Will you turn, please, to the book of the prophecy of Ezekiel.
Ezekiel chapter 36.
And verse 25.
and I will put my spirit within you, now notice, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them. This is God's promise of what he will accomplish in the new covenant. Turn back to Jeremiah chapter 31 for another similar reference, Jeremiah 31, beginning with verse 31.
Jeremiah 31, 31.
Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, which my covenant they break, although I was a husband unto them, saith the Lord. But this shall be the covenant that I will make with them after, with the house of Israel, after those days, saith the Lord. I will put my law in their inward parts, and will write it in their hearts, and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest of them, saith the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and will remember their sin no more. Now notice the many I wills in both of these passages. God says, I will do something to change the basic disposition of the hearts of men so that they will delight in my law and delight to keep my precepts. And so I submit to every one of you hearing my voice tonight, if you do not know what it is to have been born of the Holy Spirit, to have experienced that supernatural, transforming work of the Spirit of God, taking the basic disposition and bent of the heart which is in the direction of rebellion
and indifference to the precepts of God, and giving you a heart which has as its basic disposition obedience to and glad subjection to the revealed will of God, You can never be a blessed person. The blessed person delights in the law of God. But we saw that the very word delight means to have a natural affinity for something. And by nature we don't have that affinity for the Word of God.
We have an antipathy to the Word of God. We have an active hostility and rejection of that Word. And so we can never be blessed men and women, blessed fellows and girls, until God in His grace, on the basis of the redemptive work of Christ, is pleased to subdue our hearts and to give us new hearts. And when we turn to Hebrews, as we read last week, and shall be reading again, Lord willing, next week in the tenth chapter, this whole promise made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah is clearly applied to all those who are saved on the basis of the death of Jesus Christ and the shedding of His blood.
For this passage in Jeremiah and Ezekiel is quoted both in Hebrews 8 and in Hebrews 10. So some of you no doubt have a problem to make. You couldn't care less about the law of the Lord. Delight in it?
No delight in it. Why? Because there's no affinity for that law. There is no spontaneous and natural gravitation to that law.
Why? Because you have an unregenerate heart. You have what God says a heart of stone. Stone is lifeless, cold, adamant, inflexible, unbending.
It's hard to inscribe anything upon it. God says, I'll give a heart of flesh and write my laws upon the tables of the heart. But now for those who by the grace of God have been born of the Spirit, and you know that God has changed your basic disposition and given you that natural affinity for the Word of God, Let's ask this question, why does such a person delight in the law of God? We've considered what it means to delight in the law of the Lord.
Reason 1: The Law Reveals the Lord Himself
Now, why does a true Christian, one who's been born of the Spirit, why does he delight in the law of God? May I suggest three or four reasons why he does? If he's in a healthy state of soul. Now, we're going to do a little soul surgery.
If you're in a healthy state of soul, this is why you will delight in the law of the Lord. Reason number one, the law of the Lord reveals the Lord himself. And if you're a believer, if you're a true Christian, you love him. And loving him, you want to know more about him.
and it's in Holy Scripture in the law of the Lord that the Lord Jesus sets before us all the delineations of his own character and his person. If we want to know what Christ looked like we do not go to some picture of Christ. For Paul says we know not Christ after the flesh we go to the one tremendous composite picture of Christ here in Holy Scripture as we sing in that hymn of O Word of God incarnate, O wisdom from on high. Remember the words of that second stanza.
The church from her dear master received the gift divine and still that light she lifteth o'er all the earth to shine. It, that is the Word of God, is the golden casket where gems of truth are stored. It, the Word of God, is the heaven-drawn picture of Christ, the living Word. The only inspired picture of Christ is found in Holy Scripture.
Now, I'm not accusing Mr. Solomon of being a liar when he said he woke up in the middle of the night with this mental image of Christ and drew the picture. I question that on the basis of Holy Scripture. If God wanted us to have a picture of Christ, he would have allowed someone to, at artistic ability, to record what he looked like.
but he doesn't want us to think of him in terms of physical representations. He wants us to think of him in terms of the tremendous many-sided pictures of him as recorded in what he did and who he is as found in Holy Scripture. And so the righteous man, the blessed man, delights in the law of the Lord because that law reveals his God and having tasted and seen that the Lord is good, having been ravished with but a veiled view of Christ and the Father and the Spirit, his heart longs to know more. And then, in this way, 2 Corinthians 3.18 is fulfilled, but we all with open face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into that image from glory to glory, even by the Lord the Spirit.
The only representation of Christ that a believer needs to deepen his faith, To strengthen his love is the picture of Christ in Holy Scripture. That why he delights in the law of the Lord Because the law reveals his God Secondly he delights in the law of the Lord because that law is truth And having been born again by the instrumentality of the truth, as we read in James 1.18, of his own will begat he us by the word of truth, the believer who's been born of the truth is like a salmon. Now you say, wait a minute, Pastor, that's kind of a grotesque illustration.
Reason 2: It Is the Truth by Which He Was Born Again
How is a believer like a salmon? Well, some of you have read something of the ways of salmon. And you've seen pictures of these salmon literally beating themselves to death, thrashing their way up the steep rapids and many times up very high obstacles to make their way back to the place where they themselves were spawned. And there the female salmon will spawn and then many times die.
They've literally beat themselves to death, cut themselves upon the rocks. Now there's some mysterious, quote, instinct. This is what the naturalist says. Some, quote, instinct that drives the salmon back to his own spawning place.
Now we know that that instinct is nothing less than that which God has put into the salmon, as we read in the 104th Psalm of the activities of the animal kingdom as being the result of the working of God in them. Now, in a real sense, this is a picture of the believer. Having been spawned by the truth, the believer has this irresistible drive to be where truth is. And he's never comfortable when he's away from truth.
There's something in the life of a man who has received life by the truth that forever drives him to delight in and meditate in that very truth. I believe the psalmist is talking about this when he says in Psalm 119 and verse 93, I will never forget thy precepts. Why? Here's his reason. For with them, or by the instrumentality of them, thou hast quickened me. Psalm 119 and verse 93, I will never forget thy precepts.
For with them thou hast quickened me. Thy precepts have been the instrument of my life. Therefore, I cannot forsake them. My spiritual life was brought into being by the truth, and I have this inbred affinity for that which brought me life.
Frankly, this to me is one of the clearest indications that anyone who is careless and indifferent about hearing the word of truth has the earmarks of an unregenerate person. For whenever God is beginning to stir in the heart of an individual and bring him to saving faith, in an awakened sinner, what is one of the marks of a truly awakened sinner? He'll go anywhere to get under the sound of the truth.
He says, maybe here I'll hear the way that will lead me into life. Maybe under this particular ministry my ear will be opened and God will loose the burden. And if that's true in an awakened state, before a man has even come into a saving acquaintance with Christ, how much more is it true when he has been born of the Spirit through the instrumentality of the Word? That's why the blessed man, who is, of course, a true believer, one who's been regenerated by the Spirit, delights in the law of God.
Reason 3: It Reveals His Duty
Why? Because that law reveals his God and he loves God and wants to know more of him. That law is truth and there is this affinity for the truth by which he was born into the family of God. The third reason why a true believer who is the blessed man delights in the law of God is this.
The law of God reveals his duty. and as one who's been truly converted he wants to know his duty for he is a willing subject and bondservant of Jesus Christ. Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 1.9 that the Thessalonians turned from their idols to serve the living and the true God and because they've been made servants through grace Romans 6 speaks of this same truth The servant comes to look for orders from his master.
We have not been made servants against our will.
But we have been made servants as the Spirit of God has secured our glad, wholehearted subjection to Christ. You see, the idea that because God's grace is grace that will accomplish its purpose, Some people have the idea, well, I can't believe that in this doctrine that some people call irresistible grace, or others call efficacious grace, and they get the picture as though God drags men into the kingdom backwards, kicking and snorting against their will. No, no, no, no. What he does is, as we read in Psalm 103, I believe it is, no, not Psalm 103, 110, verse 3, thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power.
When God puts forth his arm of power, he changes our will. He works in our willer and our wanter so that we come, as the old confession says, most freely and willingly being made willing by his grace. And so a true Christian is a man who is a willing bondservant of Jesus Christ. And being a bondservant, he loves his duty and he wants to know his duty and so he instinctively delights in this book that sets forth his duty.
Now that's simple enough, isn't it? So the blessed man who refuses to walk in the counsel of ungodliness delights in the law of the Lord because this law not only reveals his God, it not only sets forth truth, but it reveals his duty and he can say with the psalmist as recorded in Psalm 40 in verse 8, I delight to do thy will, O my God. Yea, thy law is within my heart. The precepts are treasured up as a precious thing.
The New Testament counterpart, John 10, 27, Jesus said, My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. My sheep hear my voice. Why does the blessed man delight in the law of God? because being a regenerate man, he loves his duty, and in Scripture he finds his duty.
Reason 4: It Is the Instrument of Sanctification
And then the fourth reason, I'm sure there are more, but I just give out these four this evening. Why the true saint of God delights in the law of God is that the law of God, the word of God, is a sanctifying agent. Psalm 119 in verse 9, we have a question. Where with all shall a young man cleanse his way?
And the answer is, by taking heed thereto according to thy word. Thy word have I laid up in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee. John 17, 17. Sanctify them through the truth.
Thy word is truth.
I believe I used this illustration some years ago, or one similar to it. If my children should come to me and say, Daddy, with all my heart, I want to be as clean as possible when I come to the table tonight. Well, I promptly direct them to where the soap and water and towels are, and I say, now apply yourself to the proper means. Let the water run till it's warm enough.
Apply more than six drops, hoping to just create a little surface mud that can be streaked by the towel. That's not washing. Often our children think that's what washing is. but apply a sufficient amount of water and soap and let it rinse and flow freely.
If you really want to be clean, here are the means, apply yourself to them. Now, if they come back, obviously, having carelessly applied the means, then either they don't know how to use the means or they really don't want to be clean.
It has to be one or the other. Now, we say as believers, oh yes, I want to be holy. I want to be clean. I want to be pure. Now, God has put these means at our disposal, not soap and water and towel, but the Word of God, applied to the conscience and heart by the Spirit of God, as that Word is preached publicly, as that Word is studied and meditated upon privately.
Now, the blessed man, that truly godly man or woman who's found blessedness in the way of holiness, he longs to be yet more like his Savior. He longs to be holy, and he knows that this is the soap and the water and the towel, and he proves the sincerity of his longing by applying himself to the means. And if he doesn't apply himself to the means, either it's because he's ignorant of the means, or he just plain loves his dirt. It has to be one or the other.
And I think with those of us who are adults here tonight, young people, intelligent enough to know and having been exposed enough to Scripture to know that this is the means for our sanctification, if you do not delight in the law of God, it's probably because you love your dirt and you don't want that dirt removed. You love your sin, and you don't want that sin exposed. Now, before we...
What to Do When Delight Wanes: Recovering Lost Love
In fact, I probably have to leave that last phrase till next week. In his law, let him meditate day and night. This is an interesting study. The word meditate means to mutter.
And I saw something new here in several other passages that opened up when I understood that that word meant to mutter. But I want to ask the question now, because this again creates a problem. The blessed man is pictured here as a man who constantly refuses the counsel of ungodliness Constantly refuses to identify himself with delight and sympathy in the course of the lives of sinners He walks not in the way of sinners He refuses constantly to sit in the seat of a scoffer Intellectual pride, to sit up as a judge upon scripture To sit there as not a disciple to learn, but as a critic to dispense with the word of God. He refuses that, and in contrast,
he is pictured as a man or woman who constantly delights in the law of God day and night. Now, this is the picture of the healthy, blessed man. Now, the problem is, and I'm sure this has confronted some of you in our study, what do you do when you don't delight in the law of God? Some of you have been sitting here saying, yes, I've known what it is in some times to really delight in the law of God, to come to the law of God like a fish comes to water, like a bird comes to the air, like a man who loves steak comes to his steak cooked to perfection just as he's asked that it be fixed.
But at other times I don't. What do I do if as a child of God I have problems with this matter of delighting in the law of God? I confess to you that perhaps there's no more accurate barometer of my own spiritual state at least in my own estimation as to whether or not I am coming to the word of God with relish and with delight eagerly devouring the Holy Scriptures well if we are not delighting in the law of God tonight if we are not delighting to the same extent that we have in the past what should we do? well the first thing we must do is acknowledge that this is a symptom of spiritual declension.
Acknowledge that this is a symptom, not a cause, a symptom of spiritual declension.
David could say in Psalm 119 and verse 131, I opened my mouth wide, I panted, I longed for thy commandment. A man who's got his mouth open wide and panting for a draft of water will not be satisfied with half a teaspoonful. And if we find that we come to a place where we're satisfied with a quick little five-minute snatch at Scripture, that's a symptom that we're in an unhealthy state spiritually. It's a symptom.
It's not a cause. It's a symptom. But we must recognize the symptom for what it is. If we are not longing for the word there is some area of sin or uncleanness some neglect of some other means of grace that has led us into this state And so if we not delighting in the law of God tonight acknowledge first of all this is symptomatic of decline Secondly, we must confess it to be sin.
Turn to Jeremiah chapter 2, and then we'll look at the New Testament counterpart in Revelation 2. Jeremiah chapter 2, starting with verse 1.
Lord and the firstfruits of his increase. All that devour him shall offend, evil shall come upon them, saith the Lord. Hear ye the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel. Thus saith the Lord, What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they have gone far from me, and have walked after vanity, and are become vain? And then God goes on to say all of the things that he did for his people, and he says, What reason is there for your forsakenness?
Do you see the parallel in our own lives? Can you remember the love of your espousals? Those periods, perhaps initially in your early Christian experience and at periodical places along the way, when there has been that freshness of delight in God that has made you open your mouth wide and pant for the commandments of God. Now you're content with a little half teaspoon doses of the scripture.
Can you remember the time when the anticipation of coming to church and hearing the Word of God filled you with such holy longings you just couldn't wait to come and hear the Scripture? Now you kind of have to drag yourself and one foot drags behind the other and you've lost that relish for the Word of God. That sheer delight, that spontaneous and natural affinity for the Word of God. this must not only be acknowledged as symptomatic of decline it must be confessed as a sin of heart departure from the Lord the sin of moving away from what Jeremiah calls the love of our espousals called in Revelation chapter 2 thou hast left thy first love
and I confess to you dear people tonight that perhaps there is nothing as I mentioned earlier that's more humbling and convicting than to look back and remember those times when no matter how weary we were, we dared not have a day closed without feasting our souls upon the Word of God. When we were not content to simply read our one or two or three chapters, we read and read until something fresh as the dew of heaven came upon our spirits. When we delighted in the law of God because here we saw the heaven-drawn picture of Christ, the living Word, and every new glimpse of Him ravished our hearts. When our desire for holiness was so intense that we came with the prayer,
Search me, O God, and know my heart, and we welcomed the wounds of Scripture and the exposing influence of the Word of God. That's well nigh gone now, isn't it? Is it on the way out? Oh dear one, recognize this as a symptom of declension Confess it as sin And then thirdly, set yourself to rekindle that delight in the law of God Determine that by the grace of God you'll not rest Until there is that rekindling of delight For the blessed man is the one who delights in the law of God day and night and all the other peripheral symptoms of the absence of blessedness in your own life
have their root here, that you've lost your delight in the law of the Lord, and that delight must be rekindled at any cost. The story is told, and it's supposed to be a true story, of a man who captured an eagle in its infant stages, and he put a chain around that eagle's leg and put it out with his turkeys, and he fed it turkey food and the eagle used to try to break away from the chain but after a while he got so accustomed to being a turkey that it was content to just wander around the yard with the turkeys eat the food of the turkeys maybe get up on top of a little shack and then flutter down it was content to be a turkey created an eagle to have its home high in the rocks
to soar to great heights to catch the crest of an updraft and go up and up until out of human sight almost. Anyway, they get up very high.
And the owner of this particular group of turkeys and this, what shall we call, adopted turkey, one day set the eagle free. But instead of going out and soaring, he was content to be a turkey. Even though the chain was taken off his leg, he was content to just be at home with the turkeys. and he'd hold him up and try to throw him up and he'd just flutter down content to be a turkey.
Until one day the owner took him up to a high mountain peak where there was a shark and dropped down hundreds, perhaps even thousands of feet. There he took that eagle and he said to the eagle, you're not a turkey, you're an eagle. be an eagle and he threw him out and he had one of two things to do either fold his wings in and be dashed to pieces or once again stretch those mighty pinions and begin to soar and the eagle did this and of course once he experienced what it was to be an eagle again he never was content with the turkey yard again and he built his nest up in the high places of the rocks
where he belonged he wasn't made to be a turkey he was made to be an eagle I'm sure you see the application to us as God's people we were made to delight in the law of God God did something in us by his grace that gave us a natural affinity for the word of God and in the days of our espousals how precious was that book that set forth Christ and the Father and the Son and we delighted at every new ravishing sight of him. With hearts that were born of truth, there was this longing for truth, to reinterpret all of life in the light of Scripture, to rethink and unthink any areas that was necessary. There was that longing to know our duty as his loving bondservants, that longing to be
holy, but we've become turkey-ized, we've become chained to earth, and we've lost that delight and that natural affinity as the eagle for the air. Remember, dear ones, you weren't made to be a turkey but an eagle. And you ought to rest, not rest, until once again that delight is your experience. You say, well, how do you get to it? Well, I hope I've helped you to say you first of all got to acknowledge that you've lost that delight, confess it is sin and then set your face to rekindle that delight will you say yes I know that but how?
well I wish I could give you some magical formula I don't have one but I do know something that's worked in my own life and I think it's based upon the direction of scripture for when the exposure to the church at Ephesus came through the risen Lord as recorded in Revelation chapter 2 the Lord gave them this very pattern that I'm giving to you tonight. He said, first of all, you must acknowledge this sin that you've lost or you've left, you've departed from your first love. Verse 5, Remember, therefore, from whence thou art fallen and repent. Remember.
Recognize where you are. See the symptoms. Secondly, confess this as sin. Remember from whence thou art fallen and repent.
Now notice the next directive. And do the first works.
I don't know how it works, but it's true. That when a man or woman who has declined spiritually, oh, he hasn't gone out and denied the Lord and cursed God, hasn't gone out into any great open sin, but there's no longer that delight in the law of the Lord. And you know it and I know it when it happens, if we're honest, don't we? We know when that relish is gone.
if we will set ourselves to do the first works to treat the word of God as it were in cold blood the way we treated it when it was our delight wonder of wonders the old springs begin to open up in the heart once again the old wells begin to be dug out and those pinions that have been lying at our side begin to be strengthened and once again we begin to soar You've got to start, as it were, in cold blood, devouring the word of God, making time to seek the face of God in Holy Scripture. Because what has happened to change the figure, our spiritual stomachs have been shrunk, as they can be when someone is dieting in a very close, rigid way.
I had one of my sisters. She was so concerned that she did not gain a pound that she practically starved herself to death. And then when it came time to where she could eat normally, she had so shrunk her stomach that eating anything more than a teaspoonful of everything made her feel like she was going to bloat herself and kill herself. And so she needed to go through this painful process of force-feeding herself until she stretched her stomach again.
And I believe there's a perfect parallel in the realm of the spiritual. We need to do some force-feeding until once again we stretch our spiritual stomach and have our appetite come back to normal. And I know of no better time to do that than starting right now tonight. We'll be out of here, the Lord willing, in just a couple of minutes.
The hour is early, and after fellowshipping and visiting for a little bit, what a better way to end this Lord's day than it might be a true day of experiencing fresh resurrection power than to go to our homes and acknowledge before the Lord, Lord, I don't know who else you had this word for tonight, but that word was for me.
I know why I'm not experiencing the blessedness that I once knew. It's because I'm not delighting in the law of God. Oh, I'm not consciously walking in the advice of the ungodly. To the best of my knowledge, I'm not sitting in the standing in the way of sinners and I'm certainly not sitting in the seat of the scornful.
But Lord, here's my problem. I'm not delighting in your law. I've lost that affinity, that natural delight in thy holy precepts. Acknowledge it before.
confess it is a sin of spiritual declension and before you pillow your head tonight force feed yourself some big stiff doses of the word of God with the prayer that the Holy Spirit will bring your appetite back to normalcy. Don't expect some miracle. I think at times we insult the Lord. We get into a syndrome of declension that can pass over days and weeks and months and we expect that in five minutes by snapping our fingers, God's going to once again break the light of His countenance upon us and bring us back to our original state.
I think it's wrong. Sometimes God lets us smart under the inward pain of our declension that we won't be quite as quick to go back to it again, that we'll be watchful, that we'll be prayerful. And so we must take that waiting place, that posture of waiting upon God. As the psalmist said, I waited patiently for the Lord.
That's not a sinner outside of salvation. That's the picture of a saint who's gotten himself into some boggy area in his spiritual life and he waits patiently for the Lord. He waits upon his God to lift up the light of his countenance upon him. Perhaps it's better that we didn't get to the phrase in his law he meditates because you won't meditate in the law day and night until first of all you're brought to delight in it.
And may God grant that if we're not delighting in the law tonight by the time we come together next week we will be and perhaps will be better prepared to embrace what the Lord says about meditating in the law of God day and night. And if you're here tonight as one who knows that the reason you've never experienced delight in the law of God is because your heart has never been a heart touched by the grace of God, I plead with you, give yourself no rest until you know what it is experimentally to have God take out the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh and write his law upon your heart so that from within you long to obey him and live to his praise. Let us unite in prayer.
This transcript was generated by automated speech recognition and may contain errors. It is provided for study and reference only; the audio recording is the authoritative source.
Passages Expounded
His delight is in the law of the Lord -- the positive mark of the blessed man
The new covenant promise: God gives a new heart that delights in His law
Remembering the love of first spiritual espousals and recovering lost delight
Texts Expounded
Also Referenced
More from the archive
If this spoke to you, hear also…
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Gospel in Words Only
1 Thessalonians 1:2-5
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