The Enjoyment of God

Psalm 73:25-26

An eminent minister had once gathered with some friends for a time of fellowship. After having been silent in their company for a considerable time, someone asked him the reason why he remained so quiet. He responded by saying that he had been absorbed with the thought of eternal happiness. In quite an energetic manner he blurted out, “Oh, my friends, consider what it is to be with the Lord for ever, and ever, and ever.”

Some of us here this morning may find that to be one of the oddest things that has ever been said. I would assume that no one here has ever been so engrossed with God, and I’m sure that some here may find it quite odd.

But you need to understand that this man had pinpointed the heart of Christianity. He was not trying to act pious and put on a “holier than thou” show. No. He was simply daydreaming about the one thing that pleased him the most: his God.

As Americans, we have a wide array of pleasures set before us each day. But because we have so many things that can catch our fancy, it is important that we remember what is to be our primary enjoyment in life.

In our tradition we confess that our chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. And sometimes I think that we are a bit lopsided. We put a great deal of emphasis on glorifying God, but (I think) we hardly ever consider the fact that we are to enjoy him. We emphasize how important it is to worship him and serve him. But we don’t often talk about the fact that we are to take pleasure in him.

But it is this enjoyment of God that defines a Christian. One who is really a Christian will find that the one thing that makes him most happy is his creator and Redeemer.

That is what we find the Psalmist doing in the verses before us tonight. The Psalmist’s heart explodes as he raises his voice to heaven to express how much he delights in God.

If you are a Christian you should be able to say these words with the Psalmist. You should be able to say that he is all I want, he is all I need, and he is all I’ll ever have.

Look at the words the Psalmist uses to express his delight in God. The first thing he says is found in verse 23. He says, “Whom have I in heaven but thee, and there is none upon earth that I desire but thee.”

Basically he is saying, “God, you are the only thing I want.”

I. “You are all I want” [25]
And he says it in two ways. He says I want God more than anything in heaven and more than anything that can be found on earth.

No doubt you’ve been hearing a lot about Islam lately. If you haven’t done any study in Islam, you probably don’t know anything about the religion. CNN isn’t going to give you an accurate picture of what it believes.

But one of the beliefs of the Islam faith is that when an Islamic man dies he goes to heaven and Allah blesses him with all the wine and women he desires. So he gets to indulge all his carnal desires in heaven. That’s the glory of heaven for Islam. That’s why all those guys are willing to blow themselves up. They believe that by doing that that will please Allah, and as a result Allah will give them all those things.

But if you think about it, just for a moment, you’ll see that that is so carnal. Really, in the end, Allah is nothing more than a pimp. Heaven, in this view, becomes nothing more than a giant whore house.

Now I don’t know if there is anyone who may be friendly to the Islam faith here. My aim is not to offend. I really just want to point out the difference between Christianity and Islam. My greatest desire cannot be contained in a bottle. My greatest yearning cannot be confined to a bedroom. My greatest desire cannot even be contained in heaven! A Christian greatest pleasure is not fleshly in its orientation. A Christian’s greatest pleasure is God! He is all I want! “Whom have I in heaven but you.”

Heaven is not really all that glorious to a Christian in and of itself. It’s a place of splendor, for sure. But what makes it splendid is that God is there!

Imagine going to heaven. If you are a Christian, you get to the gates and they are opened to you. You run right in. As you come through the gates you are met with the splendor of the edifices. The buildings are made of gold and gems, and they rise up like skyscrapers. But you take no notice of them. You simply start running down the road.

As you are running you come to a corner where there is an angelic choir is singing. Their as bright as the sun and their voices ring out in such a majestic style—of the likes you have never heard—it’s glorious! But you don’t even pay attention to it because you are looking for something else.

Then you see an old friend of yours. You remember when he died and how it felt like a piece of heart was just torn way from your soul. You remember how you were torn up about it and how you missed them for so long. But now you don’t even stop to say hello. You barely blurt out a “hey,” because you are so caught up with one thing. You want to find Jesus.

Of course, that’s not how its going to be. You won’t have to search for him. He’s going to be right there. But I use that as a descriptive example. It’s what Charles Spurgeon means when he says “A Christian will ransack heaven until he finds Christ.” Heaven wouldn’t be heaven without God there. Even with all its outward splendor, Heaven would be a wasteland if God were not there.

Jonathan Edwards was one of America’s most famous theologians. He expressed it well when he preached a sermon on this verse. He said this: “If heaven were empty of God, it would indeed be a melancholy place. All creaturely enjoyments cannot satisfy the soul; and nothing will content them but God. Offer a saint what you will, but if you deny him god, he will esteem himself miserable.”

Offer him anything on earth, and he will reject it if it means rejecting his God. Ship in treasures from India and they will be turn aside by a godly person. Give him fame and he will turn it down.

Some of you may have seen the new game show “Deal or no Deal.” If you make it far enough you come down to two briefcases—you have one and the dealer has one. You can choose to trade yours in for the other if you want. Someone could play that game with you: They could say I have 1 bizillion dollars here and over here I have a life with God. Which do you want?
As a matter of fact this is exactly what happened with Jesus Christ. Satan came to Christ and offered him all the kingdoms of the world. The only hitch was if Christ would fall down and worship him. Christ said, “No deal.” And because of his desire for the true and living God, we through him may be able to say: “There is none on earth that I desire besides you.” For a godly man the answer is obvious, “Nothing is going to make me happy except my God.”

But a godly man not only says “he’s all I want.” He also says, “He’s all I need.”

II. “You are all I need” [26a]
Look at what the Psalmist says next (verse 26). “My flesh and my heart fail, but God is the strength of my heart.”

Everyone here has faced that wretched catastrophe of having your computer crash on you. You know how it is. You are going along quite happily—you’ve got your term paper almost finished—and bam! It crashes. Of course, your brain has been in the groove so you haven’t stopped to save your work. You’ve lost everything. All you have is a blank screen.

That’s what the Psalmist is saying here. Our lives are like a computer in that way. There is going to come a point where we just shut down. Our flesh and our hearts will fail.

The other day as I was working a screwdriver fell out of my hands. And for a few seconds I just sat and looked at it lying on the floor. I had something of a contemplative moment. You may say, “What’s the big deal, you dropped a screwdriver?” Well, it was the 15,000th time I dropped that screwdriver! I realized that my hands just are not as nimble as they used to me.

And that reminded me of Carlos. Carlos was an elderly man that my wife and I used to visit when we were in college. Carlos was 90 years old and he lived in a nursing home. He lived there because of his poor health. But one of his biggest problems was that his hands didn’t function properly. He really couldn’t move his fingers, and he could just barely move his thumbs. If he wanted to pick something up he could only do it by squeezing his thumb against his index knuckle. I remember he called them his clubs. If he would drop something he would ask us to pick it up for him. “I got club hands,” is what he would say.

He was 90 at the time, and I’m sure, that he has since passed away.

The flesh and the heart will fail. We can try to elude it. We can get our exercise and eat right. We can take advantage of all our medical advancements. But someday death will creep up on us.

In the book Don Quixote, Quixote’s sidekick says, “When death comes knocking at the door she is always in a hurry and nothing will stop her, not prayer or struggles nor scepters or miters.” True words indeed.

Psychologists are known to say that we have a few basic needs in life. They say that there are some things that are non-negotiable when it comes to sustaining life. They list things like love, food, & shelter. But a Christian knows that those are not one’s basic needs. Yeah, they are important. But a Christian knows that even if you have those, you’re still going to die at some point.

Our basic need does not consist in earthly entities. Our basic need is God. And the Christian realizes this. He says with the Psalmist, “My flesh and my heart may fail, nut God is the strength of my heart.”

The word for strength here literally means “rock” or “cliff.” And big boulders or mountains are not known to be things that simply break down and disappear. No, but they give support and refuge. And the Christian says, “God is what supports me.” The Christian knows Christ’s words where he says in the gospel of John, “I am the resurrection and the life.”

Remember where Jesus was when he said that. He was standing there with Mary. Just days earlier she had lost her brother Lazarus. He had died and now they were mourning their loss. And in the midst of their grief Jesus says to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.” And Jesus said, “Mary, do you believe this?” Do believe that I am all that you need?

Part of the reason I enjoy my wife is because she takes care of me so much. Some people say when they introduce their wife, “This is my better half.” When I introduce her I say, “This is my better three-quarters.” She makes my life live-able. I am able to survive in life because she is around. In other words, I enjoy her because I need her.

The same is true when it comes to God. Our enjoyment of God is partially found in how much we need him.

The spirit of a godly man says, “God, you are all I want” and “you are all I need.” But he will also confess that God is all he is going to have.

III. “You are all I’m going to have” [26b]
In the last part of verse 26 the Psalmist says that God is his “portion forever.” You might not understand that. I know I didn’t when I first read it. We don’t usually talk like that. A portion is like an inheritance or an allotment. When you are sitting at the dinner table you may say, “May I have a portion?” And what you mean is that you want a part of that dessert or of that meatloaf.

In the ancient times one’s inheritance was called “their portion.” So the Psalmist is saying that God is his inheritance. He is the allotment that the psalmist is going to receive. God is what he’s going to get.

And he’s happy about that! He sounds excited. He’s not saying that he’s getting the short side of the stick or getting stuck with a lemon. No. He can’t wait until the time comes when he finally and fully inherits his God.

If you are familiar with the Bible you may know something about the Levites. The Levites were a tribe of Israel in the Old Testament. And when God brought his people into the promised land, each tribe was supposed to get a portion. The tribe of Judah got a lot of land in the south. That was their portion. The tribe of Ephraim got a portion in the middle. The tribe of Naphtali got a spot in the north and so on. But the Levites didn’t get any land. They were the priests and temple servants. They were to be spread throughout all the other tribes. They were charged with the duty of teaching the people and taking care of all the holy things. God basically said to them, “You are not to have anything in this earth, because I am your portion.”

And, I don’t know this for sure, but I would assume that every faithful Israelite was jealous of them. When they saw those Levites standing in the temple and they realized that all they got to do all day and all night was worship God, those people from Judah or Ephraim would be so jealous. Because every one of God’s people wants to be so close to God.

As a Christian we confess what was symbolized in those Levites. When our lives are done, when our flesh and our hearts finally do fail, we receive the greatest 401k package ever.

John Janeway was once around a group of people who had predicted that Christ would come again on a specific day. And they were doomsday say-ers too. Their talk of Christ’s coming was only to note its gloom and terror. Janeway knew they were acting foolishly to even attempt to assign a date, but he decided to play along. "What then?" said he; "what if the day of judgment were come? If I were sure the Day of Judgment were to come within an hour. I should be glad with all my heart. If at this very instant, I should hear such thundering, and see such lightning, as Israel did at Mount Sinai, I am persuaded my very heart would leap for joy…The thought of the certainty and nearness of it is more refreshing to me than all the comforts of the whole world."

Those are the words who delights in God. Those are the words of a man who finds God to be his portion.

Some people dream of getting that boat or that car or that house. They say, “Someday, I’m gonna have it.” And all their life they seek to obtain the object of their desires. They may be so dedicated to it that they work overtime here and there. They save up every dollar they can until they finally have the money in hand. Then they run off to purchase the thing they had been longing for. When they get it, they enjoy it. They drive out of the lot with a big smile on their faces. They inhale that new car smell like they are breathing in mama’s home cooking. But sooner or later the toy loses its thrill.

You know how that happens, don’t you. After a while, the thing loses its novelty and all you have left are the payments.

You may have a portion in this world. Something may catch your fancy for a while, but you will only enjoy it for a limited time. It might be a few days, or a few months, or if it’s really special it may give you pleasure for a few years. But its glory will fade, and its pleasure will evaporate.

But not so with the Lord. He “is my portion forever.” Long after the world has been burned up in a flame, I will be found relishing Christ. And anyone else who has put their trust in him as his Savior will be doing the same.

Conclusion:
There was a fellow who lived in England. At one time he decided to pay a visit to an aunt, who lived in London. As he visited with his aunt he became quite fond of the city life and indulged himself in all the pleasures of the city life. As a result of his licentious living he incurred a significant debt. Because the debt was so big he determined to leave his native country, and seek his fortune in America. Soon after his arrival, he began to earn a living by teaching in a school in New Jersey. For some time engaged in this business, without any practical sense of religion.

But one evening he was riding at a late hour and the moon and stars shone above him with an unusual brightness. As he gazed on the beauty and grandeur of the scene, he began to think to himself, “how transcendentally glorious must be the Author of all this beauty and grandeur.” But then the thought struck him with the suddenness and force of lightning—'But what do I know of this God? Have I ever sought His favor, or made Him my friend?' This happy impression, never left him until he took refuge in Christ.

This man learned that there is nothing in this world will satisfy your soul. You may try to find your happiness in all sorts of pleasures, but you will find that they only empty your pocketbook and leave you feeling empty yourself.

It is only when the Lord Jesus Christ becomes your chief pleasure that you will find true satisfaction. And when you truly turn to Christ as the Supreme Savior and the Lord of all, you will gladly confess that he is all you want, he is all you need, and all you want to get.