What To Do With Our Joy
- David Fairchild
- Sep 6, 2009
- Series: Psalms
Psalms 16:1-11: “A Miktam of David. Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge. 2 I say to the LORD, ‘You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.’ 3 As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight. 4 The sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply; their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names on my lips. 5 The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot. 6 The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance. 7 I bless the LORD who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me. 8 I have set the LORD always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken. 9 Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices; my flesh also dwells secure. 10 For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption. 11 You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”
We’re finishing our series in the Psalms on the emotional life of God’s people. We’ve spent eight weeks examining several emotions, including fear, anger, guilt, shame, doubt, and desire. As we’ve mentioned several times, the reason for this is to help us learn what to do with the various emotions and how to bring them before God and pour them out and process them in His presence rather than stuff them down or simply vent them. The Psalms is God’s counseling casebook. Not a textbook, but a casebook that shows us instances of the Psalmists who lead us in doing this very thing.
We’re ending our last message in this series with joy as our subject. I think it’s important to do so since all other messages ultimately serve to bring us through them to the soul-satisfying experience of finding our greatest delight and joy in the One for whom our souls long.
In essence, this is what salvation is all about. Conversion isn’t merely about new duties and new deeds, but new desires and new delights. To know God doesn’t mean we pick up a number of new tasks, rather it is the heart’s change to new treasures.
This is why Augustine describes his conversion as the triumph of joy for God:
How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose…! You drove them from me, you who are true, the sovereign joy. You drove them from me and took their place, you who are sweeter than all pleasure…you who outshine all light…you who surpass all honor…O Lord my God, my Light, my Wealth, and my salvation.
To know God, to love God, to enjoy God is not just a duty (though it is), it is a delight. It is what we’re made for. We’re made to know Him, love Him, and enjoy Him out of a deep emotional satisfaction in Him, not just because we have to be “saved.” CS Lewis says this:
Provided the thing is in itself right, the more one likes it and the less one has to “try to be good,” the better. A perfect man would never act from a sense of duty; he’d always want the right thing more than the wrong one. Duty is only a substitute for love (of God and of other people), like a crutch, which is a substitute for a leg. Most of us need the crutch at times; but of course it’s idiotic to use the crutch when our own legs (our own loves, tastes, habits, etc.) can do the journey on their own!
Lewis is saying that to be made right with God doesn’t mean that we follow Him grudgingly. It means that we come to meet the One we’ve always wanted, the One we’ve been looking for in all our other joys. It means that we come to enjoy Him so much that we want to do anything He asks because we know that He is worth it and it will be for our joy.
Our desire for and joy in this God is what it means to become a child of God. It’s what it means to become converted. It’s what it means to become a new creature, a new creation with a new heart where old things have passed away. This is what it means to be on the path of life as verse 11 of this Psalm teaches us.
Verse 11: “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”
What was made known to David? The path of life was made known to him. And what does it mean to know the path of life? It means to come to see that in His presence there is fullness of joy. It means that at His right hand are true pleasure, true satisfaction, and true ecstasy that will last forever.
So, our journey this morning is to come to the place of our Psalmist—to come and listen, to come and learn from God so that we might know the path of life.
This entire Psalm is about David finding His joy in a time of sorrow.
It is about David finding His genuine treasure in a culture of cheap knock-offs. David is calling us to check the tags, check the lining, check the quality of these knock-off joys so that we can throw them away and get the real deal. So that we can stop pretending that they’re good enough by lying to ourselves when only the authentic treasure will make us happy. We want genuine conversion that results in genuine joy, and nothing less will do because God doesn’t intend any less for us. He’s committed to our joy.
So let’s look at what keeps us from our joy.
What keeps us from joy?
Why do we struggle with such little joy? Why do we find ourselves with such little joy in God? Why do we feel as if delighting in Him is a burdening duty?
Many answers can be given for why we feel the way we do, why we struggle to find joy, why we can never seem to be happy or content. The reasons are varied and I’m sure many of them are quite valid as secondary causes to our unhappiness.
But the Psalmist cuts through all of the psychologizing, all of the philosophizing and brings us face to face with the ultimate cause in verse 4. David says this:
Verse 4: “The sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply…”
This is an interesting verse because David isn’t saying that the people who already had sorrow will get more of it. He’s saying that those who run after another god will find a life of multiplied sorrows. The more they go after their gods, the more sorrow their life will have. It is the cause of our sorrow and the reason it increases.
So, what keeps us from joy according to David? David is teaching us about the essence of evil and sin in this passage and in this Psalm.
We use words like sin and evil with one another without always defining what they mean. David helps us to define these words and shows us what they really are. He does this so that evil and sin won’t keep us from joy. He doesn’t use the words, but the meaning is in this passage.
1-Sin is Marrying another god
“Run after another god…”
The word we translate into “run” is a Hebrew word that means more than that. It is the word mawhar and it means to barter for marriage, or to marry.
In other words, David is saying that those who marry themselves to another god will have multiplied sorrow.
This is what it means to commit idolatry. It means we marry a false lover who promises us joy and acceptance, only to find that she’s unfaithful and brings us only destruction. She can not bring us joy because she can only multiply our sorrow.
When we sin we’re cheating on our true lover for a false lover that can not satisfy and will only bring us disease and destruction.
What keeps us from joy is marrying other gods. God wants us to be monogamous with Him. He’s jealous for our love. He doesn’t want to share us with another god because they will only destroy us.
2-Evil is exchanging God’s joy for something else
Jeremiah the prophet explains what evil is.
Jeremiah 2:13: “For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.”
God defines evil for us by saying that He is a spring of life giving water that satisfies and the way we glorify that fountain is by enjoying it and keep coming back to it.
But in Jeremiah’s day, much like David’s, the people tasted the fountain and didn’t like it. They went searching for better water. God says that their effort was futile since they are broken cisterns that can hold no water.
He also says they were evil because they preferred the pleasures of money, power, sex or fame to Him.
3-In God our joy is always increasing
No other god can bring multiplied joy. No other god will bring you lasting and ever-increasing delight.
By saying that their sorrow will multiply, he’s hinting at something important.
Just as sorrows multiply for those who marry other gods, our joy is multiplied for eternity for those who enjoy the true lover of their souls.
In His presence, we will have ever-increasing discoveries of more and more of God’s glory with greater and greater joy in Him.
He is infinite and we are finite and there will never be a time when we are bored with Him or have had enough. Instead, our joy will increase because for eternity we will more and more come to bask in the splendor of His glory.
II. What Encourages our Joy?
- Confessing Our Failure
Verse 2: “I say to the LORD, ‘You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.’”
He says this to the Lord. He’s confessing it to His God. God knows, but David wants to remind Himself and also praise God that though he is a failure He knows God is gracious.
Unlike the world that teaches us to have a positive self-image, David recognizes that would only lead him to more despair. The truth is that David knows he has no good apart from God. He is able to be honest about his failure and this honesty opens his heart to want grace.
He wants God’s goodness because he knows he has none. Most of us don’t want to hear that we’re failures. Most of us don’t want to hear that we are sinners. Most of us want soothing talks by encouraging preachers to make us feel good about ourselves.
The job of the preacher is not to make you feel good about yourself, it’s to make you be honest with yourself so that you can feel good about Jesus.
To feel good about yourself is basically to deny you need a Savior.
You will never experience the joy of the resurrection unless you first admit your guilt at the cross. David realizes he is a needy man, but in this realization his joy is born because He remembers what he has in His God. God is good though David is not and this makes Him want grace.
- Confessing Our Need for Others
Verse 3: “As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.”
David recognizes his delight is found in the children of God, the saints of God. His delight in God and His delight in God’s people are not at odds.
The more you delight in God, the more you will be able to delight in one another. Why? Because the more we see of God, the more we understand who He is, and the more we enjoy Him, the more we’ll see Him in others.
This is not in competition. What we fight to see in others is what we fight to see in ourselves. If we loathe ourselves it’s because we don’t see Christ in us. If we have a hard time with others, it’s because we’re not seeing God in them.
All of us are not only image bearers of God, if we love Christ we’re also children of God and therefore we have the Spirit of Christ. What we enjoy in others is a reflection of our God. We should long to see Christ in one another. In doing so, we can say we delight in one another because we delight in God.
If we lack joy in God, we’ll lack joy with one another when we’re together. Gathering together will be a burden instead of what it was mean to be, a joy as we reflect God’s joy.
- Confessing that God is better than Anything Else
Verses 5-6: “The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot. 6 The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.”
David confesses that though he’s experienced the finest of food, the greatest of wine, and pleasure the world has offered, God is still better than anything else. God is still his chosen portion. God is still his cup.
In other words, God is David’s meat and drink.
Not only this, the goal of God’s grace is not that David would have a bunch of stuff, but that David would have God as his inheritance!
God is the goal of the Gospel. In being saved, we rejoice not that we missed hell, will have our friends in heaven, or that there will be no more suffering. Those things are good, but the greatest of joys is that we get God.
Have you ever thought about why you want to be saved? Do you want something else or do you want God?
III. What is the Foundation for our Joy?
God’s Happiness
Can you imagine what it would be like if the God who rules the world and saved you to Himself were miserable and unhappy?
What if God was constantly grumbling, pouting and depressed like some freakish Jack-in-the-beanstalk giant in the sky? What if God was always gloomy, always despondent, always discontent and dejected?
Could we possibly join David by saying, “in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore”?
I don’t think we could. We would all relate to God like little children who have a frustrated, gloomy, dismal father. We couldn’t enjoy him. We would only try not to bother him, or maybe try to work for him to earn some little favor from him.
But what we’re calling you to is joy in God, to delight in Him, to cherish and enjoy his fellowship and favor.
But children can not enjoy the fellowship of their Father if He is unhappy. The foundation of our joy is the happiness of God.
And the foundation of the Happiness of God is the glory of God.
2 Corinthians 4:6: “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
And what keeps us from joy is not seeing the glory of the Gospel.
2 Corinthians 4:4: “In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”
Isaiah 53:4-11: “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. 7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. 8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? 9 And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. 10 Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand. 11 Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.”
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