 Enjoy
The catechism question states that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Enjoy! We are designed to enjoy God. We are by nature pleasure seekers and by sinful nature, sinful in the seeking of pleasure. Our souls are never satisfied with just existing we must be enjoying. All around us we see the effects of this dissatisfaction in the pain and problems found in many of our most pressing social ills. Why is there a drug problem, a divorce problem, a gender confusion problem or almost any other problem you can imagine? It is because we must be satisfied! Worship In Psalm 103, David begins by calling us to worship God. He says “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name!” Now I am sure that we have all read and sung these words many times but David is going somewhere with this call to worship. We are told that we should, while worshiping, not forget all His benefits. Among these benefits are forgiveness of sins, healing of diseases, redemption from the pit, crowns of steadfast love and mercy, AND satisfaction with good so that your youth is renewed. This last point is the one I would like to focus on. As we battle against sin and the devastating effects of sin in the world it is easy to begin to get discouraged. Sometimes it is possible while trying to practice both practically and spiritually the ‘right’ things but still not be able to experience the growth and victory over sin that we would like. At the risk of sounding “Piper-esc,” David tells us that we are to remember that Yahweh satisfies us. In our struggle against sin it is satisfaction that is what we are seeking. We are seeking to satisfy our design to enjoy something, and David is saying enjoy God. Remember He satisfies! The Fountain of Youth What is also remarkable is that this satisfaction brings renewal and even youth. For ages people have been seeking the fountain of youth and our culture seeks every way possible to monetize this pursuit. We can probably all think of examples of people, probably middle aged men (and some women), doing absolutely ridiculous things to try to recapture their youth but here David has the answer! Worship! That’s it, worship God! Bless the LORD, O my soul! This actually does two things for us. First worship gives a weapon with which to fight sin. In Ephesians 6, Paul tells us that we have the sword of the Spirit which is the word of truth. This offensive weapon can be and should be used to kill sin. But how? How do we wield this mighty weapon? Is there a class somewhere on Bible fencing? One way to use the sword is to take the word of God and direct it to Him in praise and adoration. Use the very words of this Psalm and begin even now to praise His name. With all that is in you bless His holy name! Just as David does in this psalm remember the great things that God has done and preach the gospel to yourself from all of scripture as you glorify God. This leads into the second thing that this worship does for us. It gives us a final and sufficient end to our quest for satisfaction. God is perfect and everything He does is perfect and so this is the way to perfect satisfaction. The problem with all the imitation ways of satisfying our souls is that they do not work. They may appear to work for a little while, but they do not keep working. But when we begin to find our satisfaction in the One whom we were designed to be satisfied with then we are finally and fully satisfied with enjoying Him forever. David goes on in the Psalm to lay out the bigness of God, the lowliness of man, the greatness of divine love and the precious hope for God’s people. In verse 20, he writes “Bless the LORD, O you his angels, you mighty ones who do His word, obeying the voice of His word!” Defeating sin is hard and the fight for joy is a real fight but the way to fight is to worship. Pitying yourself over your deplorable condition and wallowing in your sins will never give you success in destroying the sin in your own self or the temptations of your great enemy. Rather turn from your sin and worship the true King who loves you!
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