Delight: Take Pleasure in Obedience [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. We invite people. I don't want you to invite people for Easter because it's your duty. I want you to invite people for Easter because you delight in the Lord.

He's beautiful and He's wonderful in all of His ways. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series we've called Saver, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now, an audio album called Saver. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries, either a CD album or a digital download of these audio messages.

So as you listen into today's messages, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org. Or call 877-544-4860.

877-544-4860. More on all of this later in the program. But now let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. God the Christian life is not a celebration of our sacrifice to God. The Christian life's a celebration of God's sacrifice for us.

And everything powerful about being a Christian depends on understanding this. There may be times that God calls you to deny yourself of something or there may be a suitable fast, a time of focus, but it is not to shame yourself or deny self in a sense of trying to therefore impress God. So Isaiah 58 continues to where we come to our text today, and the invitation to delight in God begins with the invitation at verse 13 to call the Sabbath a delight. If you turn back your foot, verse 13 says, from the Sabbath, from doing your own pleasure on my holy day.

If you don't have to run around, travel everywhere, that's what it's talking about, turning back your foot, or just making it all about you, including your sacrifices. But if you could not do that and instead call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable, if you honor it, then he says, you'll take delight in the Lord. If you'll call the Sabbath a delight. You know, that's a strange thing to say because the Sabbath is a delight. It's the oddest thing in the world that people of God would struggle to keep the Sabbath because the Sabbath is one of the most wonderful things that God has ever given to his people. It's the day in which not only do you not have to work, but nobody else expects you to work. It's the thing we don't even have anymore.

We can't even find this. Not only are you not expected to send out 37 emails and respond to 14 business calls and to make sure you get all the chores done on that day, but nobody else is calling you and expecting an urgent answer on something. It's the day in which nobody had to be productive. Everybody just got to enjoy being. Everybody got to enjoy being together. The children just loved Sabbath and the life of Israel. They knew every week, every week there's going to be a day that mom and dad aren't working, aren't distracted, are going to be deliciously just devoted to having family time. They knew it would be the day that no matter how poor they are, you're going to have a nice feast that day. I don't care who you are, you're going to get yourself some scrawny chicken together and have some kind of a feast on Sabbath day. It is the day that if you've got problems, you don't talk about them on that day.

You got some marital issues you need to work out? Honey, we're going to do that tomorrow, today is Sabbath. Today we're going to enjoy being. Today we're going to enjoy one another. Today we're going to laugh. Today we're going to worship the Lord. Today we're going to feast. Today we're going to play. Today we're going to rest. Today we're just going to relax.

What a wonderful day. It's a vacation day in the middle of every, at the end of every week for the people of God. Why would God have to say if you will just delight in that day? Because people didn't know how to delight in that day, and we're the same way. We struggle to delight in the day in which we're not productive. We struggle to delight in the day that we didn't get a bunch of things done.

We seem to measure our days by how much we got done, and whether we landed the big accounts, and whether we got everything cleaned up, and whether we brought home the big check. That's how we tend to measure our sense of well-being. And God's saying if you can come to the place where you call it a delight to just be a child of God, then you have come to the place of delighting in the Lord. To delight in the Lord is to delight in the grace of God. God is most happy when we are at most at rest in Him.

God is most glorified when we most enjoy Him. He's like the father of a boy who ran away with his inheritance early, spent everything in wild living, scandalized the family name, became destitute, and returned home. And when he returned home expecting his father's shame, instead found his father's grace.

And in that celebration of a son who had failed, you recognize the father's heart is not primarily oriented towards celebrating the accomplishment of his sons, but the fellowship of his sons. And this father begged the older brother to come in to the party, but the older brother would not. And he said, I've been slaving for you for all these years, and you never gave me such a party. And the father begged him.

He said, all I have is yours. Come in, please, son, and celebrate. But he could not delight in the father's love because his heart and mind were blocked by the notion that I please my father through my own sacrifices. To delight in the Lord requires delighting in the Sabbath in this sense, delight in the grace of God that lets you rest from your labor to earn your way to God. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. With so much worry about yesterday's failures and so much hurry getting ready for tomorrow's tasks, sometimes it's hard to focus on the moment that matters most right now. In a hurried, worried season, God invites you into the present.

Modern day life coaches call it mindfulness, but it isn't a new psychological program and it isn't rooted in Eastern religion. Mindfulness living in the present is God's idea, and the Bible unveils the way Pastor Alan Wright invites you to savor life each day. When you make your gift today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's eight messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. Make your gift today and learn how to savor the textures and flavors of God's grace each moment in the moment every day of your life. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. Today is the final day we're offering this special product. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. Once you delight in the Lord, it starts a process that is the description of Christian obedience.

And it goes like this. Whatever we delight in, we praise. It's not something that you try to do. It's something you do. If Nana meets her great granddaughter and she's cute, she praises her. And you don't have to say now, it's your duty as a great grandmother to praise your great grandchild. In fact, it is as if our praise to God is just an extension of our delight in God.

C.S. Lewis said it brilliantly. He wrote, I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment. It is its appointed consummation.

Love that. He writes, it is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are. The delight is incomplete till it is expressed.

It's part of it. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not be able to tell anyone how good he is or to come suddenly at the turn of a road upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then have to keep silent because the people you are with care for it no more than a tin can in the ditch. Or he says, compare it to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with. If there's something you delight in, then no one has to tell you to talk about it.

You just talk about it. And this really becomes the primary impetus and fuel for all Christian evangelism is that we don't invite people to meet Christ because it's our duty. We invite people to meet Christ because he's our delight and you can't help but want to tell people about something that is delightful. This means that it clarifies my job. That my job as I see it, beloved, is not so much to tell you what you ought to do.

My job is to so lift up the excellencies of Christ that you would be increasingly taken with delight at how good he is. You praise what you delight in. And what you praise, you automatically want to share with others.

If you just saw a good movie, don't you want to tell seven people? If you just found a restaurant and it had a really good meal, don't you find all week long you're telling somebody about how good it was? There's something about delight that wants to delight with others. It is not something that is fiercely individualistic.

It is something that enjoys fellowship. It's like in our home if we're watching a good movie and somebody gets on their phone, somebody else will call them out and say, well, you're missing it. Well, so what? They're missing it. You're not missing it.

Why do you care if they're missing it? Because I'm enjoying the fellowship of being able to both enjoy this good scene in this movie. And so it is that we invite people. I don't want you to invite people for Easter because it's your duty. I want you to invite people for Easter because you delight in the Lord.

He's beautiful and He's wonderful in all of His ways. And whatever we praise and delight in, we make sacrifices toward and for without giving it much thought. The funniest masters piece of trivia I have for you is that some years ago, Golf Digest surveyed its readership about just how far people would go in their desire to get in to see the masters. And one of the questions on the survey asked men if they would be willing to be struck by a taser gun, tasered just outside the gates and upon recovering allowed to go into the masters.

And the majority of readers said, yes, they would be willing to be tasered. I'm saying that if there's something that delights you enough, then you begin to be drawn towards it in such a way that other things get sacrificed, but you don't think of it as a sacrifice. The problem, the way in which the people of God were fasting that God rebuked in Isaiah 58 is that they weren't having it be the sacrifice that falls into place because of the delight in the Lord. There's a kind of delight in the Lord that, yes, it changes everything in your life, but you didn't even think of it as being denial. Prince of Preachers Charles Spurgeon said it beautifully, when I hear persons say, well, you know, my religion consists in some things I must do and some things I must not do.

I reply, mine consists in things that I love to do and in avoiding things that I hate and would scorn to do. He continued in a brilliant sermon to say, does the dove deny itself when it does not eat carrion, referring to the flesh of a dead animal? No, verily the dove could not delight in blood, would not feed thereon if it could. When a man sees a company of swine under the oak, delighting themselves in their acorns and grunting out their satisfaction, does he deny himself when he passes them by without sharing their feast?

No, verily he has better bread at home, whereof he can eat and swine's meat is no dainty to him. So it is with the believer. His faith's a matter of delight, a matter of satisfaction, and that which he avoids and turns from is very little self-denial to him. His tastes are changed. His wishes are altered. He delights himself and his God and joyously receives the desires of his heart.

That's the denial. That's the sacrifice that is lifted up in the Scripture, the kind that comes automatically from delighting yourself in the Lord such that what you are denying yourself of is not even a denial of self because you wouldn't even want it anyway. And so this process of delight that leads to praise and praise that leads to inviting others and then leads to making sacrifices effortlessly leads to one final point, as we saw in the Psalm. When we delight in the Lord, God delights in that.

And in a sense, if you could say this of a sovereign God, God is released to bless fully the one who delights fully in him. Because God is so good, he would not give to you something that was bad for you just because you said you desired it. He's too good of a father for that.

Thank God. If a cocaine addict's main desire was just a flesh's desire for more cocaine, it would not be a loving father that gave the addict more cocaine. But as soon as the addict started thirsting for something that would be good for him or her, then a good father would give a superabundance of it. It's like if you were drawn to polluted water and you wanted more of it, your father in heaven wouldn't give it to you. But if you began to be drawn towards living in pure water, he would give to you without measure. In other words, what happens is that the more that you delight in the Lord, all of your own desires then change and become increasingly conformed to the very heart of God. In other words, to delight in the Lord is to experience a process where your will starts lining up with the very will of God. And when that happens, the psalmist says, God will give you the desires of your heart. God loves you and he cares very much about you. And I just want you to understand, beloved, that every good gift comes down from God. There is no lack in God, and God loves to give good gifts. And it breaks my heart to see that there are so many Christians that have come along with some ridiculous notion that being a Christian is about this life that is going to be contrary to anything that you would ever desire in your deepest heart.

That's not the case at all. The things that you, in your deepest heart, if you could really be in touch with it, are the very things that God wants to give to you. The focus of the Christian life, therefore, beloved, is not about you putting on a fast. By that I mean by you practicing some sense of self-sacrifice and self-denial that then you think is going to impress God and turn around and get Him to give you something.

No, that is absolutely reverse of the whole Christian life. The Christian life is about you having a revelation of the goodness of God and what He's done for us in Jesus Christ, of seeing that a great exchange has taken place wherein God the Father loved you so much that He sent His only begotten Son to die in your place and to take your sin and to take your shame so that you would have no condemnation left in your life, no shame left in your life, and God wouldn't even see your sin anymore, so much so that you've become the righteousness of Jesus. And all of the wonder of God then poured out into you by the very presence of the Holy Spirit in whom you live and grow, the life of God inside of you, pulsating within you, and all the beauty and wonder of the heavens that open up to you when you see things from God's perspective. This is the life of the Christian evermore delighting in the goodness of God, and everything that changes in your life comes because of that little bit of focus. This, the grace of God, is the delight of my life. Delight yourself and the Lord, and He'll give you the desires of your heart, and that's the gospel. Alan Wright and today's teaching, Delight, Take Pleasure and Obedience, the conclusion of that teaching, but also the conclusion of the series, Savor.

And Alan is back here in a moment in the studio with our closing good news thought for the day. With so much worry about yesterday's failures and so much hurry getting ready for tomorrow's tasks, sometimes it's hard to focus on the moment that matters most right now. In a hurried worried season, God invites you into the present.

Modern day life coaches call it mindfulness, but it isn't a new psychological program and it isn't rooted in Eastern religion. Mindfulness, living in the present is God's idea and the Bible unveils the way. Pastor Alan Wright invites you to savor life each day. When you make your gift today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's eight messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. Make your gift today and learn how to savor the textures and flavors of God's grace.

Each moment in the moment, every day of your life. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. Today is the final day we're offering the special product. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860 or come to our website, pastor alan.org. Alan, as we close the book on this particular series of savor and certainly in this teaching, take pleasure in obedience. What's your closing thought? Well, Daniel, I hope that listeners have been able to join this journey with us and if not that they'll avail themselves of this very special collection of messages because I think it's one of the most important messages for our culture, savor. We live so much of our life, not just in the busyness like we've all experienced, but we live with regret about yesterday and that's exhausting and we live with worry about tomorrow and that's frustrating and God invites us into a whole different way of living right here, right now, in this moment. It's what in the secular world they call mindfulness. It is God's idea.

It's His invention. It's His plan that you learn to savor His goodness each and every day. That's my prayer for each and every listener.

You'll be able to savor the goodness of God in the moment, each moment, every day this year. If you only caught part of today's teaching, not only can you listen again online, but also get a daily email devotional that matches today's teaching delivered right to your email inbox free. Find out more about these and other resources at pastor alan.org. That's pastor alan.org. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.