Delight Yourself in the LORD - Sermon for the 14th Sunday after Pentecost

Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 3^rd, Year of Our + Lord 2023
Our Redeemer and Our Savior’s Lutheran Churches
Custer and Hill City, South Dakota
Delight Yourself in the LORD 
Psalm 37:4 and Matthew 16:21-28

Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will give you the desires of your heart.

   That sounds pretty good.  That sounds good, and kind of easy, doesn’t it?  Almost sounds like the prosperity Gospel, the “name it and claim it” approach to Christianity, which promises that if you say the right things to God, and believe them, if you really believe God will bless you, then He will bless you, right now, with health and prosperity, surpassing riches, and your best life now.  Maybe Joel Osteen is right after all? 

   Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will give you the desires of your heart.  Does this mean: “Make God your highest good, and you’ll be blessed with all the toys and goodies you’ve ever wanted”?  The other side of prosperity preaching is, of course, that if somehow you’re not blessed, well then you’re not doing it right.  Your heart’s not really in it, you’re not really making God number one, not really committing.  Because if you were, you’d be blessed, like me, the prosperity preacher.  Maybe you better buy my book, or sign up for my video series, to get yourself over the top.  Cash or credit card only, please.  

   Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will give you the desires of your heart.  Did King David, the author of Psalm 37, intend to say by this declaration that we can manipulate the LORD with our attitude and commitment into giving us whatever we want?  When it’s put that way, the answer is obviously ‘no.’  We fallen, frail creatures do not make God be anything. We do not manipulate the Almighty.  The LORD God is our highest good, but you and I don’t make it so. 

   So, what does ‘Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will give you the desires of your heart,’ actually mean?  

   To delight in the LORD is to love the things He loves, to agree with the truth as He declares it to be, and to desire in your heart to pursue His delight.  And this desire will come naturally, because when you delight in the LORD, the desires of your heart are changed.  Like David wrote in another famous Psalm:  “Create in me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit within me.”  And the Holy Spirit does just that.

   ‘Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will give you the desires of your heart,’ is a wonderful promise.  It’s not only the key to having a good life now, it is the key to living, period.  It means to be conformed to the mind and will of God in your inner being.  It is the goal of Christian faith.  However, such Godly delight does not come easily, as we learn from the exchange between Jesus and Peter in our Gospel reading from Matthew 16.

   Last week’s Gospel, the section just before today’s, was a wonderful high for Peter.  Peter correctly confesses that Jesus is the Christ, the promised Savior sent from God to save Israel, the very Son of God, made man.  Jesus commends this confession, and declares that it was His Father who gave this knowledge to Peter.  Peter was no doubt delighted to receive such high praise from Jesus, and to hear the promise that his confession of faith will be the rock upon which the Church of Christ will be built.  To correctly know the identity of Jesus is the necessary foundation for saving faith.  Delightful indeed. 

   Today, we wince as Peter falls from his pedestal.  Correctly confessing who Jesus is, the Christ, the Son of the living God, is the necessary first step, but it is not yet delighting in the LORD unto salvation.  Delighting in the LORD does not mean loving the ways of God as we imagine them to be.   Rather it means to know the way of the LORD and to embrace it, to trust in it, to love it.  And the way of the LORD, the delight of the Almighty, is to save sinners by the crucifixion of Jesus.  So now that Peter has correctly identified Him, Jesus lets the 12 in on the Way of the LORD.  He tells them they are approaching the final and greatest stage of His plan of salvation, His death on a Roman cross. 

   Peter hears of this Way of the LORD and cries out: ‘God be merciful to you, Jesus, this will never happen to you.’  Simon the son of John is not delighted to hear that his Master, Teacher and Friend would be cruelly executed. 

   There are many reasons to struggle with the Cross.  It was so wrong, so cruel.  Unless one understands that it was necessary, indeed that it was the central goal of Jesus’ life and ministry, the barbarity of crucifying the One truly and perfectly good man who ever walked the earth is too much too take. 

   The Cross is also an indictment of each one of us.  Cross-avoiding people for 2,000 years have loved to debate who was really to blame for Jesus’ unjust execution.  Was it the Jewish leaders?  Or was it Pontius Pilate and the Roman Empire he represented?  Or was it Judas, who betrayed him?  Yes, yes, and yes are the answers, but not the complete answer.  Because it was also me.  It was also you.  We too, are sinners, for whom it was necessary for Jesus to suffer and die. 

   Accepting the Cross puts to death all the schemes and ideas of mankind for achieving holiness by our efforts, of justifying ourselves, of proving ourselves to be worthy, good people.  But, we do not like to be indicted, convicted of being sinners.  And so our ears itch for other religious talk, Cross-less talk full of encouragement to good works, and of course, lots of praise of us workers of good.  But there is no lasting peace in Cross-less Christianity.  Without the Cross, there is no firm foundation upon which to stand when strife and guilt and sickness and death come for us.  And come for us they will.  Saving faith has no other foundation except the one established by Jesus, on a tree outside Jerusalem.   

   Delight yourself in the LORD, love what He loves.  Turn away from your natural
rejection of the Cross of Jesus, and embrace it.  Because there at Golgotha, the LORD loved being merciful to sinners, by the only way possible, which was to accept within Himself the penalty human sin deserves and requires.  And so St. John teaches us the mystery that the greatest act and revelation of love is the sacrificial death of Jesus, the propitiation for all our sins.

   And yet still, for Peter, and for you and for me, it is so hard to accept the Cross.  Some Christian churches today, in a misguided attempt at evangelism, remove the symbol of the Cross, so as not to offend outsiders.  Many Christians especially don’t want to see a Crucifix, a cross with the body of Jesus depicted upon it; too negative, too gory. 

   Worst of all, far too many supposed Christian teachers and preachers avoid speaking of the Cross.  Which is the greatest danger.  Christ crucified for the forgiveness of sins can be preached without the symbol of a Cross or a Crucifix.  But without the Word of the Cross, without it being applied to our sinful lives, without the Atonement in our ears, today and every day, the faith that saves begins to starve.  Eventually, starved of the Cross, faith can even die. 

    And so it is no surprise that Jesus rebukes Peter in the harshest terms: "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man."  Delight yourself in the LORD and His way, and you will receive the desires of your heart, which will be to receive the fruit of the Cross, to receive the righteousness of God delivered to sinners through the blood of Jesus.  Delight in the miracle of love that Jesus finished on the Cross, and your greatest desire will be to be in the blessed and joyful presence of God.  And this joy is already yours, because Jesus is truly with you, today by faith, and one day, face to face in glory.    

   As Jesus continues, he explains the way of delight in the LORD: "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”  Real life, not to mention never-ending life, only comes through the Cross of Jesus. 

   Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will create a new heart in you, a heart that learns to desire Godly things.  And with such delight in your heart, life in this broken world changes for you.  Jesus makes no guarantee of earthly prosperity.  Some Christians do very well, others suffer and never achieve worldly wealth or status.  But the heart that delights in the LORD doesn’t care, because it has Jesus, crucified, resurrected, and ascended to God the Father’s right hand.  The glorified God-man Jesus is ruling heaven.  Also, by the power of His resurrection, He can also truly be present with His people, His Body, the Church, present to teach and forgive and feed us for everlasting life.  In Jesus, we have the desire of our new hearts, the highest possible good, Jesus and His resurrection life, shared with us, given to us, as a free gift. 

   And there’s more.  Because delighted Christians live differently.  Struggles, illness, doubts, death and even persecution will come.  But the delight of trusting in the indestructible life and overflowing love of Christ Jesus gives you strength and peace, come what may. 

   Life in 21^st Century America seems more and more to be a meaningless rat race, but the delighted Christians sees through Cross-shaped glasses, and so knows that the LORD is working all things for the good of His people, even when it seems the opposite. 

   Technological marvels and creature comforts tempt all of us to idolize them and build our lives around pleasure and distraction.  But hearts made new by the forgiveness of Jesus remember that every good gift comes down from the unchanging Father of lights, and so we give Him thanks for all we have, and above all seek Him in His means of grace, wise to know fellowship with God is the only source of real life. 

   Living as a fallen creature in the midst of so many other fallen people tempts us to devalue life and close in ourselves, to only deal with our closest family and friends, and forget the world.  But the value that the death and resurrection of Jesus gives to every human life transforms our minds to see strangers not as bothersome, but as neighbors, souls to be loved with the love we receive in Jesus. 

   And so we delight to take up our crosses, knowing that Jesus has lifted, and been lifted up on, the One Cross that makes our crosses good, light and temporary burdens which we are privileged to carry.  By the power of the Holy Spirit, we bear our crosses in the Name of the LORD who has claimed us, and who feeds us with His delightful forgiveness, life and salvation, today, and forever and ever, Amen.