Enjoying God's Good Gifts

There's a hymn — I have no idea how old it is; I probably should have looked into that, but it's older than any of us here. It's called "Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus." Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, and the things of this earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace. That's the chorus of that hymn.

I'm sure several of you have heard that before, probably sung it before. But when you think about what that chorus is saying — turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, and the things of this earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace — is that him promising that the sign of abiding in Christ is a complete disregard for anything connected to this material world, anything connected to or associated with this created order? Is this saying that everything of this earth is just going to be completely vapid, of no use or value to us while we're here on earth? Is that what it's saying? I don't think so.

If we were to take time to extrapolate the verses, it would make it a little more clear, but I think in fact the opposite is true. I'm convinced that the closer you and I are to Christ in our relationship with Him, in our abiding in Him, in our communion with Him, the more we are going to delight not only in God Himself, the triune God of the universe, but we are also going to delight in all of God's gracious gifts. Last week we looked at this concept of enjoying God, and it's something that is so often eclipsed by our desire — and our telling people and encouraging ourselves — to focus on glorifying God, that we so often forget about enjoying Him.

Today, as a connection to this, I want to look at what it means to enjoy God's good gifts — to enjoy what God has blessed us with in the world we live in. And what I hope to make plain this morning, to you and to anyone you care to share this with, is that enjoying God's good gifts is a part of enjoying Him, and is actually a beautiful act of worship.

Let's start with this fact established in Genesis 1: God made everything good. We need to start at that place — that God made the world and everything in it good. Genesis chapter 1, the very end of that chapter, verse 31: "And God saw everything He had made, and behold, it was very good. There was evening and there was morning, the sixth day."

So after Moses lays out this sequence of creation and the days of creation, he wraps this first chapter up by establishing that everything created by God is very good. A few verses prior to that, in verse 28, we read: "And God blessed them" — that is, Adam and Eve — "and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.'" So He made all this and He essentially gives it to them to use and to have access to — even dominion over it. It was part of His good creation, and it was a part of Him giving it to them for their use and even for their enjoyment.

Today I want you to understand that part of glorifying God and enjoying Him is finding joy in His many good gifts — and that includes the stuff of this world. When we learn to enjoy the blessings of this world, we're going to be participating in the worship of God, and even the obedience of God that was established all the way back in the Garden of Eden.

You need to have this locked in your head: God created the world good. And yes, we are living in that world after the fall — after Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the garden, and after everything was then subjected to sin and the curse. I don't want to downplay or diminish that, or imply it has no effect on us or the world we live in. But I want you to understand that creation is still more than capable of pointing us to God in a way that highlights His glory and grace.

In Psalm 19, what does the psalmist say? "The heavens declare the glory of God." He's speaking after the fall, after they are now subject to the curse and entropy and decay and calamity — and still, they declare the glory of God. They still proclaim His handiwork. "Day to day pours out speech, and night after night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard." In other words, the psalmist is saying that creation — the heavens, the stars, the trees, the birds, the mountains — is literally shouting that God is glorious, and everyone can hear it. Everyone can hear what they are telling us about God.

The apostle Paul affirms this in Romans chapter 1, where he says that God's invisible attributes — namely His eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. Everyone everywhere can open their eyes, and even if you can't see, you can feel, you can taste, you can touch, you can experience the fact that God is eternal, that God is divine, that God is glorious.

What does this mean? That we live in this good creation — this thing that God has made and declared very good. It means you can look through a telescope out into space, and you can see that God is good and have reason to glorify Him. It means you can look into a microscope at the cellular level, or even the subatomic level, and see that God is good and that there's reason to glorify Him. You can go up to Tahoe, or Yosemite, or to the beach, or to the desert, wherever you want to go — you can see God's creation, and it is literally telling you that God is good and that He is glorious.

But there's more. It means you can sit down at your table and eat your favorite food. You can watch sports. You can sew a quilt. You can work on an old car. You can participate in this life with a sense of gratitude and delight, because everywhere you look, you are going to see and experience the handiwork of God, and it is going to be to you an evidence of His generous provision.

You look around you and you can easily see that there is so much in this world that highlights the character of God and fills us with joy in the process. I would bet — I won't even ask, because I know it would be 100% — that if I asked you to raise your hand in agreement that there are experiences and objects in this world that bring you joy, every one of you, even the person who thinks they're living the most miserable existence on planet earth, would still be able to find one thing — an experience, a memory, an object — something that brings you joy. That is a demonstration to us of God's goodness.

We should be able to look all around us, at the simplest of things and even the most luxurious and complex things, and see that they are all giving us the opportunity to enjoy God by enjoying His good world. Think about a little kid — we were just talking about this the other day. You break out a bubble machine for a little kid, and you might as well have taken him to Disneyland. It's unbelievable how excited kids get over bubbles. Or you give them a balloon, and it's like you've given them the world — just a simple object like that. And even as adults, we can appreciate that it doesn't have to be extravagant, luxurious, opulent, or expensive. Even simple things can be evidence of God's goodness in our lives and an opportunity for us to enjoy His good creation.

I want to establish in your mind: when we go to Genesis, we have a perfectly holy God — the God that the angels in His presence in heaven never cease to declare "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God; the whole earth is full of His glory." That's what the angels are declaring in the presence of God even to this day. That holy God, the only true and living God, created the universe. And what did He say about it when He created it? It is very good. It's like God is giving Himself a high five when He creates everything — "This is amazing." Even the holy God who needs nothing declares this to be very good. He is self-existent and self-sufficient. He delights in Himself. And yet the creation of the world is evidence that His goodness and His joy are overflowing in the world He created.

Broken as this world is right now, there is still so much of that good that fills and saturates this world. There's enough good remaining that points us to Him, adding to our reasons to enjoy Him by enjoying the world He has created. And I feel like we so often lose sight of that fact. We become so focused on the negative, so focused on the brokenness, so focused on and obsessed with what is wrong in this world because of sin, that we fail to see and appreciate the goodness that still remains — a gift of God to us, an opportunity for us to enjoy Him by enjoying what He has given us.

You don't have to try to find the sin and brokenness in this world. Nobody has to go looking for it. It's there. It makes itself perfectly obvious in your own heart and in the world we live in. You don't even have to listen to the news — you just know it's out there. It's painful. It's hard. No denying it. But so often, because of that, we fail to see God's handiwork all around us. We take for granted all the evidences of His graciousness that still fill our world and are woven into our daily existence.

I've had a bumper crop of tomatoes this year. Tomatoes are polarizing — it's a love-or-hate relationship. But if you love tomatoes, you know it's not a real tomato unless it's come from a garden. The things you buy in the store are pretend tomatoes — they want to be a tomato, but they are not. A tomato from the garden is simple, but so good. There are things like that all around us, everywhere you look.

So get this in your head: God created the world good. And there is still so much good, even in the world under the curse of sin, that there is more than enough reason for us to glorify Him and enjoy Him by enjoying the things He has made and given to us to enjoy. Let's establish that.

But there's a danger — there's always a danger — in these good gifts. This danger is a tale as old as time. Paul highlights this when he talks about the evidences of God all around us in Romans chapter 1. The danger is that people so often, rather than worshiping the God who created all this and made it good, worship the creation instead. This is what we call idolatry. You understand what an idol is — a carved image, and people devote their worship toward it. But it's essentially something that takes the place of God. Where God should be, we put something in His place and we worship that instead of God.

So often for us, that's the stuff of this world. We build a "god shelf," and we obsess over the things He gave us, the things He made, the things He creates, the things that are given over to us that are meant to be enjoyed as an act of worship to Him. We take the food He's given us and become gluttonous. We look at the beauty of His creation and worship the sun and the trees and the animals instead of God. We take things like sports, music, or acting, and idolize athletes or performers rather than letting their performances and creations point us to the giver of all good things. This is a danger every one of us must always be on guard for — that we are somehow fixating on the gift rather than the giver, fixating on the creation rather than the Creator. As God has given us good things to enjoy, we must never let those things take the place of God.

We've experienced this as parents too. The kids at Christmas finally get the gift they've been asking for all year, they've begged for it, and what do you have to do? "Don't forget to say thank you to Aunt Becky for buying this." The gift is all they care about — they completely forget that the only reason they have it is because Aunt Becky got it for them; they wouldn't have it otherwise. So often we live our lives that very same way. We love all these gifts we have because of God's goodness and grace, but we so often forget, "Oh yeah, there's the God who made these and gave them to us." We just obsess over the stuff.

That's one danger. The other danger is hedonism. That's a broad term covering a lot of areas, but let's focus on the idea that we live for pleasure — pleasure becomes the pursuit of our lives. It's essentially self-worship. God's good gifts are viewed simply as instruments for personal gratification. Their value is found only in the pleasure they bring, and we fail to recognize them as blessings from God. We don't care where they came from or how we got them — all we care about is what they do for us. We don't understand the beauty they possess; we only see them as a means to an end. And what often happens when we're in this pure pursuit of pleasure is that they can only satisfy our desires temporarily. We always have to have more, something new, something different. We get tired of them so quickly, because hedonism does not delight — hedonism consumes.

"I am a consumer, pure and simple. I just want more, more, more. I don't care what it is, I don't care where it comes from, as long as I derive pleasure from it, that's what I want. But as soon as I've wrung the pleasure out, I need more, more, more." It's like a dog when food falls off the table — it doesn't care what it is, a piece of meat, a piece of bread, a carrot — it just wants to eat it as fast as it can before somebody notices and takes it away. It wants to suck that thing up, consume it, choke it down. Maybe it'll throw up later, maybe it'll gag on it — it doesn't care. No enjoyment, just a frantic rush to gobble it up. No gratitude — no dog has ever thanked me for food that fell on the floor. In fact, when I try to get it back, I usually get my hand bit. No savoring. No real joy. And so often that is us with God's good gifts — just the cookie monster.

This is where the gospel is so vital for us. Redemption — being rescued from our depravity, from our brokenness — heals our hearts. It's in the gospel that we come to see God for who He is: a holy God who is the giver of good gifts. We see Him as we should. The gospel reminds us that God is good, that He made this world, and He made it for us to rule over by giving thanks and giving honor and giving glory and giving praise to Him.

The gospel also reminds us that we have rejected Him as our ruler. We've decided to run our own lives, to do things our own way — "No thank you, God, I know You said don't eat that fruit, but You're wrong and I'm not, so I'm going to eat it anyway." By rebelling against God, we damage ourselves. We're broken because of it. We damage our world, our relationships, our connection to God. We brought upon ourselves condemnation and punishment. God's punishment for our rebellion, the Bible says, is death and judgment.

But because of God's love, He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, into this world to be not only fully God but fully man, and to take our punishment on Himself by dying in our place on the cross — paying the debt we could not pay, giving Himself as a substitute. God raised Jesus from the dead through the power of His Holy Spirit. Jesus has conquered sin and death, and now brings forgiveness and new life, and will return in glory. That is the promise of the gospel. And the Bible also promises that every person who submits to Jesus' rule and trusts in His death and resurrection will be made right with God and will become a new creation.

I want to pause here and just plead with you: if you have known this and only considered it factually, but never trusted in what Christ has done on your behalf, I want to beg you to stop just thinking about it, to stop just regarding it as interesting information about a religion, and to actually recognize how desperately you need God's help — how desperately you need what Christ has done for you — and to trust in it, to believe it is sufficient to make you right with God, to ask God to be merciful to you and to save you from your wretched state. I would encourage you to stop letting this be information you hear, and instead let it be truth that you actually believe.

The gospel says that when we do that, our hearts are changed, our eyes are opened, and we begin to see in a new way the signs of God's glory and love and generosity that are all around us. We begin to grow settled in the reality that no desire we could ever have could eclipse the love of God in our lives. And so we begin to see afresh all of His grace and all the mercy poured out toward us — including in the world He created. Because of the gospel, then, we can begin to glorify God by enjoying His good gifts, which are part of His good creation.

In James 1:17, James says that every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, in whom there is no variation or shadow of change. Everything you have that's good in your life, everything we have that's good in the world, is a gift from God. And it's not always things we regard as good — James is clear that even trials, all the various trials you have, are also part of God's good gift to you, because of the work they do in your life.

I want you to think about how we can enjoy these gifts in three different ways: by delighting in them, by stewarding them, and by sharing them.

Delighting in them is maybe the most obvious way to think about enjoying God's good gifts. There are certain of God's gifts we don't argue about delighting in — sunsets, peaceful mornings, hard work, friendship, things like that. Nobody says, "I hate sunsets, they're the worst." Nobody says, "I hate looking at a mountain, I don't want to see a mountain." There are also innumerable blessings in life that we can and should receive with thankfulness and even joy. You can absolutely delight in your favorite meal at your favorite restaurant, and receive that with joy as a gift from God. You can play golf with your buddies and delight in that. You can sit by yourself and read, and find joy in that. Hobbies, serendipitous moments, your new cell phone — all of that can be enjoyed and delighted in as a good gift to you from God, the big and the small, the simple and the complex.

When you and I learn not only to see all that we have from God, but also to delight in those gifts — understanding that all we truly deserve is the consequence of our sins, and we don't deserve any of this — all of a sudden our lives become magnifiers of God's glory. When everything you get to experience and participate in becomes an opportunity for delight and enjoyment, and reflects your enjoyment of the giver of those gifts, you can't help but point people to God with sheer delight. So by all means, look at the world around you, look at the experiences you have, look at the opportunities in your daily life, and find joy in them. Use them as opportunities to glorify God. Delight in them.

Steward them. You have to use these gifts wisely, not wastefully. Don't cast them aside as insignificant — "easy come, easy go, there'll be a sunset tomorrow, who cares." Don't overindulge, don't obsess over them, but use them wisely. Paul tells Timothy in 1 Timothy 6:17, "As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy." If you're rich, if you live a luxurious life, that's okay — don't be haughty about it, don't put your trust in it, but recognize it as a gift from God and an opportunity to enjoy it and give glory to Him in it. God's glory shines as we use and enjoy His lavish provisions, but even more so when we do it with care and consideration, showing clearly that we understand it's a gift from God, and that He is our great provider. We're to use these things wisely to magnify our joy in Him and our glory of Him.

And we do this by sharing the riches with which God has blessed us. In 2 Corinthians 9:8, we read: "And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all contentment in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work." Contentment is key — that's one of the things lost when you're just a consuming dog going after scraps off the table. There's no contentment in that, no matter how much you get.

God's gracious gifts are meant for more than supplying your needs. They do that, but they're also given to us so that we might in turn be a blessing to others. Enjoying God's good gifts means using them in a way that benefits those around you as well. These gifts are meant to be resources for you to actively love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to actively love your neighbor as yourself — a tool to let your light shine.

One of the great examples of how we can do this is through the art of hospitality. Hospitality isn't just having people over to your house — believe it or not, in the Bible the specific emphasis is on welcoming strangers into your home and providing for their needs. God gives us all these gifts to enjoy, but it's not just meant to be a table of "me and mine." I've heard it said that hoarded joy shrinks, but shared joy multiplies. These gifts God gives you should never be hoarded like a dragon sitting atop a pile of gold — "This is just for me, I'm not going to use it, but it's mine and I don't want anyone touching it."

So here's some homework for you: what are the sources of joy given to you by God that you normally like to keep private? Maybe it's a hobby, maybe it's a meal, maybe it's time spent in God's creation. But what are those things where it's just, "This is mine, God's given it to me, and it's for me alone"? How can you invite people to share in that joy, to participate with you as you experience God's goodness in your life? How can you spend time together with other people, worshiping and delighting in God's good gifts that have been given to you by a loving God? Yes, they're given to us to enjoy, but don't feel like you just have to go into your bedroom, shut the door, and it's just you and your stuff that God's given you. There are so many opportunities around — and not only is joy multiplied when you share it, but our glorifying of God and our worship of Him multiplies as well when we participate with one another.

So here's what you've got: God created the world. He created it good. Yes, it's fallen and broken because of sin, but there's still so much good there. Don't worship what He's made. Don't consume it just for pleasure. Recognize it as a good gift from Him to enjoy as a means of glorifying Him and enjoying Him and worshiping Him. And don't do it all by yourself — do it with other people.

Let's pray. Dear Lord, we thank You so much for all that You have given us. We thank You for Your creation. We thank You for the ways that people have creatively discovered how we can use Your creation, and what we can do with it, that only serves to further magnify Your grace and glory in our lives. May You help us to be people who are grateful. May You help us to be people who are filled with joy and delight at all the good gifts You have given us. May You help us to use them to magnify Your glory. And may You help us to desire to share that with other people. We ask all this in Your name. Amen.