To Glorify God and Enjoy Him Forever

Do you ever ask yourself, "Why am I getting out of bed this morning? What is this all for?" Why are we going to church? Why do we read our Bibles? Why are we supposed to pray? Why do we listen to these podcasts or read these books? Or are we just surviving, just trying to get to the weekend? Are we like the little hamster in the store—there's a group of them all asleep in the corner, and one of them is in the wheel, chugging away, going as fast as he can but not getting anywhere? Is that how it is? Could you articulate what the point of all this is—what we're doing, why we're doing it?

Historically, Christians have summed it up in two statements. We see it, for example, in the Westminster Shorter Catechism. The first question: What is the chief end of man? And it's summed up in two statements: to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

That's the point. That's what gets you off the wheel and doing something—whether it's just getting out of bed in the morning, or coming here to church, or going to your job and doing a good job, doing it joyfully, doing it as unto the Lord. It's more than just surviving. It's more than just trying to get to the weekend, where you have the opportunity to distract yourself from all the mundane and painful stuff of life.

That first statement—glorify God—has, of the two, been covered significantly more. That tends to be the one we land on and focus on when we think about this, in part because it's the one most explicitly stated in Scripture. For example, the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:31, "Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." He says it as plainly as he can: whatever you're doing, from the most significant to the most mundane, do it all to the glory of God. That first statement also gets the most attention from Christian writers, preachers, and theologians. That's where we tend to focus our energy, helping one another grasp what it means to live all of life so that praise, honor, and glory always get directed toward God. To God be the glory—that's what we like to camp on.

So this morning I want to consider the second half of that. Let's assume we understand we're supposed to live for the glory of God. But what does it mean to enjoy him? Is it possible to live every part of your life for the glory of God? Is it possible to live every part of your life in the joy of the Lord?

I want to begin our journey in maybe an unlikely place—Psalm 73. We won't stay here, but we're going to start here, because we see a lot of what we'll cover in this passage. Some of this was also reflected in the prayer Chaz prayed this morning.

Psalm 73 says:

"Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped. For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For they have no pangs until death; their bodies are fat and sleek. They are not in trouble as others are; they are not stricken like the rest of mankind."

Already we begin to see a familiar problem—we're looking for meaning and purpose in the wrong place.

"Therefore pride is their necklace; violence covers them as a garment. Their eyes swell out through fatness; their hearts overflow with follies. They scoff and speak with malice; loftily they threaten oppression. They set their mouths against the heavens, and their tongue struts through the earth. Therefore his people turn back to them, and find no fault in them. And they say, 'How can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?' Behold, these are the wicked; always at ease, they increase in riches. All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. For all the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning. If I had said, 'I will speak thus,' I would have betrayed the generation of your children. But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end.

"Truly you set them in slippery places; you make them fall to ruin. How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors! Like a dream when one awakes, O Lord, when you rouse yourself, you despise them as phantoms. When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you.

"Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. For behold, those who are far from you shall perish; you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you. But for me, it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all your works."

I think it's a familiar struggle. There's no joy because bad people do whatever they want, whenever they want, and they get away with it. They live lives of ease and prosperity—that's how it seems, at least. We all know that's a generalization that doesn't really stand up to scrutiny, but that's how it tends to seem. But us? We're out here doing everything we're supposed to, and what do we have to show for it? Just misery, disappointment, discouragement. It seems like we've wasted our time living for the glory of God.

In fact, initially the psalmist comes to the opposite conclusion Solomon comes to in Ecclesiastes. Instead of "vanity of vanities, all is vanity," he almost says everybody's getting whatever they want as long as they don't waste their time trying to do what they're supposed to—trying to live for God. It's almost like he's saying it's vanity to do what's right.

But then there's a shift, a realization. A glimpse of reality breaks through, and the fog of the lies about earthly pleasures fades. He realizes they don't actually put us in a better place. All they do is distract and deceive people from reality, from the ultimate purpose of their lives, and from their eternal futures.

So there's this reassuring truth he comes back to. The reassurance isn't, "If I keep on the straight and narrow, if I keep doing what God has called me to do, then I'm going to get all the goodies too—the ease, the fat and sleek life, getting to do whatever I want and nobody caring." That's not what he's saying. The reassurance is that we have no one except God—and that's a good thing. He desires only to be near God, to be in his presence, to enjoy his presence, to be filled with the reality of what that means. That is more significant than anything this world could offer, even if we got everything it could possibly offer.

What this psalm helps us understand is that enjoying God ultimately means a complete shift in the things we prioritize instinctively. We shift from the things our natural, fallen, sinful state craves, and we begin to realize the things that are of true and lasting value. That's what we want. That's what it means to enjoy God.

So the first thing you have to do is change what you want. There has to be a shift in desire. Enjoying God forever starts with enjoying God right now. That's what Psalm 73 illustrates.

We so often lack joy in our lives because we're confused by the idea of enjoying God. And we're confused because our desires are so often aligned with the unbelievers all around us. We want and crave the same things they do. And when we don't get them—or when we get them and they don't satisfy us like they promised—we're disillusioned and discouraged, wondering, "So now what's the point of life? If I've gotten all this stuff and I'm still broken, still discouraged, still despairing, then what?" We've got the fame. We've got the luxury. We've got the power, the comfort, the new car, the new promotion, the new dining experience. You've got your little book nook where you can hide yourself away and read all day. You've got whatever you thought you wanted, and yet you're still not satisfied. You're like the little hamster on the wheel, and you just have to keep going because you're sure there's something else out there.

We are rarely satisfied with what we have, and we're often envious of people who seemingly have all the things we want. But what we see in Scripture, what we see throughout church history, is that the strongest Christians are the most joyful, and the most joyful Christians tend to be the most content, because they have one desire: getting closer to God.

You know who Corrie ten Boom is? She wrote The Hiding Place. She and her sister ended up in a concentration camp, Ravensbrück, and it was a miserable experience on every level, for so many reasons. One of the things that was particularly troubling when they got there—not only were they living in overcrowded barracks, but the barracks were infested with fleas, to such a degree that it seemed almost unbearable—until her sister Betsie pointed out that they could hold open Bible studies in the barracks, because the guards wouldn't go in on account of the fleas.

Maybe that's an extreme example, but they—like so many other Christians throughout history—found that what seemed to be a trial was actually the very thing God provided to help them cling to him, to draw closer to him, and to help others do the same. So often we see throughout Scripture and church history God using not luxury, power, and fame to draw people closer to himself, but trials and struggles and challenges—the very opposite of what we tend to want for ourselves—as the very thing he blesses us with to draw us ever nearer to him.

In Psalm 23 we read, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want." But we also find out we sometimes walk through the valley of the shadow of death. We find out there needs to be a rod and a staff to comfort and protect us because of what's out there. David said in Psalm 27:4, "One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple." Remember, that's how Psalm 23 ends too—"I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever." Being with God, being as close to him as possible, is the greatest gift God gives his people.

Even the Apostle Paul talked about his own struggle with ministry in Philippians. He tells the Philippians, "I'm really torn. On the one hand, I want to be here and do ministry, because I know that's beneficial to you, beneficial to the church. But on the other hand, I honestly wouldn't be all that upset if I left and got to be with Christ. That would truthfully, for me, be even better." To depart and be with Christ was Paul's desire for himself. If he were being selfish, he's out of here.

Think all the way back to Adam and Eve. Their greatest blessing in the Garden of Eden, pre-fall, wasn't frolicking with the animals or eating all the fruit of the different trees except the one they weren't supposed to eat from. Their greatest blessing was being able to walk with God in the garden, to have intimate fellowship with him, to be in his presence. It's after the fall that separation from God becomes the most tragic effect of sin's curse—we're no longer in fellowship with him. That's broken.

This is also why, for the believer, what we're ultimately looking forward to in our glorification in eternity is to dwell in the house of the Lord forever—to be in the presence of God. So much about the new heavens and the new earth is shrouded in mystery. There's so much we simply aren't told. We can speculate all we want about what it will be like, but we have to throw up our hands and say we don't really know, because we're only given the tiniest sliver of what that will be like. We can be assured it will be better than we could possibly imagine. But there's one thing we're given concrete assurance of—the greatest part of it, the thing we're looking forward to the most—found in Revelation 21:3: "And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.'"

That's ultimately the greatest joy of eternal life and glorification—being in the unadulterated, unfiltered, unrestrained presence of God. Charles Spurgeon said, "When are we happiest? There is no room for question here. Every believer knows he is happiest when he is nearest to his God." Being close to God—the closer you get, the more joy should fill your heart as a Christian.

What that means is you have to change what you want. If you want to begin to understand what it means to enjoy God forever, you shift what you want from the temporary stuff of this world to the eternal presence of God, because it becomes a perpetual joy factory. The more you have, the more you want. The more you want, the more you get—not stuff that breaks down and falls apart, but God himself.

I don't have to go into detail about how much we want the stuff we want here. How many of you, if you're honest, have had your yard sales or garage sales where you're selling for two dollars something you once wanted so badly? "Oh man, this was going to make my life amazing." When you shift that want from the temporary stuff of this world to the eternal, abiding presence of God, you begin to cultivate the joy of the Lord within yourself.

This is why we're so often challenged about the importance of things like our quiet time, prayer, Scripture study, meditation, and memorization. That's like fertilizing your plants. It's there to help us grow—not just in knowledge, not just as an information dump, but to build a relationship with the God we love and serve. As the desire for God's presence is sought in our lives, that's what we begin to want, and we pray for it, and we become more and more aware of that presence. The more aware we become, the more we want more of it. Does that make sense? Our time in prayer and in the Word is meant to develop that—to create within us not only a satisfaction for it, but a desire for more. In prayer, we talk to God, expressing our adoration and our dependence on him. In Scripture reading, meditation, and memorization, he speaks to us and helps us grow in faith, love, and desire to know him more. So it becomes a perpetually developing reality—the closer we are to him, the more we want to be close to him; the more we enjoy him, the more we want to enjoy him.

Change what you want. Scripture points us to another change we need to make if we want to enjoy God forever: we have to change what we hold onto. If you want the joy of the Lord, if you want to enjoy God forever, you've got to stop clinging to your earthly achievements and possessions.

I have to be honest—in our house, we probably have fifty blue ribbons from the county fair. You're impressed, I'm sure that's spread across all the members of our household, but we've got a lot of those blue ribbons. You know what? They mean nothing, really. And that's so often the reality of the things we cling to so much, the things we hold onto in our lives that, in the grand scheme of things, don't really mean anything.

Paul talks about this in Philippians 3. He talks about all the things he thought were accumulating credit for him in the bank of heaven—his pedigree, his education, his devotion to the Hebrew Scriptures, all of that. And he came to the shocking realization that it wasn't adding up to anything at all. If anything, it was like a debit being subtracted the more he depended on and craved it. In Philippians 3:8 he says, "Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ." It's a great illustration of what it means to change what you hold onto—letting go of all that stuff, realizing it's just rubbish, like that pile of county-fair ribbons. The one thing that means everything is clinging to Christ, holding onto him, desiring to know him more deeply.

One of the things we have to be willing to let go of, the most important thing, is our sin. So often that's what we cling to the most. Titus 2:11–12 says, "For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions"—that's sinfulness—"and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works."

As Chaz prayed just a little while ago, many of us have a love-hate relationship with our sin. We're on that hamster wheel with our sin too. We let Satan, or our own desires, convince us that sin will bring us pleasure, satisfaction, and joy, and we buy into it—"You're going to be so happy if you do this, you wouldn't believe how fulfilled you'll be." So we give in, and then we're racked with guilt. So many of us are frustrated: "I can't believe I did it again, for the millionth time." We feel discouraged, defeated, guilt-ridden by it, and angry with ourselves that we're unable or unwilling to resist. All the while, we've neglected the resources we have in Christ, and instead opted for stupid, short-lived pleasure.

Others of us just love it. We crave it—the rush of pleasure, the feeling, the satisfaction, the release, whatever it is. We've convinced ourselves we're not hurting anybody, or we just don't care. "I like it. Don't tell me it's wrong. This is what I do. This is me. This is who I am." Doesn't matter what it is—the big ones, the little ones: pornography, screaming profanities at people while driving, anger, shoplifting, gossip, envy, whatever your sin of choice is. Some of us just love it. It's who we are.

But whether you're in that love-hate relationship or you just embrace it, these things are traps. They are snares. Scripture says we're supposed to lay aside every weight and sin that so easily entangles us. They betray our Savior, who died to pay the penalty for our sins. And they enslave us like real addictions. They rob us of real joy.

One of C.S. Lewis's most famous quotes illustrates this: "It would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition, when infinite joy is offered us, like ignorant children who want to go on making mud pies in a slum because we cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased." This is the reality of what we so often cling to—mud pies in the slum—when God is offering us, in Christ Jesus, joy we can't even imagine. But we think our sin is where we'll find joy and satisfaction.

Remember Jesus's parable of the man who finds treasure buried in a field? What does he do? In his joy, he goes and sells everything he has so he can buy that field. Let's imagine he had a lot—not that he was poor and barely scraping by, but that he was living well, with lots of stuff. But he realized what was in that field was of such greater value that even selling all he had would really be no sacrifice at all. That's how we're supposed to view letting go of sin, even sin we love so much, in order to hold onto this one thing of eternal, lasting value. We're really not giving up anything of value at all.

Change what you hold onto.

The third thing Scripture encourages us to do—not only change what we want, change what we hold onto—we've got to change what we do. There's a certain amount of time outside your direct control. There are things you have to do: you have to sleep, most of us have to go to work, we have other obligations that aren't really optional. If we don't do them, life falls apart. But we also have a lot of discretionary time, don't we? No matter how busy you are, you have some time you get to choose how to use. What's amazing is how much of that discretionary time is spent in direct opposition to the things that would help us enjoy God more. So often that discretionary time is spent on things that cause us to forget God even exists.

Don't worry—I'm not suggesting we all need to lock ourselves in monasteries, at least not forever. It doesn't mean you have to spend every waking hour with your nose in the Bible, or attending everything whenever these church doors are open—every program, every volunteer opportunity, every everything. If you're not doing that, you'd better be at a Bible study; if you're not at a Bible study, you'd better be on your knees praying. That wouldn't be bad, but I'm not saying that if you're not spending every moment of free time that way, you're living in opposition to God.

But I do want to challenge you to get honest with yourself about how you use your discretionary time. Time is the one resource we all have the same amount of. You can't get more time than you're given—you can't add a twenty-fifth hour to your day, or an eighth day to your week. So you have to ask yourself: how do I decide what I'm going to do with the time I have? How do I determine the purpose of what I do?

This is why, in financial planning, they often say to "pay yourself first"—put money into savings and investing before you even pay your bills—because otherwise, if you only save what's left over at the end, you'll never have the money you need. It's the same with our time. We establish rhythms in our lives not so that we become like the hamster in the wheel, slaves to a schedule and dutybound, but so that we're forced into regular patterns of investing our time in the things that are ultimately valuable and help us enjoy God more.

That's why we regularly talk about having a daily quiet time or devotion time—viewing it as a set, regular time for the Lord carved out of your day, where relational intimacy with the Lord is strengthened as you spend time with him in prayer and in the Word. That should be part of your daily life. That's why we talk about the weekly Sabbath and the importance of what God has established for us—carving out time to rest and recharge from our week. And most of us, I'll just throw this in, not just for the teenagers—most of us need to rest from our devices. If we're honest, that needs to be part of it. Also, times of regular retreat, where you take prolonged time to get away from people and familiar surroundings to invest in enjoying God's presence.

We started with Psalm 73. Asaph is frustrated with the apparent injustice and imbalance of life. But in verse 17 he says, "Until I went into the sanctuary of God." Step one for him was drawing near to God, spending time with the Lord, going into the house of the Lord. This wasn't an epiphany that struck him like a bolt of lightning. He was struggling. This didn't add up in his mind. It didn't seem like how life was supposed to work. And he goes to the sanctuary of the Lord, and after spending time with the Lord, he begins to realize his perspective on life was way off. How he was perceiving things was not ultimately how they were going to end up.

If we go back to the Westminster Shorter Catechism—it's not the gospel, but it sums this up so well. What is the chief end of man? Glorify God, enjoy him forever. I guess what I'm saying is those two things are interconnected. The things we want, the things we hold onto, the things we do—enjoying God motivates the desire to do things for his glory. Doing things for the glory of God is only going to be the aim of people who long for and love the abiding presence of God.

This is where the gospel helps us so much, because the gospel says God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. The gospel is a reminder of God's love for us—a love so great that God would send his Son to stand in our place, to do what is absolutely necessary to redeem sinners from their sins. But it doesn't end there. The whole point is to bring us back into relationship with him.

Remember, the separation Adam and Eve experienced in the Garden of Eden is a reality for every person who has ever lived, because we're all under the curse of sin. We're all separated from God because of that. And yet the gospel points us to the fact that God does the work to adopt us into his family, and in his grace makes us joint heirs of his kingdom and active participants in that kingdom work. It's a story of his love for us—a reminder that every person who trusts in the work of Christ is part of that family. Jesus Christ is a reminder of that—not only a reminder, but he points us to the reality of what he has done for us, as we see how he's revealed in Scripture, how the Holy Spirit convinces us and draws us to the Father. All of that helps us realize just how much God has done for us, so that there is a desire, a love, that we want to experience more deeply every day. We want to run from the things that break that down, that divide us, that hinder that, and we want to come and be as close to him as possible. He's done all that for us. How could we not enjoy him? How could we not make it our aim to give him all the praise and glory of our lives?

The more we realize that, the more we want to glorify him. And if you want to glorify him, then certainly you enjoy and love and adore him. Those two things are the answer. They are companions. They support one another.

If you want to enjoy God, or even begin to, there needs to be a shift in the things you value and prioritize in your life. You're not going to do that on your own. You need God to reorient you. You need to be rescued from the brokenness of this world, from the deceit of this world convincing you that what it has to offer is of value and meaning and purpose. We need a shift to take place. And as that begins to take root in our hearts, you will enjoy God more and more every day.

Let's pray. Dear Lord, we thank you so much that you have sent your Son into this world. We thank you for the gift of salvation. We thank you for his work of redemption. We thank you for the eternity awaiting us with you, to be able to dwell in your presence—something beyond our ability to comprehend what that will be like. We know that is something reserved for the believer, not universally promised to every person, but a gift offered and promised to those who put their faith in you, who trust in the work of your Son, Jesus Christ, to atone for and provide justification for our sins, to save us and make us right before you. But we also know that salvation is just the beginning—it's not the end of our spiritual journey. There is a sanctification that takes place in our lives throughout the course of our lives, as through the working of your Word and your Holy Spirit we are made more and more like your Son, Jesus Christ, and in that our desires shift, our priorities shift, and we love you more deeply and want to be closer to you each and every day. We ask that you would help us to crave that, to embrace that, to lean into that, and to come to know what it means to experience the joy of the Lord. We ask all this in your name.