“What God Likes” – FBC Morning Light (5/15/2024)

What a good Wednesday morning to you. Today we're continuing to read in the Psalms today, but now for the rest of the week we'll be looking at Psalms of Asaph.

We've been reading the Psalms of David up until yesterday, and today the Psalms of Asaph.

We're reading Psalms 50, 73, and 74. Psalm 73 is a pretty commonly appealed to psalm.

It's a psalm of Asaph as he looks with envy at the filthy rich who seem to have no troubles in life at all, and yet he does.

I've dealt with that in the past, but I want to look at Psalm 50 because I think as Christians sometimes we can feel pretty good about ourselves, if you will, if we're faithful at certain religious practices.

For example, we go to church regularly, however we define regularly, or we read our

Bibles every day, and we have devotions every day, or I give to the church,

I tithe and give offerings to the work of the ministry, the work of the Lord, and in those kinds of things.

We can feel like, well, you know, I do these things, I go to church, dah, dah, dah, dah, so God's got to be pretty happy with me.

Well, in Psalm 50, Asaph talks about the fact that God sees your sacrifices, but he's not going to make any more demands about that.

For example, the Lord says, hear my people, I will speak, I will testify against you,

I am God, your God. I will not rebuke you for your sacrifices or your burnt offerings, which are continually before me.

So they are constantly doing the religious things, like they're supposed to.

He says, I won't take a bull from your house or goats from your folds. Every beast of the forest is mine, if I wanted these things,

I would take them. That's not what I'm interested in. You're doing all the religious stuff, but what I'm really interested in, he tells us in verse 14, is this, he says, offer to God thanksgiving and pay your vows to the

Most High, call upon me in the day of trouble, I will deliver you and you shall glorify me.

You see what the Lord is saying is, he really delights in, oh yeah, the religious practices are good for you.

They're good spiritual disciplines to engage in. They will help you. I mean, these are some of the common means of grace, right?

The regular means of grace, getting into the Word, being in church and so forth. These are things that can help you grow in grace and the knowledge of Christ.

But what the Lord really delights in, what he really delights in, is our thanksgiving, our giving thanks to him for who he is and for what he's done for us and what he is doing in my life and for how he is changing me and growing me and all of those things.

For what he's done in the past, what he's doing in the present, what he will do in the future, giving thanks. And not only thanksgiving, but he says,

I delight when you pay your vows to me. In other words, when you say you're going to do something, that you actually follow through and do it.

The Lord delights in that. And he says another thing he delights in is, he says, when you call upon me in the day of trouble.

When you express total dependence on the Lord and you come up against a hard thing, a difficult, challenging thing, you don't just try to grab the bull by the horns and wrestle it to the ground as if you can do everything, you can deliver yourself, that you can get yourself out of this trouble.

What the Lord delights in is when we've got this bull charging at us, this trouble, whatever it is, we call to him for help.

We cry out to him in the day of trouble. And he says, I'll deliver you and you'll glorify me.

What he wants is our lives to be lived in such a way that he is glorified through us and he is glorified through us, not so much in our religious practices of spiritual disciplines.

Those are helpful to us. But the way he is glorified is when we express total dependence upon him, we express great thanksgiving to him, and when we follow through on what we promised to him that we're going to do, these things delight the

Lord. So let's take that as a challenge today and let's ask ourselves, what are three things right this moment that I can stop and give thanks to the

Lord for? What are three things that I can give thanks to the Lord for? And what's the trouble you're facing today?

Will you call upon the Lord and ask him to deliver you from that trouble, express your dependence upon him?

Is there anything left undone that you've promised the Lord you would do? Think on these things.

So our Father and our God, we thank you for this challenge today, because how easily we can feel self -satisfied in just doing some spiritual disciplines and think, oh, this has to please you.

Let's think more deeply, Father. Help us to think more deeply and to delight in that which you delight in, we pray.

In Jesus' name and for his sake, amen. All right, listen, have a wonderful rest of your