The Greatest Reoccurring Enemy to Christians
Peculiarly, Happily Odd
The Christian Life is one of superior tastes, better sights, and higher fears. To the worldly eye, Christians look like the Hollywood version (which is the wrong understanding) of the Puritans: miserable, bland, boring and dull creatures living under a list of do’s and don’t’s.
But as usual, the Bible presents the Christian as one who is happy! A happy life is a holy life unto Christ.
Christians are the ones who see and daily enjoy far superior pleasures than this world can offer; and in doing so, they will act in a way that happifies them the most.
Christians are peculiarly and happily odd to the world. It may cost them the temporal gazes of worldly approval but we do so looking forward to the thunderous joy of “Well done, good and faithful servant!”
Continually Joyful
Psalm 34:1-3, ESV, starts off with these words, “I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul makes its boast in the Lord; let the humble hear and be glad. Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together!”
This psalmist displays his joy in the Lord six times in three verses.
Then he unpacks the Lord’s power in his life: he sought the Lord in trouble and he was delivered (v.4, 6, 7). Every deliverance from the Lord we experience in this life may not always be immediate, but it will be definite.
God will deliver His people: either now and forever, or then forever. In the bitterness we know that God is working all things according to the counsel of His will (Ephesians 1:11) and in the sweetness we get a glimpse of the coming joy.
Because of this promise, we are able to sing and bless the Lord at all times continually.
Tasting and Seeing
The Christian’s greatest reoccurring enemy in this life is indwelling sin; the sin that still is at war with their body of flesh (Galatians 5:17). How do we find ourselves delivered from our sinfulness in the everyday life?
Psalm 34:8, ESV, exclaims the beauty of superior pleasure: “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!” When sin tempts and attempts to take, we remember that the Lord is good. He is good and nothing else. He is satsifying. He is a fountain of joy and pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11).
Nothing on earth can be offered in comparison with the happiness found in obedience to Christ.
We must rather fear the Lord than fear man or anything else. To fear the Lord is helpfully to be understood as desiring the smile of God more than the frown of man, and seeing the frown of God as more moving than the smile of man (a paraphrase of William Perkins).
Psalm 34:9, ESV, says, “Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack!” In this life if we find that we fear the Lord we will lack nothing (v.10).
The glory of God in the face of Christ is better than all worldly pleasures, sinful lusts, and devilish temptations of a thousand worlds.
“I say to the Lord, ‘You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you,'” Psalm 16:2, ESV.
