His delight is in the law of the Lord and in His law doth He meditate day and night.” Psalm 1:2 KJV

But his delight is in the law of the LORD, And in His law he meditates day and night.” Psalm 1:2 NASB

I delight to do Thy will, O My God. Yea, Thy law is within My heart” Psalm 40:8 KJV

I delight to do Your will, O my God; Your Law is within my heart.” Psalm 40:8 NASB

The saints that are in the earth, and to the excellent in whom is all My delight” Psalm 16:3 KJV

As for the saints who are in the earth, They are the majestic ones in whom is all my delight.” Psalm16:3 NASB

Numerous passages of Scripture give us insights into the heart of the Lord Jesus. We see His desire to glorify His Father and His heart’s devotion to His Father in John 14:31. Hebrews 12 reveals to us His anticipation of joy which was set before Him. His was no mere dutiful service, no onerous task undertaken with a sense of obligation. In this perfect Man, this profitable Servant, God finally found a Man Who brought Him pleasure in both His manner and motivation.

It is especially to the Psalms that we turn to learn something of His heart and His feelings. The three Psalms cited above remind us of what brought delight to His heart. The words of Psalm 1, the portrait of the “Blessed Man,” relate to us His delight in the Word of God. It is a puzzle beyond this writer’s ability to explain that He Who is the Word, should meditate on that Word day and night. The Word of God never left His mind. That Word expressed all that His Father is; as such it brought Him delight to dwell on its truth and to fill His mind with its precepts.

In Psalm 40, the spotlight changes. Here are words which He uttered on coming into the world. He did not come with unbounded optimism over the success of His mission. He was not beguiled with hopes of popularity and a favourable reception. He came with full knowledge of the will He had come to fulfill. As part of the Godhead, He had been privy to the eternal counsels which had formulated the great plan of salvation (I speak as a limited human to other humans, in employing these word pictures). And yet, knowing all that the will of God would entail, He came willingly and with joy in His heart. His delight was to accomplish the will of God with all the suffering, shame, and reproach it would entail. Psalm 40 pictures to us the Burnt Offering aspect of His death; that aspect involved the willing intelligent sacrifice of self for the pleasure of God.

But it is Psalm 16 which should prostrate us further in worship. We can understand His delight in the Word of God and in the will of God; there is a moral correspondence inherent in the will and Word of God with His person.

But how are we to understand that His delight was with the sons of men? That would be you and I, sinners, rebels against the God of heaven. It is we who assaulted the throne of God and in our enmity would metaphorically dethrone God and enthrone self. His delights are with redeemed sinners, once enemies, but now brought near by His blood. He finds joy in us, delight in having us for Himself.

Dear fellow believer, today, this moment as you are reading this, be assured that He finds delight in you. Despite our failures, limitations, and slowness to appreciate all that grace has done, He still finds pleasure in us. He does not consider His “investment” at Calvary a poor “bargain.” He has no regrets despite how we have turned out. His delights are with the “excellent of all the earth.”

Consider:

Do you think that Isa 53:11 expresses a similar thought? “He shall see of the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied?”