The Joy of Calvinism and the Fight for Joy
00:00:00.000 | Two of your major themes, Pastor John, are God's sovereignty and the centrality of
00:00:08.400 | joy in God, and last time in episode 116, we talked about the joy of Calvinism and
00:00:15.200 | God's joy as the foundation of our joy. But you wanted a second half to explain
00:00:20.480 | how Christian hedonism and Calvinism connect, so explain this for us.
00:00:25.040 | Tony, last time when you posed this question to me about sovereignty of God
00:00:30.720 | and joy, I said that God's joy in the fellowship of the Trinity is the
00:00:36.000 | foundation of His sovereignty and the overflow of His sovereignty as God
00:00:40.620 | creates the world to share in the joy that He has in Him. So now the
00:00:47.720 | question becomes more specifically, in this world there is so much sorrow. We
00:00:58.560 | are disappointed again and again. We're discouraged, we suffer, we fail, we're
00:01:04.000 | assaulted, we get sick, we die. Day after day, it seems to me, I mean, I feel that
00:01:10.320 | the world is attacking our joy in God, our family's joy in God, our church's
00:01:17.540 | joy in God, our nation's joy. We're constantly being assailed by things that
00:01:23.240 | threaten our joy, and the question is, how does God's sovereignty work to help us
00:01:30.320 | fight for joy in God, because joy in God is the reason we're made, and it's what
00:01:35.200 | glorifies God. And the answer comes in Romans 8 28 and 8 32 and Genesis 50
00:01:48.660 | verse 20. When I read, "Rejoice always," in 1 Thessalonians 5 16, I say to God, "Oh
00:01:56.060 | God, do you mean always? Really?" And I think his answer is, "Yes, but not a
00:02:05.100 | superficial smiley face, praise God anyhow, but rather with a 2nd Corinthians 6 10
00:02:11.820 | kind of answer, sorrowful yet always rejoicing, that there is a joy in God
00:02:18.260 | that is constant even in the midst of sorrow, in loss, and the reason that can
00:02:28.800 | be is because God in Christ has committed himself to work everything
00:02:36.060 | together for our good." Romans 8 28. And Romans 8 32 shows that Christ, in his
00:02:43.200 | dying for us and rising, is the ground of Romans 8 28. "He who did not spare his
00:02:49.060 | own Son, but gave him up for us all, will he not with him give us all things that
00:02:55.020 | he's..." Won't he work everything together for our good? So because Christ came and
00:03:00.460 | identified with us, bore our suffering, bore our sin, rose from the dead
00:03:05.540 | triumphant, took away our guilt, purchased for us all the promises of God,
00:03:10.420 | therefore God is no longer angry at us, but his sovereignty serves entirely his
00:03:17.660 | mercy toward us, and thus he is working all of our calamities and all of our
00:03:22.340 | good times together for our good, so that written over all the experiences of our
00:03:30.580 | life is Genesis 50 verse 20. "They meant it for evil, the devil meant it for evil,
00:03:38.660 | my enemies meant it for evil, but God meant it for good." And I underline that
00:03:45.140 | word "meant it." God meant it for good. So this meaning of God, this intention of
00:03:50.700 | God, this purpose of God in all of our hardships is the unshakable foundation
00:03:57.100 | for my joy. So if somebody were to ask me, "How does God's sovereignty right now in
00:04:01.900 | the midst of your loss of your mom or your loss of your granddaughter or this
00:04:05.620 | crisis in your church or this cancer that you had to walk through a few years
00:04:09.620 | ago, in that very moment how does the sovereignty of God help?" I would say, "God
00:04:15.660 | means this." Not just uses. Lots of people say God's playing catch-up ball all the
00:04:21.900 | time, like he finds things he didn't know were gonna happen, he says, "Oh, well I can
00:04:25.060 | make something of that." No, no, no, no. That's not what the Bible says. God meant
00:04:28.900 | it for good. So this cancer is coming from him, this loss is coming from him,
00:04:34.820 | this pain is coming from him, and he means it, he intends it, he purposes it
00:04:39.180 | for my good. And I know it's for my good because Christ bought it and he says
00:04:44.460 | that everything's gonna work together for my good. The older...when I was thinking
00:04:51.260 | about this, Tony, I just thought my mind situation here, and I'm 67, and this is
00:04:56.100 | what came to my mind. The older I get, the more thankful I become for God's
00:05:03.980 | sovereign keeping power. Jude 124, a lot of people don't don't see this when they
00:05:11.980 | read it, it says, "Now to him who is able," now that word "able," dunitas, means
00:05:18.020 | powerful. You could say sovereignly powerful, sovereignly able. God is
00:05:23.700 | sovereignly committed and able to keep John Piper from stumbling and to present
00:05:30.500 | him blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy. So if you ask me
00:05:37.100 | then, "How does the sovereignty of God relate to my joy?" That verse says, "God's
00:05:41.900 | sovereign power and pledge to keep me from making shipwreck of my faith is
00:05:48.500 | intended to lead me now and in the end to great joy." And my love for my enemy, or
00:05:57.940 | people I just have a hard time with, flows out of this joy. Loving people and
00:06:04.620 | worshiping God. Romans 12, "Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, don't
00:06:09.860 | return evil for evil, don't avenge yourselves." Why? Because you can hand it
00:06:15.180 | over to God. Why? Because vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. In other
00:06:20.020 | words, God's sovereignty has such a control over this world that if I think
00:06:24.780 | my enemy is getting the upper hand and that's tending to make me angry or
00:06:29.340 | bitter or vengeful, I must remember, "No, no, no, no. God is sovereign. Nobody gets
00:06:34.860 | away with anything. All accounts will be settled either on the cross if they
00:06:39.380 | repent or in hell if they don't." And so you can love them, you can love your
00:06:45.180 | enemy, you can feed him. If your enemy's hungry, feed him. If he's thirsty, give
00:06:49.940 | him something to drink. You'll heat burning coals on his head. Don't be
00:06:52.740 | overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. So the sovereignty of God maintains
00:06:58.700 | my joy, not just for me, Tony, but for my enemy and for the world and for my
00:07:03.820 | ministry in the world to keep on going when it looks like the world is
00:07:08.020 | just spinning out of control in sin and corruption. It's not. God is sovereign. All
00:07:13.700 | accounts will be settled, and that enables me then just to keep on loving.
00:07:18.580 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. If you have a
00:07:21.960 | question, please email those to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:07:25.820 | At DesiringGod.org you'll find thousands of other free resources from
00:07:29.380 | John Piper. I'm your host Tony Reinke, thanks for listening.
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