Delighting in What Is Not God
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Christian hedonism is about finding our joy in God
00:00:08.020 | through the person and work of Christ.
00:00:09.800 | And Pastor John, you rightly warn us
00:00:11.480 | against finding our joy in our joy,
00:00:13.900 | or loving God rather than loving God.
00:00:17.680 | We've talked about this in episodes 326 and 345.
00:00:20.460 | So how does this warning fit with the passages
00:00:22.480 | of the psalmist where he says that he finds delight
00:00:25.080 | in God's commandments and law?
00:00:27.720 | How is delight in God's written word,
00:00:29.880 | a delight in God himself?
00:00:32.120 | - Excellent question.
00:00:34.800 | Let me put those texts that were mentioned
00:00:37.240 | right in front of us.
00:00:38.680 | His delight is in the law of the Lord
00:00:41.520 | and on his law he meditates, that's Psalm 1.
00:00:43.940 | Psalm 19, the precepts of the Lord are rejoicing the heart.
00:00:49.560 | Psalm 119.16, I will delight in your statutes.
00:00:53.800 | And Psalm 119.11, your testimonies are my heritage forever
00:00:58.800 | for they are the joy of my heart.
00:01:02.800 | So from those texts, I would say clearly,
00:01:07.680 | it is a godly and good thing to feel delight in God's word.
00:01:12.680 | So if I've said anything that contradicts that,
00:01:16.840 | like I don't want people to be rejoicing in God's word,
00:01:20.880 | then I have misspoken.
00:01:22.860 | Regardless of whatever Piper says, that's clear.
00:01:26.520 | So let me clarify my view.
00:01:29.320 | I have never intended to say joy in anything but God is sin.
00:01:34.320 | I have always meant to say having your greatest joy,
00:01:41.100 | your ultimate joy in anything but God is sin, it's idolatry.
00:01:46.100 | And having any joy in anything that is not God,
00:01:51.760 | that fails to be for God's sake is sin.
00:01:55.500 | In other words, you can have joy in something
00:01:57.540 | that's not God if it is for God's sake
00:01:59.980 | and have it not be sin.
00:02:02.380 | So maybe the question that would be helpful to ask
00:02:05.500 | is what does that mean?
00:02:07.180 | Joy in something created for the sake of the creator.
00:02:12.180 | And here's a couple of some pointers
00:02:15.260 | that I think help us just experience joy in non-God
00:02:21.460 | for the sake of God biblically.
00:02:24.760 | Psalm 43 verse four,
00:02:27.380 | "I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy."
00:02:32.380 | Now, literally in the Hebrew, God my exceeding joy is,
00:02:38.440 | I will go to the altar of God, to God the joy of my joy.
00:02:43.440 | That's really clear in Hebrew.
00:02:47.860 | This points to the way that we can have joy in other things
00:02:52.860 | because if God is the joy of our joy,
00:02:59.160 | then the joy we're having in his word, say,
00:03:04.240 | is not idolatrous.
00:03:06.500 | If God is the joy of our joy,
00:03:09.100 | if at the heart of our joy in something God made
00:03:12.700 | is what we are tasting and seeing of God himself.
00:03:18.160 | In the joy that we experience at God's altar
00:03:21.560 | or Christ's cross or God's word,
00:03:24.360 | there's an experience of God.
00:03:26.680 | That's what's implied there.
00:03:27.880 | God is the joy of my joy.
00:03:29.360 | These joys come from God.
00:03:31.800 | They are something of God's own goodness.
00:03:35.320 | And when we taste them, we are tasting something of God.
00:03:39.400 | He's the sweetness of all our joys.
00:03:43.200 | If you taste honey and you enjoy honey,
00:03:46.560 | that honey was made sweet for you by God.
00:03:50.120 | Therefore, it must be something of God.
00:03:52.720 | And if you don't taste God in that,
00:03:55.820 | then you're starting to move towards idolatry
00:03:58.120 | in your very eating of a peanut butter honey sandwich.
00:04:01.960 | Here's another pointer from Psalm 40, verse 16.
00:04:05.120 | May those who love your salvation say continually,
00:04:09.360 | great is the Lord.
00:04:12.300 | Well, those who love your salvation,
00:04:13.820 | don't just say great is your salvation.
00:04:16.200 | They say great is the Lord.
00:04:18.000 | In other words, the joy of our salvation
00:04:21.440 | is the joy in what it reveals about the Lord
00:04:25.080 | and the joy that it brings in taking us to the Lord.
00:04:30.080 | That's what salvation is.
00:04:31.440 | So when I say I love the salvation of God,
00:04:34.960 | I mean, I love the God of salvation
00:04:37.840 | 'cause he wrought it and it's taking me to him
00:04:41.080 | and he's the ultimate joy that I have.
00:04:44.080 | One more from 1 Thessalonians 2, 19.
00:04:48.040 | For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting
00:04:52.320 | before the Lord Jesus said he's coming?
00:04:54.020 | Is it not you, Thessalonians?
00:04:56.960 | So Paul is saying my joy, my crown,
00:05:00.160 | my boasting before the Lord is the people
00:05:04.080 | that God has used me to save.
00:05:07.000 | He doesn't mean that the Lord won't be his boast
00:05:11.880 | or his joy or his crown.
00:05:14.040 | He said, let him who boasts boast in the Lord.
00:05:17.240 | The Lord will be his joy and his crown.
00:05:20.440 | What he's saying is before the Lord,
00:05:23.920 | the Thessalonians will be the ground
00:05:26.640 | and evidence of God's mighty grace in his life,
00:05:31.540 | using him to bring them out of darkness into light.
00:05:34.440 | The point is not to compare the Thessalonians with the Lord,
00:05:38.920 | but to compare them with lesser evidences
00:05:41.760 | of God's power in his life.
00:05:43.960 | As I look at my life and I think what will be the token
00:05:47.280 | or the evidence of my joy and my crown
00:05:50.900 | and my boasting before the Lord?
00:05:52.480 | It's gonna be you.
00:05:54.520 | You are the trophy of the grace that poured through my life
00:05:59.300 | as I trusted in the Lord.
00:06:01.740 | So my answer to the question is that Christians delight
00:06:05.940 | in many things that are not God.
00:06:08.920 | So yes, we delight in many things that are not God.
00:06:13.080 | We delight in God's word, we delight in God's works,
00:06:15.680 | we delight in God's people, we delight in the gift of food
00:06:18.420 | and marriage and friends,
00:06:19.860 | but we do not delight most in these.
00:06:26.020 | We delight most in God.
00:06:28.100 | Paul said, I count everything as loss
00:06:31.520 | because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus,
00:06:34.880 | my Lord, compared to Christ, all these things
00:06:37.180 | in which we might boast or delight are as nothing.
00:06:41.880 | And all our delight ultimately resides in God.
00:06:46.040 | He's the joy of all our joys.
00:06:50.480 | There's something of God in every holy joy
00:06:54.920 | because God created the joy and he gives us the joy
00:06:59.680 | to show something of himself.
00:07:01.660 | - Thank you, Pastor John.
00:07:03.880 | This reminds me of an old episode we recorded,
00:07:06.080 | one of the early ones titled,
00:07:07.360 | How Do I Know If I Love the Gifts More Than the Giver?
00:07:10.920 | That's episode number 55.
00:07:12.400 | You can check that out in the podcast archive,
00:07:14.120 | most easily found by using the free app
00:07:16.120 | for the iPhone and the iPad.
00:07:18.200 | Well, a podcast listener writes in to confess,
00:07:20.400 | I want sin to bother me more.
00:07:22.900 | How can I reclaim my heart when it seems to be so calloused?
00:07:26.960 | That's tomorrow.
00:07:27.800 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:07:28.680 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:07:31.240 | (upbeat music)
00:07:33.820 | (upbeat music)
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