Is It Sinful to Be Unhappy?
00:00:00.000 | [music]
00:00:04.000 | Last time we looked at joy. Is joy in God a choice that we make, or is joy in God a
00:00:11.400 | feeling that just sort of comes and goes? Monday we saw that joy in God is not a choice.
00:00:18.480 | It's not a choice, but a God-given, spontaneous experience of the beauty, worth, and greatness
00:00:25.240 | of God.
00:00:26.240 | That's what you said, Pastor John. Great episode. Love that response. Joy is a gift.
00:00:31.640 | It's a supernatural gift, a divine awakening to true beauty.
00:00:36.780 | And that leads to Dan's question today. Dan is in Wheaton, Illinois, and he writes this,
00:00:41.240 | "Pastor John, I have greatly appreciated your emphasis on joy in the Christian life.
00:00:45.240 | Indeed, the psalmist tells us to rejoice always. Paul describes himself as sorrowful, yet always
00:00:52.000 | rejoicing.
00:00:53.560 | As the Bible commands us to have joy in God, are we in sin to the degree that we lack joy?
00:01:03.300 | Or could our lack of joy sometimes be the result of sin, but not a sin in itself?"
00:01:11.720 | Whenever we're dealing with the emotional dimension of the Christian life, which is
00:01:16.960 | most of it, I think, a simple yes and no answer is seldom adequate. And I was thinking about
00:01:25.580 | why this is, and it might be helpful for me to just think out loud with Dan for a minute
00:01:31.660 | why endless qualifications sometimes seem to be necessary. One is that words that refer
00:01:39.840 | to emotions are so flexible because they carry meaning, but the meaning, the name of an emotion
00:01:49.840 | has to correspond with your experience of the emotion because that's the nature of emotions.
00:01:56.000 | And our experiences of emotions are so different, so the words, when we say them to each other,
00:02:02.460 | may not correspond to exactly the same thing. For example, if you've never experienced anger,
00:02:08.640 | and I use the word anger, it just won't carry meaning for you. Same thing would be pity,
00:02:15.440 | fear, guilt, lust, pride, greed, joy, admiration, hope, thankfulness, all of those, the hard
00:02:24.440 | words, the negative words and the positive words, they all refer to experiences that
00:02:28.400 | you may or may not have and that you might have very differently than someone else. So
00:02:34.560 | it's hard to give simple answers regarding emotions when people's meanings for the word
00:02:42.520 | corresponding to their experiences are so different. And another reason that I feel
00:02:49.040 | like I'm always making qualifications when I give answers regarding the emotional life
00:02:54.840 | of the Christian is that our responses to comments about emotions are so different.
00:03:04.720 | I might say something in answer to this question, and a sensitive person might feel like I'm
00:03:11.920 | pointing out a defect in them that sends them into a tailspin of despondency, while another
00:03:18.000 | person might hear the very same word and like water off a duck's back because they're not
00:03:23.840 | even touched by comments about their emotions at all. And so a person who tries to answer
00:03:29.160 | a question about emotions has to be so discerning if you're in a situation of who's listening,
00:03:38.280 | and of course I have zero control over that, and I hope that people take to heart this
00:03:43.920 | complexity and cut me some slack. So anyway, here's the simple answer, and then endless
00:03:50.680 | questions. Since the Bible commands us to rejoice always, I think it is sinful not to.
00:03:57.720 | There's my simple answer. Jesus commands us to rejoice even in the hardest circumstances.
00:04:03.720 | Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil
00:04:07.500 | against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad. So not just when it's easy, but
00:04:14.160 | when it's flat out seemingly impossible, do that. And Peter commands us to rejoice, 1
00:04:21.040 | Peter 4.13, rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings. And Paul commands us to rejoice,
00:04:27.000 | rejoice in the Lord always. And again I say, rejoice, Philippians 4.4. So I take it that
00:04:34.020 | Christ wants us at all times to rejoice in Him. It's a Christian duty. If we fall short
00:04:42.000 | of that duty, it's a sin. Now, there's my simple answer, and here come some qualifications,
00:04:47.560 | and these are so crucial. The Bible says, for example, weep with those who weep. In
00:04:54.440 | other words, compassion, empathy for others will modify at least the way you express your
00:05:03.040 | joy, if not the joy itself. There may be joy beneath your tears when you're weeping with
00:05:09.240 | those who weep, but you don't sing chipper songs to the grieving saint. And James 4,
00:05:15.600 | I just saw this for the first time in getting ready for this question, and it was very helpful
00:05:20.720 | for me to think about. James 4.9 says, sometimes we sin, be wretched and mourn and weep. Let
00:05:29.840 | your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Hmm. So what becomes of rejoicing
00:05:39.800 | at all times when you let your joy turn into gloom because you've been such a rat towards
00:05:47.000 | your employees that you need to repent to God and to them? So there are times, obviously
00:05:53.520 | from this text, when for the sake of recovered joy, fuller joy, we put away our cheerful
00:06:02.840 | demeanor and really experience a broken heart over our sin. Now, my guess is if Paul were
00:06:11.800 | having a conversation with James about this, I don't think they would wind up disagreeing.
00:06:16.880 | I don't think that ultimately contradicts Paul's command to rejoice always because at
00:06:23.160 | the bottom of our repenting, even in the very moment of our repenting, our repenting is
00:06:31.360 | owing to the fact that at the root of our being, we're totally convinced that God is
00:06:35.880 | all satisfying and we haven't acted like He was. And so there's this seed of joy in God
00:06:44.080 | that's even giving rise to my brokenheartedness that I haven't experienced it to the full
00:06:50.360 | the way I should. So that's my first qualification. Here's the second one. As soon as I say joylessness
00:06:57.800 | is a sin, I realize that the resistance to the command to rejoice may be unbelievably
00:07:04.480 | diverse. So here's a person who hears me say, or hears Paul say, "Rejoice always."
00:07:09.200 | That person might say, "Who do you think you are telling me to rejoice? Get out of
00:07:12.800 | my face." Now that's one kind of disobedience. Here's another one. A person may say, "I
00:07:18.640 | want to. I really want to, but I can't feel anything right now but the want to." And
00:07:25.880 | another person might say, "I do. I do rejoice, but it's so weak." Now, all those three
00:07:33.640 | people I think are falling short of rejoice always. And again, I say rejoice, but what
00:07:39.480 | a difference between the kinds of falling short. And here's my last one, my last qualification
00:07:46.360 | for why the simple answer just can't be left by itself. There are enormous differences
00:07:53.200 | in personality types. Eeyore, the gloomy, depressed, old gray donkey in Winnie the Pooh
00:08:01.720 | is a real personality. And Puddlegum in the Chronicles of Narnia is a real personality
00:08:09.560 | type and their experiences of joy are going to look so different from someone else's,
00:08:16.560 | especially on Sunday morning during worship. And here's the last and most important qualification
00:08:23.400 | of all, perhaps. It's not really a qualification, it's an encouragement. 1 Thessalonians 4
00:08:29.840 | says that the Thessalonians are walking in a way that pleases God. And then he adds,
00:08:40.160 | "Now, do so more and more." So, they can do better. They can do more. And yet they're
00:08:47.280 | pleasing God. In fact, Tony, I noticed in the whole batch of questions you just sent
00:08:51.880 | me, lots of people struggling with what looks to me like a kind of perfectionism and obsessiveness.
00:08:59.040 | This text here addresses every one of those questions, I think, because it gives us a
00:09:03.920 | paradigm to know we can please God while not being as good as we should be. They are pleasing
00:09:12.600 | God. "Now, do so more. Please Him more. Go on more. There's more that you can do. There
00:09:18.200 | are more things about the way you're living that could become more fully pleasing to God."
00:09:24.560 | Which means, and here's the massive encouragement, God has a huge capacity for sorting out the
00:09:32.560 | good fruit of our lives from the failings of our lives and finding delight in the good
00:09:41.800 | while being displeased with the bad and all the while never holding His children in contempt.
00:09:51.280 | I think a lot of us feel like, "If God's just pleased with me, He's just folding His arms
00:09:54.860 | and rolling His eyes and clucking His tongue. It's just fed up with me." That's not true.
00:09:59.840 | That's not the way He relates to His children. So, back to the beginning, yes, let's rejoice
00:10:06.420 | in the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice. And even in our shortcomings, there is reason
00:10:14.960 | to rejoice.
00:10:15.960 | Yes. Amen. Always good reasons to rejoice. Thank you, Pastor John, for this emotionally
00:10:20.480 | careful and pastoral response to Dan's question. And thanks for joining us today. If you want
00:10:25.760 | to ask Pastor John a question, email that question to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:10:31.720 | And as always, you can find all of our nearly 2,000 episodes in the archive at askpastorjohn.com.
00:10:38.400 | In the search bar this morning, I just typed in "joy," and 80 episodes popped up. So, lots
00:10:42.920 | of episodes to listen to if you want more on joy.
00:10:47.120 | Well, speaking of things that we haven't ever really talked about on the podcast, AI
00:10:52.480 | is the big news of 2023, artificial intelligence. So, what's Pastor John's first take on chat
00:10:59.200 | GPT? What does it mean for learning about divine realities? Can bots guide us into spiritual
00:11:06.440 | truth? We're going to find out together next time. I'm your host, Tony Reinke, Pastor John,
00:11:10.400 | and I will see you on Monday. Have a great weekend.
00:11:13.880 | [END]
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00:11:16.880 | Thank you.
00:11:21.880 | You