Drug Users and Christian Hedonists — Aren’t Both Just Chasing the Next High?
00:00:00.000 | Well, isn't a drug user and a God-were joy seeker just two different kinds of junkies
00:00:09.880 | both seeking after a new high, a new spike in an experience for which they cannot sustain
00:00:15.120 | beyond a fleeting moment?
00:00:16.960 | Well, now there's an interesting question and it comes to us from a listener named Brian.
00:00:21.720 | "Hello Pastor John, I live in Greenville, not far from where you grew up.
00:00:25.120 | My question is one I've wrestled with for a long time.
00:00:27.960 | How is there not any difference between 1) returning to substances like drugs, alcohol,
00:00:33.080 | and sex once the fulfillment of those things has withered away, and 2) returning to Jesus
00:00:37.640 | once His joy has withered away in us?
00:00:40.680 | It appears as if both things, substances on one hand and communion with Christ on the
00:00:44.800 | other, offer effects that then wear off over time, neither permanently fulfill, both call
00:00:50.400 | us back for another dose or hit.
00:00:53.760 | How would you respond to this apparent parallel?
00:00:56.260 | Is it right or wrong?"
00:00:58.720 | It's wrong.
00:01:00.240 | It's wrong.
00:01:01.240 | It's wrong in all the ways that ultimately matter.
00:01:04.960 | Now of course, Brian, there is a surface parallel that you're pointing out.
00:01:11.760 | It's true that the intensity of our pleasure in physical experiences and the intensity
00:01:20.340 | of our pleasure in spiritual experience of fellowship with Jesus both rise and fall.
00:01:28.000 | There's a parallel.
00:01:29.540 | Both rise and fall.
00:01:30.740 | Pleasures go up, pleasures go down in drugs and in relation to Jesus.
00:01:39.280 | In this life, while we are still in this body and while indwelling sin remains a reality,
00:01:45.900 | there will be, till we die, a conflict between flesh and spirit, Satan and God, old man that
00:01:53.280 | needs to be reckoned dead, and new man in Christ.
00:01:56.400 | So there is a superficial parallel between the experience of Christ and our experience
00:02:03.460 | of physical pleasure.
00:02:05.440 | They both rise and fall.
00:02:07.320 | But in spite of that superficial parallel, there are at least four profound differences
00:02:16.140 | between our communion with Christ and all of his pleasures and our physical high from
00:02:22.900 | substances.
00:02:24.200 | Number one, Jesus Christ is a living, eternal, supernatural, divine, morally beautiful person.
00:02:33.460 | We love him.
00:02:34.460 | He's not a thing.
00:02:36.620 | He's not a substance.
00:02:38.620 | There is an infinite difference between encountering a person and the physical material impersonal
00:02:44.580 | effect of drugs.
00:02:46.580 | And there's an infinite difference between encountering a merely human person and encountering
00:02:51.520 | a divine person, the Son of God.
00:02:54.040 | When Jesus calls us, he calls us to himself, not to a generic experience that can be duplicated
00:03:04.300 | with substances.
00:03:05.820 | He calls us not into a physical reaction to substance, but into a personal relationship
00:03:13.740 | with himself.
00:03:15.140 | Jesus said, "I am the bread of life.
00:03:18.060 | I am the bread of life.
00:03:20.460 | Whoever comes to me shall not hunger.
00:03:23.860 | Whoever believes in me shall never thirst."
00:03:28.540 | He is the bread.
00:03:29.820 | He is the water.
00:03:31.860 | We're not comparing substance and substance.
00:03:35.720 | We are comparing a created substance with the person who created it.
00:03:40.580 | That's the first difference—massive, infinite.
00:03:43.540 | Number two, the second difference in the parallel is that the experience itself is qualitatively
00:03:51.320 | different between the physical and psychological effects of a drug on the one hand and the
00:03:56.700 | spiritual effects of communion with Christ on the other.
00:04:00.180 | Paul said, "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
00:04:07.280 | The old has passed away.
00:04:09.840 | Behold, the new creation has come."
00:04:15.600 | 2 Corinthians 5:17.
00:04:17.600 | When you use drugs, you are not a new creation.
00:04:21.780 | You're not born again by using drugs.
00:04:24.640 | You do not have a new nature by using drugs.
00:04:28.240 | When you are united to Christ by faith, you become a new kind of being forever and ever
00:04:36.960 | and ever.
00:04:38.140 | And your experiences are qualitatively different.
00:04:43.080 | You're not yet perfect, but you are being renewed.
00:04:46.760 | Ephesians 4:23, "You are being renewed in the spirit of your mind."
00:04:52.900 | Your mind is now spiritually, qualitatively doing a different thing.
00:04:58.800 | Number three, the third difference between the experience of a drug and the experience
00:05:06.520 | of communion with Christ is that the reason we keep returning to Christ is because he
00:05:15.900 | himself, as a person who loves us, has chosen to make sure that we return.
00:05:25.420 | We're not being sucked back by addiction.
00:05:28.980 | We are being drawn back by a Savior.
00:05:32.820 | He has laid hold of us and made us his own forever.
00:05:38.580 | He does not bring us back mechanically, but personally.
00:05:42.540 | Listen to this, one of my favorite verses, Philippians 3:12, "Not that I have already
00:05:47.260 | obtained this or am already perfect, I press on to make it my own."
00:05:52.500 | You could paraphrase that.
00:05:53.500 | I press into Jesus again and again.
00:05:56.020 | I press back in again and again because Christ Jesus has made me his own.
00:06:05.220 | He has personally owned me, bought me.
00:06:08.220 | When he sees me drifting away, becoming lukewarm, he draws me back because he's made me his
00:06:14.460 | own.
00:06:15.460 | And here's number four.
00:06:16.920 | The more we are brought to him by his personally compelling beauty, the more we become like
00:06:25.620 | what he created us to be.
00:06:27.240 | We are being transformed from one degree of glory to the next by coming back to Jesus
00:06:33.020 | and seeing him again and again and again until our fellowship is totally unbroken when he
00:06:39.140 | comes or when we go.
00:06:42.380 | The more we return to him, the more we fully become whole and rational and free and joyful.
00:06:53.820 | But the more we return to substances, the more we become broken, irrational, enslaved,
00:07:00.780 | and miserable.
00:07:02.980 | In other words, coming to Jesus makes us more alive, more real, more able to put ourselves
00:07:10.940 | resourcefully at the disposal of others for their everlasting good.
00:07:16.180 | John 7, 37, "The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water,
00:07:22.220 | welling up to eternal life."
00:07:24.220 | Or John—oh, that was John 4, 14.
00:07:27.180 | Here's John 7.
00:07:28.620 | "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.
00:07:32.700 | Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of
00:07:37.540 | living water."
00:07:38.540 | In other words, drinking from Jesus doesn't draw us into ourselves and make our own private
00:07:47.260 | substance experience.
00:07:49.580 | It fills us with overflowing, spring-like, fountain-like love for others and capacities,
00:07:59.820 | new capacities to love others.
00:08:02.380 | And then maybe I should add one more fifth difference.
00:08:07.620 | The fact that there is a superficial parallel between the ups and downs of experiencing
00:08:14.260 | Jesus and the ups and downs of experiencing drugs, the fact that there's that superficial
00:08:19.820 | similarity, parallel, may mean something very different than that the experiences are leading
00:08:27.560 | to the same outcome.
00:08:29.620 | They aren't.
00:08:31.060 | Suppose you suddenly experience a spiking fever which fades slightly and then spikes
00:08:36.700 | again and then fades slightly and then spikes again, and you suddenly realize because of
00:08:42.140 | the epidemic in the town, you've got a fatal disease.
00:08:46.580 | You are going to die.
00:08:48.940 | That's what happens to everybody.
00:08:50.980 | Spike, fade, spike, fade, spike, fade, die.
00:08:55.540 | This spiking is a sure sign you're a goner.
00:09:00.220 | Then the medical team arrives, sent by some merciful Red Cross, and they've got an antibiotic,
00:09:08.820 | and it works.
00:09:09.820 | It always works.
00:09:11.940 | And they give it to you.
00:09:13.740 | And they tell you, "Now, you're going to notice tomorrow that the fever will rise, and then
00:09:20.420 | it will fall, and then it will rise again a little less high, then it will fall, and
00:09:25.420 | then it will rise, and then it will fall, and then it will go away.
00:09:31.100 | You'll become better.
00:09:33.220 | When it falls, you'll become better, even though the return of the fever tomorrow several
00:09:39.880 | times will make you think you're in the same position you were before, and you're not.
00:09:45.300 | That's a superficial parallel.
00:09:48.380 | It's not where you're going.
00:09:50.980 | That's the way antibiotics work.
00:09:53.020 | You're going to be well."
00:09:55.300 | The same similarity with the spiking and falling of pleasure in drugs and the spiking and falling
00:10:03.700 | of pleasure in Christ.
00:10:06.420 | The ups and downs have a totally different meaning.
00:10:11.940 | You're on your way to healing in Christ.
00:10:15.540 | So it is the ups and downs of our experience in Christ that mean we are on the way to an
00:10:24.520 | everlasting, uninterrupted joy.
00:10:27.620 | Amen.
00:10:28.620 | Yes, thank you, Pastor John.
00:10:30.900 | And this is our 48th episode on the theme of joy.
00:10:34.980 | We talk a lot about joy because it's at the very heart of what we do at Desiring God.
00:10:39.340 | You can find all of those past episodes in our archive at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:10:45.300 | There you can explore all of our now 1,200 past episodes.
00:10:48.780 | You can scan through a list of our most popular episodes all time, which is a list that's
00:10:52.780 | updated every single day.
00:10:54.220 | And you can read full transcripts of episodes, even send us a question of your own.
00:10:58.020 | Again, that's at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:10:59.020 | And of course, you can get new episodes delivered to you three times per week.
00:11:05.340 | Subscribe to Ask Pastor John on your favorite podcast player or follow along with us in
00:11:10.140 | YouTube.
00:11:11.140 | Well, every penny we own is God's money.
00:11:15.900 | And that profound reality raises all sorts of questions about stewardship.
00:11:19.340 | So how do we live as though our money is all his?
00:11:21.900 | It's a great question coming up on Monday.
00:11:24.820 | I'm your host, Tony Ranke.
00:11:25.820 | We'll see you on the other side of the weekend.
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