Living the Mystery of Joy in Suffering

00:00:00.000 | In the fall of 2012, Bethlehem Baptist Church hosted a very powerful and memorable conference

00:00:10.400 | on disability.

00:00:11.980 | It was titled "The Works of God Conference – God's Good Design in Disability."

00:00:17.700 | The entire event was God-centered and inspiring and faith-building.

00:00:21.500 | I encourage you to watch it all.

00:00:23.640 | But in that conference, there was one particular bit from John Piper's contribution that

00:00:27.140 | really stood out to a podcast listener who sent us the clip to feature here on APJ.

00:00:32.620 | And here in this section, Pastor John is applying the testimony of the Apostle Paul when Paul

00:00:38.120 | says of his life that he was "sorrowful, yet always rejoicing."

00:00:42.740 | 2 Corinthians 6.10.

00:00:45.340 | Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.

00:00:48.340 | It's a paradox and a miracle and a mystery, and it needs to be applied to our lives as

00:00:53.380 | Pastor John does here.

00:00:55.340 | I've got a concluding statement and five brief applications.

00:01:01.540 | The conclusion goes like this.

00:01:03.380 | God is so sovereign over the disasters and the disappointments of our lives that he is

00:01:09.980 | able to make every one of them serve our everlasting joy.

00:01:14.900 | He is so sovereign over all the disasters, all the disappointments of our lives, that

00:01:19.940 | he is able to take all of them and make all of them serve our everlasting joy.

00:01:27.700 | This sovereign grace is the ground of your joy in sorrows.

00:01:34.420 | Not after sorrows, but in the sorrows of deep disappointment.

00:01:43.300 | So the Christian hedonist does not merely pursue joy after sorrow.

00:01:49.360 | He pursues joy in sorrow, in disappointment.

00:01:54.320 | So the watchword of your life then becomes sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.

00:02:01.420 | Here are five implications or applications of this.

00:02:04.820 | And it really is quite profound what happens in a church when this takes hold and what

00:02:08.980 | happens in you, your family.

00:02:10.580 | But I'll give you five.

00:02:11.580 | Here we go.

00:02:12.580 | Number one, if you experience this paradox of emotions, sorrowful, yet always rejoicing,

00:02:19.340 | you will never have to pretend again.

00:02:24.060 | Your sorrow will be real.

00:02:26.780 | Your joy will be real.

00:02:28.920 | You won't ever have to be ashamed of saying, "I am very sad," because your sadness will

00:02:40.380 | not contradict or exclude being very glad.

00:02:47.740 | That's number one.

00:02:49.940 | Number two, if you experience this paradox of emotions, sorrowful, yet always rejoicing,

00:02:57.100 | you will be able to bear the weight of sorrow that is inevitable in this world of sin and

00:03:05.260 | brokenness.

00:03:08.860 | The joy you know in the very moment of heavy sorrow will keep the sorrow from crushing

00:03:17.700 | you.

00:03:20.700 | It doesn't make the sorrow less weighty.

00:03:27.540 | By strength, it makes the sorrow less destructive.

00:03:33.760 | So the second one is, this experience, without minimizing the sorrow, prevents it from destroying

00:03:41.500 | you.

00:03:42.500 | Number three, if you experience this paradox of emotions, sorrowful, yet always rejoicing,

00:03:50.820 | your sorrow will not ruin the joy of others, and your joy will not offend the sorrow of

00:04:00.180 | others.

00:04:01.180 | This is delicate.

00:04:03.740 | This is the way we want to be, right?

00:04:04.980 | You want to walk through life in and out of relationships that are either sorrowing or

00:04:11.580 | rejoicing, and you don't want to ruin them.

00:04:13.860 | You don't want to hurt anyone.

00:04:16.260 | You don't want to offend the sorrow.

00:04:17.900 | You don't want to rain on the party.

00:04:20.880 | Your joy will be deep with its roots in the springs of God's grace, the very same grace

00:04:29.820 | that sorrowing souls need.

00:04:33.660 | Your joy will be rooted down in grace, and it will understand grace as what people need,

00:04:41.820 | and you'll have discernment as to how to bless them.

00:04:45.140 | Your sorrow will not be morose, gloomy, self-pitying.

00:04:50.660 | I'm speaking to myself mainly here.

00:04:53.820 | This is my battle.

00:04:56.500 | I am defending sorrow in this message.

00:04:58.620 | I'm not defending moroseness.

00:05:00.940 | I'm not defending gloominess.

00:05:02.900 | I'm not defending self-pity.

00:05:04.660 | I'm hating those in myself.

00:05:07.820 | This sorrow that you have will have real love in it, and love cares for the good of others

00:05:13.220 | so that you don't ruin their party.

00:05:16.580 | You may feel, see, I just think there's a huge amount of selfishness in sorrow that

00:05:22.160 | walks into a happy room and says, "You all wouldn't be happy if you knew what I knew

00:05:26.220 | about me."

00:05:29.020 | And you just ruin it.

00:05:30.060 | You just spread your gloominess everywhere.

00:05:32.940 | You're like, "What, you're the center of the universe here?

00:05:35.460 | Get a life."

00:05:37.180 | They don't need to know you.

00:05:39.200 | You don't have to ruin this party.

00:05:41.780 | Jesus can sustain you for an hour tonight.

00:05:45.700 | He can put a smile on your face.

00:05:48.020 | He can have you play some of the games, and you can go home and cry some more.

00:05:53.020 | You think that's not hypocrisy?

00:05:56.100 | That's love.

00:05:58.900 | Because it's different.

00:06:00.060 | The sorrow that is being sustained by interpenetrated, simultaneous joy is of a different kind than

00:06:07.820 | worldly sorrow.

00:06:09.500 | Worldly sorrow has so much self in it, so much selfishness in it.

00:06:13.780 | And godly sorrow is real sorrow, but it's just been changed, profoundly changed by this

00:06:21.140 | underpinning of peace and contentment and satisfaction and joy and a sovereign God,

00:06:28.580 | so that when you walk in each situation, you walk into a broken situation, and your sorrow

00:06:35.100 | enables you to sweetly empathize, and you walk into a happy situation, and your joy

00:06:40.220 | rises to enable you to be a part of it.

00:06:45.700 | People will watch over the long haul.

00:06:47.580 | They won't miss your pain if you're real.

00:06:51.540 | If you're walking in a church's life, and you're just living a normal life, week in

00:06:55.980 | and week out, they'll know your situation, and they will love you for not raining on

00:07:00.980 | the party and not being glib and silly at the funeral.

00:07:06.540 | Number four, if you experience this paradox of emotions, sorrowful yet always rejoicing,

00:07:13.860 | the ministries of your church, from the worship service to the youth group to the ministry

00:07:21.780 | of disability, will be free from silliness and trifling, and will have the aroma of Christ

00:07:30.580 | with his wonderful paradoxes, the aroma of Christ who wept over Jerusalem like this.

00:07:40.180 | Would that you knew the day of peace, but now it is hidden from your eyes, Luke 19,

00:07:49.380 | verse 1, and yet rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven

00:07:56.620 | and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed

00:08:00.780 | them to little children."

00:08:03.820 | He wept, and he rejoiced over the same city because of the same condition.

00:08:12.460 | Strange Savior.

00:08:14.100 | We need people like that in the world who are inexplicable in worldly categories.

00:08:20.480 | We need church services that people walk into and there is joy here, but it's quite serious,

00:08:27.140 | but the serious is not heavy.

00:08:28.580 | It's that, "I can't figure this out here.

00:08:31.700 | This is different."

00:08:32.700 | And many, many thousands of our churches are throwing this away in the name of being cute

00:08:37.580 | or clever or slapstick or like the latest TV or show some movies or anything to make

00:08:43.620 | it feel something that the people already know.

00:08:46.380 | You don't want them to know.

00:08:48.460 | You want them to be stunned.

00:08:51.460 | And so God had showed up from another world and created something new on planet earth,

00:08:57.260 | not the latest movie or the latest comedy or the latest talk show host.

00:09:03.180 | Why would you want to have the people feel at home with that?

00:09:07.660 | You want them to taste something so stunningly strange.

00:09:12.460 | So that's what I'm trying to do is just talk about the strangeness of Christian life.

00:09:17.620 | Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.

00:09:19.780 | What does that feel like on Sunday morning?

00:09:22.500 | What's a youth ministry feel like?

00:09:25.180 | What does a disability ministry feel like?

00:09:31.020 | That paradox, that strange miracle has taken hold.

00:09:38.140 | The spirit that will pervade your church will be joyful seriousness and serious joyfulness.

00:09:44.980 | It won't be morose.

00:09:47.300 | It won't be miserable.

00:09:49.580 | It won't be self-pitying.

00:09:51.620 | It will have a profound gladness about it.

00:09:55.980 | I don't do money welcomes anymore because my present transition, but I used to stand

00:10:01.460 | right here in downtown, welcome the people every Sunday.

00:10:05.780 | I loved it.

00:10:06.940 | I love to have that little informal moment because I'm in the pulpit, I'm Mr. Authority.

00:10:12.900 | And down here, I'm daddy in the living room.

00:10:18.540 | And I was so profoundly aware I'm going to welcome these people in such a way that those

00:10:25.440 | who are coming out of the funeral and out of the wedding feel good about this moment.

00:10:32.180 | That's impossible.

00:10:33.180 | Isn't that wonderful?

00:10:34.180 | To have an impossible job.

00:10:37.380 | You know what it makes you do?

00:10:39.380 | Pray.

00:10:40.380 | Makes you desperate.

00:10:41.380 | Makes you want miracles to happen.

00:10:44.620 | Let me have a demeanor down here so that the hurting can say he knows and the ecstatic

00:10:51.780 | can say he knows, he gets it.

00:10:55.020 | And everybody has a daddy who gets it.

00:10:59.780 | It will affect, if you catch the paradox of these emotions, it will affect your whole

00:11:05.740 | church.

00:11:06.740 | And the last one is, if you experience this paradox of emotion, sorrowful yet always rejoicing,

00:11:14.680 | the beauty and the worth of Christ will be exalted because he is most glorified in you

00:11:23.020 | when you are most satisfied in him.

00:11:25.300 | And if you're always rejoicing, there's always some flavor of his excellency in your life,

00:11:30.540 | some flavor of his worth and his value, his beauty.

00:11:34.020 | There's something about you that means you're loving Jesus.

00:11:37.620 | You're valuing Jesus.

00:11:39.460 | He's precious to you right now with all the tears flowing down.

00:11:44.300 | And on the other hand, the tears that are flowing and the genuineness and the authenticity

00:11:49.700 | of your sadness shows you're not out of touch with the ugliness of sin in this world and

00:11:57.100 | the horrors of its effects in human life.

00:11:59.840 | You're not out of touch.

00:12:00.840 | You're not glib.

00:12:01.840 | You're not silly.

00:12:02.840 | You're not superficial.

00:12:03.840 | You're not blind.

00:12:04.840 | You're not naive.

00:12:07.220 | And when you get that in one person, the joy reflecting the infinite worth of Jesus and

00:12:13.780 | the sorrow reflecting the ugliness and the horrors of sin, you meet somebody more like

00:12:19.380 | Jesus and you want to be like him.

00:12:23.860 | So we end, sorrowful yet always rejoicing.

00:12:30.060 | May the Lord work this paradox, this miracle.

00:12:34.860 | And I speak, please don't over read this man.

00:12:39.980 | I speak as one trying to understand and do this as a dad, as a husband, as a pastor right

00:12:48.340 | now, trying because I'm speaking over my head.

00:12:52.500 | I'm saying words that I wish were more true here.

00:12:56.340 | Don't walk out of here saying, "Well, I guess some people got that wrapped up."

00:12:58.660 | Nobody's got this wrapped.

00:13:01.820 | I'm lifting up a possibility that we're all looking at and saying, "Really, Lord?

00:13:09.460 | Really?"

00:13:10.460 | Sorrowful yet always rejoicing.

00:13:13.100 | Oh, show me, show me what that would be like in my life.

00:13:19.020 | Such a mystery and a bold point wrapped in an honest confession.

00:13:22.500 | That was from John Piper's conference message titled, "When Jesus Meets Disability, How

00:13:27.020 | a Christian Hedonist Handles Deep Disappointment," preached on November 8th, 2012.

00:13:32.260 | The clip was sent in to us by Hannah in Athens, Georgia.

00:13:35.100 | She writes in to say this, "This sermon encouraged and challenged me in a time of deep disappointment

00:13:39.580 | to realize the gospel's ability to make sorrowful but always rejoicing a reality in my life."

00:13:47.140 | Amen.

00:13:48.140 | Hannah, thank you for sending it in.

00:13:50.140 | And thanks for listening to today's sermon clip.

00:13:52.620 | All of our clips are now crowdsourced.

00:13:54.180 | You tell us what bits of Piper sermons changed your life and met you in your need.

00:13:59.820 | We share that clip with the APJ audience.

00:14:01.340 | If you've got one, email me.

00:14:02.860 | Give me your name, hometown, the sermon title, and the timestamp of where the clip happens

00:14:07.580 | in the audio and tell me how it impacted you.

00:14:09.620 | Put the word "clip" in the subject line of an email and send it to me at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.

00:14:15.580 | That's an email address, askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.

00:14:20.380 | Next time we're going to talk about podcasting, particularly the six dangers of listening

00:14:24.260 | to podcasts, podcasts like this one.

00:14:26.980 | There are dangers and we're going to talk about them.

00:14:28.900 | I'm your host Tony Renke and we are rejoined in studio with Pastor John when we return

00:14:33.900 | on Friday.

00:14:34.900 | We'll see you then.

00:14:35.620 | [END]

00:14:36.120 | 1. What are the dangers of listening to podcasts?

00:14:37.120 | 2. What are the dangers of listening to podcasts?

00:14:38.120 | 3. How do I know if I'm listening?

00:14:39.120 | 4. What are the dangers of listening to podcasts?

00:14:40.120 | 5. How do I know if I'm listening?

00:14:41.120 | 6. What are the dangers of listening to podcasts?

00:14:42.120 | 7. What are the dangers of listening to podcasts?

00:14:43.120 | 8. What are the dangers of listening to podcasts?

00:14:44.120 | 9. What are the dangers of listening to podcasts?

Living the Mystery of Joy in Suffering

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