(upbeat music) We are far too easily pleased. That's the problem in America. We're not too hedonistic, too pleasure-centered. No, we're not pleasure-centered enough. We settle for the world's paltry joys at the expense of giving our lives to pursue our deepest and most lasting joy. And in settling for the trivial pleasures of this world, we undermine both of our chief callings in life, the two great love commandments that we have, to love God with everything that we have and to love others as ourselves.

In fact, it's only as we pursue our highest joy that we are driven to enact these loves. Essential but counterintuitive point that we make in Christian hedonism, Christian hedonism. And it was a point Pastor John was making back in 1983 as he was first putting that Christian hedonism into a sermon series for his church.

From that essential series would come the book, "Desiring God" and of course this entire ministry. And today I wanna share with you a clip from his sermon, "The Labor of Christian Hedonism," a sermon preached on October 2nd, 1983. Have a listen to this point. If you and I don't pursue our ministry because we expect to find great joy in it, then we don't pursue the command of God.

There's another verse. This one is so familiar you don't need to look it up. It's Acts 20, verse 35. And strikingly, it's Paul's address to another group of elders. And listen to how he motivates those elders to care for the weak. Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, "It is more blessed, elders, to give than to receive." Now, when Paul says, "Remember this, keep it in your mind," he must mean that when it's in your mind, it functions rightly as a conscious motive for ministry.

He must mean that the moral value of our generosity in ministry isn't ruined when we pursue it hedonistically. Like so many people think, it is. It is not wrong to desire and to pursue the blessedness which Jesus promised when he said it is more blessed to give than to receive.

He didn't say, "Now this is the truth, and get it out of your head as soon as you can, unless you do it." Pursue the blessedness that comes from giving, which brings us back to where we were last week. What's the hindrance to love in the church? It's the same hindrance to worship.

The thing that keeps us from obeying the first vertical commandment is the same thing that keeps us from obeying the second horizontal commandment. And it is not that we are all trying to please ourselves, but that we are far too easily pleased. We don't really believe Jesus when he says there's more joy, more blessedness, more full and lasting pleasure in giving in a life devoted to helping others than there is in a life devoted to our material comfort.

We don't believe it. And therefore, the very longing for contentment that according to Jesus ought to drive us to simplicity of life and labors of love contents itself instead with the broken cisterns of American prosperity and comfort. The message that needs to be shouted from the top of the IDS tower in the city center to pleasure-seeking Americans is this, "Hey Americans, you're not nearly hedonistic enough.

Don't lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust corrupt and where thieves break in and steal. Go for broke. Lay up for yourselves treasures in heavens where no moth and rust corrupt, where no thieves can break in and steal. Quit being satisfied with little five and a quarter percent yields of pleasure that get eaten up with the moths of inflation and the rust of death.

Invest in the blue chip, high yield divinely insured securities of heaven." A life devoted to material comforts and thrills is like throwing money down a rat hole. But a life simplified for the sake of love yields dividends unsurpassed and unending. Hear the word of the Lord, O Americans. Sell your possessions, give alms, provide for yourselves purses that do not grow old and treasures in the heavens that do not fail.

Come on! Become real hedonists. Wake up! That's the message. We've got gospel. We've got good news to share with the world. Leave the broken cisterns of temporary, unsatisfying pleasures. Come to Christ in whose presence there is fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore. Join us in the labor of Christian hedonism.

For the Lord has spoken, it is more blessed to love than to live in luxury. Oh, that we believed it. That the Lord's word were believable to us. Turn to Hebrews chapter 10. I am just amazed at what I've seen in Hebrews 10, 11, and 12. He is so amazingly consistent in his Christian hedonism.

It's phenomenal. Hebrews 10, and we'll read 32-34. "Recall the former days, when after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to abuse and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on the prisoners, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one." You see the situation?

Some Christians had been arrested and put in jail. The other believers were facing a moral dilemma. Do we go underground, pray for them, or do we express our solidarity with them and risk losing our homes? And the text says that their joy in God's reward overflowed in love. Here's what they did, if I can reconstruct the situation.

They looked at their own lives and quoted to themselves Psalm 63. "The steadfast love of the Lord is better than life." And they looked at their houses with all of their furniture passed down from their grandmother, their precious vases, and they said to themselves, "We have a possession in heaven that is better and longer lasting than any of this.

Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also, the body they may kill. God's truth abideth still, his kingdom is forever." And they went with Jesus to the jail and they lost their possessions. And what does it say? "They felt as they went, joy." Christian hedonists, through and through, they knew where their treasure was and they didn't have to act according to any sterile sense of duty.

They just glutted themselves on the joy of love. - Such a key point in a key sermon in the Piper Archive. It's titled "The Labor of Christian Hedonism" preached on October 2nd, 1983. It was part of a series in which Pastor John outlined Christian hedonism, a series that would eventually become the book, "Desiring God." It also happens to be the only mention that I can find in any of his sermons to the topic of inflation.

That's how I found it originally. I was looking for what he had said on that and you heard it in his contemporary paraphrase of Matthew 6, verses 19 to 20, where he said, "Quit being satisfied with little five and a quarter percent yields of pleasure that get eaten up by the moths of inflation and the rust of death.

Invest in the blue chip high yield divinely insured securities of heaven." So good, I love that line. So relevant for us today in this age of inflation. Well, I found this clip. If you find one, email it to me. Give me your name, hometown, the sermon title, the timestamp of where the clip happens in the audio and make a note of what stands out to you.

Put the word clip in the subject line of an email and send it to me at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. That's an email address, askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. Well, did Paul say that Christians no longer have evil desires inside? You might get that impression from Colossians 3, and it's a text we need to think more about because we have some really good questions from a listener named Mary.

Mary puts on a clinic for us in how to write an articulate, specific, hard question via email to us, and with it, we will end the week. I'm your host, Tony Reinke, and we'll be back with Pastor John on Friday. We'll see you then. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)