The jingle is back. It's been recreated, resurrected. It resembles the old one, but it's newer, all thanks to our audio and video team. Thank you for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast. Today we close out the week with a question from a longtime listener named Chris. Chris writes in Simply to Ask This.

"Pastor John, is Jesus a Christian hedonist, and if so, what would be your primary proofs from Scripture?" Well, he asks quite simply, and I answer quite simply, yes, without the slightest hesitation. Jesus lived to glorify his Father by enjoying him as the sustaining power in all his suffering, and by seeking to enjoy him forever on the other side of the greatest suffering, and by means of the greatest suffering.

So that's what I mean by being a Christian hedonist, and to boot, he taught us to be motivated in the same way. So here are some of the texts to consider. In his final great high priestly prayer, John 17, he says, "Father, I glorified you on the earth, having accomplished the work you gave me to do.

Now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed." So he was pursuing this restoration of the fullness of glory and joy in his Father's presence, and then he prays for us that we will become part of it. In verse 24, "Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am to see my glory that you have given me before, because you love me before the foundation of the world." That's what Jesus was referring to, I think, when he said that one day we would enter into the joy of our Master.

His consummated joy with the Father would one day be ours. That's what he was pursuing, and that's what he wants us to pursue. And we see this confirmed explicitly in Hebrews 12.2. We are to, it says, "Look to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, is seated at the right hand of the throne of God." That was the power that brought Jesus through his suffering, the joy that was set before him.

It's not a defective motive to be sustained by the hope of joy on the other side of, and as a result of, your obedience in suffering. That's not a defective motive. To call it defective, like so many philosophers have, is to indict the Lord Jesus with defect. And then he told us to make this joy in God our top priority.

That's what the command to love God with all the heart means. We don't enrich God with our heart when we love God with all our heart. Our hearts are enriched by him. That's what loving God with all the heart means. He becomes our supreme treasure. So when Jesus says, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart," he means find God to be your heart's total satisfaction.

What else could he mean? Find his beauty and his glory and justice, his goodness, his truth, everything there is about him. Find that to be your heart's treasure. That's what love God with all the heart means. And then he underlines this when he says in Luke 10 20, "Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you." So the disciples had just come back, and God had used them to cast out demons and set people free, and they were thrilled at the power God had given them.

And Jesus says, "Don't rejoice in this, that spirits are subject to you. Rejoice that your names are written in heaven." In other words, beware of even having ministry triumphs as a competing joy in your heart alongside your joy of being there with God in heaven. Make God your supreme joy even higher than the joy of ministry joys, indeed the basis of all ministry joys.

And then to underline this, he warned us against a kind of self-pity when we make sacrifices for him. I just remember when I first saw this years ago, where he had just got done sending the rich young ruler away and saying how hard it is to enter the kingdom of heaven.

And Peter pipes up and says, "See, we have left everything and followed you." In other words, we've kind of made some sacrifices here, Jesus, so we're not in that category. And Jesus' response to him is amazing, and I wish I could hear his tone of voice, you know, like, "Come on, Peter." I'm not sure what his tone of voice was, but here's what he said.

Jesus said, "Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sister or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and the gospel's who will not receive back a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, yes, with persecutions and in the age to come, eternal life." Now, what's the point of that?

The point is, Peter, come on, Peter, do you think, do you really think that in making the sacrifices you have made, you struck some kind of bad deal that should cause you to have any element of self-pity at all? You've exchanged one house for hundreds, you've exchanged one life for eternal ages of life.

Now, that's pure Christian hedonism in telling Peter, "Stop feeling sorry for yourself in following me in spite of all the suffering that it's going to cost you." And then finally, I would say, Jesus motivates us over and over by appealing to the joy that comes to those who treasure Jesus enough to suffer loss in this world for the greater joy that is is set before him.

Just listen to these and see whether or not this is not pure Christian hedonistic motivation when Jesus talks like this. Luke 6:35, "Love your enemies and do good and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great." In other words, in this life, don't expect anything back.

You're just going to have trouble in this life, but oh, will your reward be great. So press on in loving your enemies because your joy is going to be full along this path and at the end of this path especially. Or Luke 14, 13, "When you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed because they cannot repay you.

You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just." So how's he motivating us to love the poor? He's motivating us to love the poor because our joy at the end of the line, no matter what it's cost us in this life, is going to be overflowing. And if we love the poor, well, maybe we'll be able to take some of them with us as we go, which is why this is not mercenary to be motivated this way.

And then he says in Matthew 6, 19, "Don't lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal." In other words, that's a stupid way to invest in your life. "Rather," verse 20, "lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven." Be rich in heaven.

Try to be rich there, "where neither moth nor rust destroys nor thieves break in and steal." How do you do that? How do you lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven? Luke 12, 33, "Sell your possessions, give to the needy, and thus provide yourselves with money bags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches, no moth destroys." So, clearly, we're to make big sacrifices in this world, which proved to be no sacrifice at all, because it's investment in our treasures going bigger and bigger and bigger in the age to come.

And then the most familiar statement of all, perhaps, from Acts 20, 35, one of the few quotes from Jesus outside the Gospels, "It is more blessed, more satisfying, more happy, more contentment producing when you lay your head down on the pillow at night." It is more blessed to give than to receive.

So that's pure Christian hedonism. So my answer is yes, Jesus was a Christian hedonist. He is today a Christian hedonist, I would argue. That could be another another APJ. The best one ever, Jesus was the best Christian hedonist who ever existed, both in his own motivation and in his teaching about motivation.

He lived for the glory of his Father by being satisfied in his Father in living and dying. He was sustained by the joy in this life that he had with his Father, would have with his Father in full, and he sought the fullness of pain-free joy on the other side of the cross, and that's what got him through.

And in all of this, he taught us, he taught us how to live and how to suffer for the joy that is set before us in God. Man, did he ever. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for the question. Chris, please email your questions to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.

Thank you for making the podcast a part of your day. You can find our audio feeds in our episode archive, and you can reach us through email all through our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. So what does it mean to pray the Bible? What is that ancient practice? What does it look like, and what does it look like for us today?

We have a question queued up on this on Monday, and Pastor John will explain, and not only will he explain, he'll also model this for us on air as well. I'm your host Tony Reggie. Have a great weekend. We'll see you back here on Monday. you