Joy in God: The Harmony of Glory and Happiness

We are commanded to pursue joy. And by the way, just as far as terminology goes, joy, pleasure, happiness, satisfaction, contentment, and the list could go on, I don’t distinguish those. I know most of you do, like R.C. in his book The Holiness of God talks about joy versus pleasure, and in his mind pleasure is defined as it’s natural, it’s carnal, it’s what the world can give you, and then joy would be what God can give you. [00:05:12]

The Bible, “In Your presence is fullness of joy. At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” This is not a small word. This is not a bad word, and it’s okay for R.C. in The Holiness of God to use pleasures as small and bad because that’s just okay to do that with definitions. Just know that when I read my Bible, I see happiness, I see pleasure, I see satisfaction, I see joy, and they’re all jumbled up and used interchangeably. [00:06:00]

The nature of conversion teaches that we should pursue our joy in God. The shortest parable, Matthew 13:44, “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man finds and goes and in his joy sells all that he has and buys that field.” So what is it to be converted? It’s to find a treasure and to open it up and say, “Look what’s in there.” [00:10:10]

And what is that? You think that’s self-denial? Yeah. Yeah, that’s exactly what Jesus meant by self-denial. Sell it off. I think that’s what He meant. If you would come after Me, you must, Luke 14:33, renounce all that you have – period. All of it goes. And you must love me more than you love your mother and your father and your sister and your brother and your son and your daughter. [00:11:02]

This is hedonism talk in the gospels. The demand for love teaches the pursuit of joy. A little more complex, I mean love for people. Let’s just take one verse. I’ve got several but just one. Hebrews 12:2, for the joy that was set before Him, Jesus endured the cross. I get really tight about this when people start dumping on the pursuit of joy, as though it didn’t produce love. [00:12:02]

I’m going to ask you, what was it that sustained Jesus in the hour of performing the greatest act of sacrifice to bring about the greatest act of love that ever was? And the answer is joy, joy, for the joy that was set before Him. In other words, He’s on a quest to maximize divine pleasure. He will have a people for His name from all the peoples of the world. [00:12:32]

How did this duty to be happy and God’s design to be glorified come together for me? They came together in Philippians 1:20 and in Jonathan Edwards, and in that order and in that priority. Philippians 1:20 goes like this, “It is my eager expectation and hope that Christ will be glorified” or magnified (megaluno in the Greek, you can hear it). He will be made much of. [00:15:20]

He will be made big. He will be made to look great. “Christ will be magnified in my body whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ and to die is,” what? “gain.” Now what does that mean? Let’s put the logic together. “My,” Paul says, “My zeal, passion is that Christ be magnified in my body,” that is in all my physical life on earth, whether I’m living or dying, I want Christ to look great in my life. [00:15:48]

And then he says, “For,” and he picks those two pieces – live and die, “For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain.” Now you see how that works? You see how the logic works? I want Christ to be magnified in my body as I die. And how does it work? For dying to me is gain. He magnified Christ in death by counting death gain. Does that make sense? That was the answer for me. [00:16:24]

It is the answer. Paul is saying, “Alright I may go to the lions. I may be burned. I may be left to rot in a prison. I may have a shipwreck and not even make it to Rome. I don’t know how I’m going to die, but if I die, when I die, O God, I want Jesus to look great in the way I die.” And he knew the answer to how that would be. I will count death gain. What does that mean? That means I get the treasure. [00:17:10]

I get the joy now. So he looks at everything. He looks at all of his friends. He looks at all of the ministry possibilities. He looks at the possibility of a retirement in who knows where, and he says, “Lose all that and get Christ – gain.” Now that’s the essence of Christian hedonism. I lose everything on the planet, gain one thing – Christ, and I call it gain. This is all rubbish by comparison. [00:17:45]

And the key is that is the way Christ looks magnificent in his dying. So I’m finished. My quest is over. Now I see it. Christ is most magnified in me when I am most satisfied in Him at the moment of my greatest loss. It’s over. That’s it. That’s the end of my quest right there. That’s the end… that’s it. Desiring God is now finished. I can just work that out forever and ever, which is what I think I’ll be doing. [00:18:22]