maybe we should pray together that might help Father in Heaven you are so good to us when U unexpected things come into our lives you somehow work them out for good we're looking for that good and we're expecting it so I pray for your help now in this seminar that I would be anointed to speak truth truth and to speak it in a way that would be faith building and hope enlarging and vision giving and life enhancing and Christ exalting and God centered and joy producing so come and rest upon all who are in this room I pray for a a listening ear and a sensitive heart magnify your son father as we work together on these things in Jesus name amen well I love this seminar and uh there are a few things I like talking about more than than uh Christian Hedonism which is what this is about it's a u liberating and devastating topic to be told that you not only may but should pursue your joy and everything lands on you me anyway with amazing Liberation really this is too good to be true I thought I was supposed to deny that and you're telling me that no you don't deny it you glut it and then on the other hand which we'll see to be told that you must delight in God above all things when you in fact don't is devastating scary I've seen it for now 30 years I've seen it do both I've seen it absolutely decimate people and I've seen it set so many free and and both probably are necessary somewhere along the way because we're not wired to delight in God we're wired to Delight in television and food and sex and fame and friends and family and and then somebody comes along and says you not only May pursue your joy in God you must and you must have more joy in him than you have anything or you're an idolator is devastating depending on where your heart is so I love to talk about it and uh I hope I can say it in a way that you don't feel like burdens are added to your life but lifted from your life I got a letter last December I think it was and I brought it along because it so encouraged me that God is still using the truths of Desiring God the book in amazing ways in people's lives and this woman who's in her 30s wrote this three-page letter to me to thank me and I'm only going to mention a paragraph or two she lost her children in a because of her drunken condition her husband committed suicide this is 8 years ago and uh she was devastated at having lost him having lost her children being an alcoholic and a heroin addict and uh a sex addict and at one point gained a 100 pound and uh so that you you catch the scenario of of misery and uh about a third of the way into the letter uh after describing one confrontation with death that she avoided she says this um I rolled over on my back in my cheap apartment choking and sobbing and there on my bookshelf was a book I do not remember how it got there or why it seemed to be illuminated in the gloominess of that night it was Desiring God I took the book from the shelf and began reading when tears sh slowed Enough To let Me by the fourth chapter God changed my heart completely and forever grasping that book tightly in my hands I reached the end of myself my overwhelming desire from that night forward was for God to see his kingdom come into this world and a passion to see others glorify him by enjoying him forever The Pursuit Of God through his word became the joy of my life I had no joy outside of him and knowledge of him I did nothing from that time that did not do in the shadow of the Cross and then the rest tells some of the subsequent struggles but I am encouraged by that because it's an old book I wrote it in uh between 19 uh well I wrote the sermons in 1983 and then the book was published first in 1986 and almost everything I have to say here is is rooted in the book Desiring God so uh for whatever reason the book has a a staying power it's still probably my long-term bestselling book just because I think it is so liberating and so devastating and usually The Liberation follows the Devastation and I am deeply deeply thankful that it has worked out that way um let me read to you just a paragraph from the syllabus I assume you all have this but here's the aim of the class this particular seminar is designed to summarize reinforce and further explain the life and Ministry and Imp in Ministry implications of Christian heathenism and the underlying vision of God as put forth in Desiring God the meditations of a Christian hedonist if God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him which would be the summary of the book then how should we live and how should we Minister how should we motivate ourselves and others when it comes to prayer love marriage money missions reading scripture Etc the seminar will include lectures and time for questions and answers so I hope hope that proves to be the case and then anybody can take this class be ATT track one person and and the guys who are in the track to they'll read there what they're required to do and then the outline of the classes on the back I hope uh that we move through 1-5 relatively quickly and spend almost all of our time on six and s in the outline here let me put on the overhead the mission statement of our church because I don't do these seminars just willy-nilly anything I write anything I preach I I see through and put through the lens the grid of this mission statement we exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of All Peoples through Jesus Christ now that mission statement came into existence in 1995 Christian Hedonism came into existence way earlier so I didn't choose to be a Christian hedonist because I live by this I formulated this for myself and for the church with a lot of people tweaking it in a committee of 23 people that worked for uh a year and a half to decide who is Bethlehem what are we about and this grows out of the convictions of Christian Hedonism and aims at it and you can see it it we aim to spread a passion now spread means we're not into this for ourselves alone because we've learned that people who live for themselves alone areen happy people it is more blessed to what than to receive well then if you want to be blessed you better be a spreader you better live for others you better be outside of yourself the people who stand in front of the mirror all day long trying to like what they see are going to be sad people but if you give your life away forget self-consciousness pour yourself out for others your heart will expand with capacities of joy you never dreamed so spreading is Christian henness plus what we aim to spread is a passion not just knowledge we want people to feel something about Jesus be convinced about something and to be joyful about him a passion for the supremacy of God this is really really big God is really big and we'll see why that's so crucial that the supremacy of God puts him at the center and our passions in him and for him are What Make christian Hedonism what it is in all things I hope Bethlehem doesn't limit our understanding of God's Supremacy to just churchy stuff it say do with politics as you'll hear this weekend with regard to pro-life stuff it's it has to do with family it has to do with work it has to do with science it has to do with everything God is supreme everywhere completely for the joy of All Peoples so we're pursuing the joy of All Peoples because that's what the Bible says we're supposed to do let the Nations be what glad glad that's that's a command that designates what missionaries are for in the Psalms and it's all through Jesus Christ so just to let you know that the mission statement of our church I pray even though I know a lot of you are not from Bethlehem will be Advanced through seminars like this now introduction and background the struggle with motivation so I want to give you a little biography here autobiography um the the roots that I can remember I'm sure there are other Roots way back in my childhood but the roots that I can remember about the emergence of what I'm calling Christian Hedonism were in college in the struggle of this soul to figure out how to be motivated for good things like going to Chicago I was went went to Wheaten College small tree shaded suburb 25 miles west of Chicago um and we would do ministry by going into Chicago and doing Street work or other kinds of Evangelistic efforts and what why should you do that what kinds of things should be going on in your heart when you do that should it be guilt should it be Duty should it be love what is Love Is it okay to be happy about it if you come home happier than when you wi are you selfish I mean that's the way my mind was work what about the glory of God is is is that supposed to be the goal what drives you when you're 20 years old and you're trying to figure out what makes your heart tick and what's appropriate what's right and wise so I was struggling with those things and reading and that happened right on through Seminary and into graduate school and here's the sort of thing that I had to deal with Luke 1413 to1 14 goes like this when you give a reception Jesus says invite the poor to like Thanksgiving dinner the crippled the lame the Blind and you will be blessed since they do not have the means to repay you for you'll be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous now what what makes motivation work according to that how does motivation work if you're supposed to have the poor over for Thanksgiving and of course if you go out and find people that are not your friends and you hardly know them and you bring them and maybe don't speak your language it just makes the afternoon awkward right just I just want to relax and watch a football game with my buddies and and my family and it just a little bit awkward to have new people especially if they're different and so you don't do it and Jesus knew that and so he he did what did he do here he said do it and do it especially for those who can't give you any Kickback therefore he's he's shooting down carnal selfish worldly motivation and then he adds this for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous now I would read these things I read them all through college I read them all through Seminary I would read these things and I would be torn up inside because of because of Scholars who talk like this there's TW Manson he's dead now so I can get mad at him in public not that that would hinder me the promise of reward for this kind of life and he's commenting on this text the promise of reward for this kind of life is there as a fact you you do not live this way for the sake of reward if you do you are not living this way but in the old selfish way I just threw up my hand I read stuff like that what why did he say it I mean what's Jesus doing toying with us with this four if that's true if what you just said is true why did he say that he said have the poor and the crippled and the lame and the blind come over for dinner for you will be repaid at the resurrection and then Manson comes along and says now forget that he said that don't let that have any motivational power in your life no no no no no Jesus Is Not a Bad Teacher he's a good teacher he says things for reasons and he said this one to get us to do that so when you thinking about having somebody over for dinner and they're going to make the afternoon difficult think I'll be repaid at the resurrection of the just glorious repayment doesn't say what it is I'm sure it's not golf I'm sure it's not a Cadillac I'm sure it's Christ more of Christ more joy in Christ more capacities to enjoy God more Holiness more purity blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God I want to see more of God I want to enjoy more of God this will be my reward this is not a bad motive so those were the struggles now alongside with my struggling with the Bible and those who were interpreting it wrongly with their big phds behind their name scaring little 25y olds like me like I can't think because smart big strong powerful people say dumb things about the Bible like this that's a dumb thing to say ion ran is an atheist and I was into a big Iron ran kick for about three years from 19 I was in the late 70s I read everything she wrote read Atlas Shrugged and the Fountain Head and the new intellectual and uh I forget but a whole bunch of books and I was blown away by her power to write she's dead wrong and got some things so close to right in fact here's a little little little bi autobiographical tidbit I was so moved by Ian Ran's atheism and her Hedonism of a different kind that I wrote her a long letter she died in oh shoot I forget one of you would remember probably but late ' 80s maybe I'm not sure um I wrote a long letter I wrote a paper of a PR appreciation and critique and I'm sure she never got any letter from a Evangelical slf fundamentalist like me who wrote her appreciation like she's an atheist why would you write a letter of appreciation to an atheist who's writing books in order to get people stop believing in God which is such an awful thing to do and uh I don't know if she ever got it however one day vain that I am I was at Luther Seminary bookstore in I forget when it was and I I was thinking how would I know if she ever got this I wonder if there's a big fat detailed biography somewhere of her and I found one big fat biography by her sidekick and guess what I looked up in the index Piper and it was there in a footnote I got a foot footnote and the footnote said her influence was so extensive that she even influenced fundamentalists I think get my name I thought the only way they could have known that is that letter I didn't published anything about her and I just hoped she got it because I wanted her to be saved that's why I wrote it I wanted to lure her in that that I don't think she got Christianity right now here's what she wrote I'll read it to you an action this is her conception of Christianity okay an action is moral said Kant you know who Emanuel Kant philosopher that uh represented Christianity in her mind an action is moral said Kant only if one has no desire to perform it but performs it out of a sense of Duty and derives no benefit from it of any sort sounds like sounds like him right neither material nor spiritual a benefit any reward destroys the moral value of an action thus if one has no desire to be evil one cannot be good and if one has one can that's very sharp that is devastating to this she's right if if that's the Christian view of Duty if that's the Christian view of motivation I'm out of here that's why she gripped me she she was providing a secular atheistic critique of what was troubling me about so many Christian ethicists who were arguing that you can't be motivated by any benefits to come to you at all not heaven not knowledge of God not increased enjoyment of the Divine not anything just raw will power well that's stupid that is not what Christianity is and but I I had no clear alternative I couldn't articulate in a way that sounded acceptable to me an alternative to what she was criticizing here that if you if you really want to do something clearly you're getting kicks from it and therefore the moral value is zero and if you don't want to do something and you do it anyway because you don't want to to that's real virtue I thought Heaven has suddenly become hell right because in heaven what will we love doing good what will be our joy in heaven everything that's right otherwise we're all frustrated in heaven forever and that's the peak of virtue let's all go to hell and call it Heaven that you can see just what incredible effect this was having as I was pulling out my hair in my 20s and 30s trying to figure out okay if if that's right and he's wrong then Jesus must be right and how can I articulate this how can I say this I got to reread my whole Bible because I breathe in the air of Emanuel Kant and frankly I think the air of Emanuel Kant still is destroying thousands of worship services for a lot of people people because they have the notion that the higher the act in terms of significance the less of self-gratification there should be in it and therefore the way to worship is stoically and dutifully and that takes the heart out of worship and ruins it Pascal came into play a lot of a lot of others did too CS Lewis did Jonathan Edwards did you'll see those as we go along but at this point here's here's the alternative to what uh TW TW Manson said all men seek happiness period Christian non-Christian atheist all men seek happiness this is without exception whatever different means they employ they all tend to this end the cause of some going to war and others avoiding it is the same desire in both attended with different views the will never takes the least step but to this object this is the motive of every action of every man even those who hang themselves I think that's true therefore sanctification becoming holy becoming Christlike being born again does not consist in stop wanting to be happy it consists in a whole new set of what makes you happy that's what it means to be born again all these things were making you happy driving you making your will go this way you're born again and new worlds open up to you Christ and the cross is at the center of that new treasure and all your affections begin to change I say begin this doesn't happen overnight some people it does others long painful process but being born again doesn't mean stop your quest for happiness it means pursue it in a whole new way because now there's a new you in there that's got different taste buts different spiritual taste buds the day before you're born again you put your tongue on the cross boring foolish as Paul said day after you're born again you put your tongue on the cross honey gold I can't get enough of Jesus what's happened not the Quest for happiness just a whole new world of what makes you glad so that's the struggle that I was in and Christian Hedonism is the outcome of all these struggles and here's the summary of it if you want a a five statement summary of what what do I mean by Christian heathenism these would be some of the pieces the the main ones number one the Longing To Be Happy is a universal Human Experience and is good not sinful I think your desire to be happy is equivalent to your getting hungry for food okay it's a given with your Humanity if you don't have it you're dead literally you will die you'll curl up in a bed this is what in the worst forms of depression right you have you don't you don't have any you just you just disappear in bed because your soul is dying it's a horrible thing I don't think it's sinful to want to be happy I think well you'll see more in a minute um two we should never try to deny this is controversial but listen to out we should never try to deny or resist our Longing To Be Happy ooh dangerous as though it were a bad impulse instead we should seek to intensify this longing and nourish it with whatever will provide the deepest and most enduring satisfaction and those two words change everything get them I'm getting them from the Bible I'll tell you the verse in a minute so here's what I'm saying there the solution to your sin problem all right everybody in this room's got a sin problem even if you're born again you still like to sin in certain ways that's what sin is it's appealing nobody sins out of Duty raise your hand if you sin out of Duty get up in the morning think I don't want to sin today but out of Duty I'll sin Nobody Does that we only sin because it pleases it feels good or it promises some money if we lie on our tax forms or whatever we we sin because we want to sin the solution to that problem is not the killing of want in your life I will now cease to be a wter I will now cease to be a desirer that's not the solution but that's that's what I felt growing up I mean how many times did a missionary speaker come through our church oh it's still so bad saying this because we our missionaries aren't like this at all and and they they said look at us young people so you young people you need to stop doing your own will and do God's will I'm sitting there saying is there a third alternative like my will becoming God's will so that I might in fact find deep satisfaction in laying my life down for Jesus like most of the missionaries who've been written about talk I'll give you some quotes later from David Livingston and others who said amazing things about the being satisfied in God in the midst of the most terrible kinds of circumstances so I don't think the solution to our sin problem is in getting rid of our want to it's in glutting our want to on what gives the deepest and most enduring satisfaction number three the deepest and most enduring satisfaction is found only in God and the verse where I get those two words is Psalm 1611 you show me the path of life in your presence is what of Joy fullness of joy and at your right hand our Pleasures for ever more so we got fullness and we got forever that's all I mean by by deepest and most enduring in your presence is fullness of joy not 99% no thank you somebody comes along and says I can give you for 88 years 80% proof happiness in this world whisper followed by Eternal suffering or somebody comes along and says I can give you a life of tremendous struggle tremendous pain much suffering with deep joy that is growing followed by an eternal complete full Joy so I'm not accepting my most insane moments enticed by the lies of the devil about where his Joy is to to be found anymore somebody comes to me and says come on I can give you I can give you so much joy you can't IM you can't even come close to Psalm 1611 four you give me four come on give me four where are you going to give me four except in Psalm 1611 money ha more people jump off the carado bridge in San Diego than off the Brooklyn Bridge in New York you prob what is that got to do with anything the carado bridge is ritzy people only go over there to go to homes that cost $3 million in Brooklyn poor people cross that bridge it's you Ordinary People poor people don't kill themselves rich people kill themselves so you're telling me money money is going to do this statistically you don't have a leg to stand on sex how many diseases shall I get and on and on the lies that are given to us I said no thank you no thank you no thank you to be born again is to discover Christ as an alls satisfying treasure and never to be able to leave him again you may battle at any given point you may battle with a particular thing you shouldn't do but the big picture is I'm not leaving him If I Stumble and fall on this thing and Ticking it in the teeth that night repenting getting right with Jesus and fighting this fight again because I have discovered where the treasure is that's number three the happiness we find in God reaches its consummation when it expands to meet the needs of others in the manifold ways of love now we're going to spend a good bit of time on this tomorrow but here just a little snapshot of what I'm saying one of the 1977 I published an article in his magazine anybody remember the IV publication his magazine okay it was called I gave it the title holy Hedonism and uh and to my utter dismay they put a big Marilyn Monroe set of lips on the page Fus I looked at I looked at the artwork and I said they missed it they just totally missed it that was not the point not helpful the article represented my effort to ask okay you've just spent several years of your life in College and Seminary and now in my early uh graduate school and bethl teaching days nailing down the biblical foundations of vertical Hedonism namely psalm 16 11 in your presence is fullness of joy at your right hand are Pleasures forever and now the question becomes what now am I a cross-legged Buddha sitting under a tree enjoying God let the world go to hell what good is that in a world like this that that was my next struggle what what is what is this deep sweet powerful enjoyment doing here like this and if it doesn't do anything here clearly it's got to be unbiblical cu the Bible is all about love right love fulfills the whole law so if you're not a loving person you're breaking every rule in the book so my next challenge was the challenge stated here that's that's the result of many years I mean can you believe that something so simple as the result of many hard-headed years what I'm saying there is when God comes to you and shows you himself and changes your heart so he and his word and his uh Glory are your Delight you become like a um high pressure Zone walking through the world this is a weather analogy I'm not a weather man but I think this works you become like a high pressure Zone you move through the world people without God are low pressure zones there's emptiness out there and you got this high pressure Zone because God is deeply satisfying you when a high pressure Zone bumps up against a no pressure Zone what's created anybody know I I I probably got it all wrong wind wind blows it moves from high to low right it feels the it fills the void and in doing it gets bigger if if this doesn't work meteorologically it does spiritually so forget the analogy okay I'm a high pressure zone I'm I'm I'm bursting with what God is showing me about himself and I'm loving him and I'm enjoying him and I'm bumping into people around my family and around the neighborhood and around church and in the world and they don't know him they don't love him they're trying to be satisfied with low crummy stuff they're low pressure Zone it's not working in their lives and a wind is created that goes out into them to and what's that wind called biblically am I know it's called love it's called love I'm sure it's got other names you're probably right um but it's called love now here's here's the deal love is not just the effect of my joy I'm going to argue big time it is because the Bible does lots of places that love is the Overflow of joy in God but I'm arguing here that it's the expansion and consumation of joy in God and therefore this love is moving out questing for great for for for being bigger which means I'm still a hedonist if you ask me if I come to visit you in a hospital or wherever you might have a need and you say why did you come a bad answer is I didn't want to come but I have a duty to that's a bad answer what effect does that have on you you don't feel more loved than if I say as a pastor to you somebody who who knows you cares about you you don't feel more loved by that than my saying um I find that when I am pouring my enjoyment of God into you at this moment of your need my joy in God gets bigger and therefore I'm here to maximize my joy in your joy do you think at that moment that person would say you are so selfish I can't believe how selfish you are Pastor because you just are seeking your joy it doesn't compute that way because when you are seeking your joy in the joy of another as yours is expanding to go into them and and make yours bigger they feel love they they don't feel like your wanting to be there makes you less loving it just doesn't work like that we got lots of work to do on that this is just summary we'll come back to it and then finally these are the these are the uh the ways you make this sound edgy and controversial okay conclusion can put a therefore to the extent we try to abandon the pursuit of our own pleasure and I mean that in a high holy sense pleasure in God to the extent that we try to abandon the pursuit of our own pleasure we fail to honor God and love people or to put it positively the pursuit of pleasure is a necessary part of all worship and virtue Bo those are controversial statements this word NE necessary really controversial don't try to abandon the pursuit of your joy really controversial I it raises all kinds of questions like where's self-denial Jesus said he would come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and here you are telling us never deny your pursuit of pleasure I said yep that's what I'm saying and I know that's in the Bible and we'll come back to it because I don't think it's a contradiction okay that's the summary of Christian Hedonism it's it's what has flavored this church for 28 years of my presence and probably before that without being called that and so if you if you if you like being around here and you can point to certain things it just may be that this is part of the reason you might be enjoying certain flavors of Bethlehem we're not a perfect church that is for sure but um it's a sweet place to be for me anyway I love being here because to have 25 pastors who are on this page together there are a thousand pastors who die go to heaven to have that much Unity as we have here Unity around such profound things is amazing and uh we could talk sometime about how we got there but God's been really good really kind to us nothing I'm saying tonight that I know of would be disagreed with by any of our pastoral staff or Elders which in a church this size is simply amazing it's what keeps us moving because we're not fighting each other about these profoundly important motivational and Theological things