Life, Liberty and The Pursuit of Joy

Our text this morning comes from the book of Mark 10:17-31,

' And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” And the disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” And they were exceedingly astonished, and said to him, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God.” Peter began to say to him, “See, we have left everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.” '

Mark 10:17-31

https://my.bible.com/bible/59/MRK.10.17-31

When I was a child, we would spend the fourth of July the same way every year. Our cousins would host a 4th of July party and then as the sun was beginning to set, we would drive out to the beach and gather with the other 10,000 or so people who were in town to watch the Onset Bay Fireworks show. The night would always seemingly end with grabbing a slice of pizza from our favorite pizza spot (Marc Anthony’s)or an ice cream cone from the shop down the street. And it was all smiles and laughter, we were happy. And then...us and the other 10,000 people would sit in traffic for an hour as we made our way out of the Onset village at a snail's pace.

(TALK ABOUT ^THIS MORE)

Happiness...is fleeting.

Actually, happiness is more than just fleeting, it's luck. The word happiness comes from the greek word “hap”, where we get the word happenstance. Recently and especially today I have been thinking about the words in our declaration of independence, the preamble says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

In American Culture today, people are FOCUSED on being happy. Not even focused, how about consumed by it. so much so that people FEAR being unhappy, they feel that somehow if they are unhappy something must be wrong. How many times have you heard someone say “I just want to be happy” I just hope my kids are happy” “Just do whatever makes you happy…”

There is a latin phrase “Summum Bonum'' which means the highest good. Reading just this one line from our declaration of Independence, we shouldn’t be surprised that we live in a culture which pursues happiness as its summum bonum, its highest moral good.

Now, there is only one problem with this. Happiness was never meant to do what we are asking it to do. The happen-chance of happiness was never meant to be a constant state of being. We ask happiness to block out all sadness, pain, hurt etc, and the reality is, happiness is simply a feeling, it was never meant to be our constant state of being.

Happiness isn’t bad in itself, but pursued as the highest moral good, it is dangerous.

In Mark 10:17, the young ruler asked Jesus, he said “Good Teacher”...Jesus responded, “you call me good teacher, but only God is good”...

There are two dialogues happening here, hidden beneath the text. Jesus is asking the rich young ruler if He is calling Jesus Good, which in turn would make Jesus God. The word for good could also be translated, perfect. And so Jesus asks him, you call me perfect as God is perfect, do you really believe that...and notice how the rich young ruler responds, he says “...Teacher.” The rich young ruler is not quite ready to submit to Jesus as GOOD, as God.

Now we could spend all morning on this part of the story but what I want us to understand is the pursuit the rich young ruler is after. This comes with the second sort of hidden dialogue that is happening here.

The rich young ruler asks Jesus verse 17, what must I do to inherit eternal life? He wants to know how he can inherit eternal life. I think all of humanity has been interested in this piece of knowledge for quite some time and Jesus tells him that which he already knows. Jesus basically says by keeping the law...and the rich young ruler says that he already has done all of this but read it with me in 21…

'And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” '

Mark 10:21

And in verse 22, we get to the point of our sermon today, the rich young ruler. Went away SORROWFUL for he has great possessions.

The young man’s pursuit and love of his possessions, his happiness, and his refusal to give them up to follow Jesus, shows that he has broken the greatest commandment of all, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might (Deut. 6:5)

Happiness is not the endgame, the pursuit, our pursuit must be for the good, and only God is good. Good is not found in happiness, but it is found in the opposite place. Good is found in the place of the cross. You see it is in the very place of the cross where the goodness of God is found.

And what is found at the place of the cross. Joy.

Joy is the emotion, is the feeling of encountering the GOOD, ie. God in the midst of pain, suffering and loss. Actually, joy cannot be joy, without pain, suffering or loss. The rich young ruler could not enter the kingdom of God because he was so focused on his happiness, his pleasure from his possessions, that he was unwilling to experience loss. In his unwillingness to experience the loss of his possessions, he was unwilling to enter into the death experience of Jesus on the cross, and because of his own pursuit of happiness, misses out on the joy of Christ and walks away sorrowful.

To pursue joy we need to do the two things the rich young ruler wasn’t able to do.

1. First we need to recognize who Jesus is, He is our “summum bonum” our highest good. He is THE Good Teacher.

We look at Jesus for example, and see that it was for the “joy set before him that he endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:2). The cross was not a happy place but Isaiah 53:10 tells us it was God’s good pleasure for Jesus to die, it wasn’t happy but it was good.

So joy is recognizing the good in our circumstances. It is recognizing the good in our pain, the good in our suffering, the good in our sacrifice and to recognize the good, is to recognize Jesus. The rich young ruler was not able to recognize Jesus as the good, instead he was content to pursue his possessions as the good.

In some ways I do not blame the rich young ruler, I mean He after all, was just seeking to live “the good life.” The only problem was he couldn't admit that Jesus himself was the GOOD.

Instead, he was trying to earn a good life, through his pursuit of pleasure and possessions, i.e. “happiness” And therein lies the point that Jesus was trying to make, you are trying to earn something you were never meant to earn, thus will never be able to grasp in your own effort...

Joy is not merely being happy with material things falling into a hedonistic pursuit, but joy is to pick up our cross daily to die to ourselves and to follow Jesus. We die to the pleasures of this world.

The rich ruler his whole life pursued happiness. He was comfortable in his own righteousness and in his own ability to keep the law.

I love what Andrew Root writes in his book The End of Youth Ministry, he writes that “While happiness, as a moral horizon, frees us with one hand to be happily whoever we want, it nevertheless enslaves us with the other. For in this supposed freedom to be happy, we have no meaning other than that which we create from within ourselves.”

The rich young ruler could not relinquish his pursuit for comfortability; he could not relinquish his pursuit for happiness. Jesus looked at the rich young ruler and could have easily said relinquish your happiness and follow me. Just like the rich young ruler we walk away from Jesus in a pursuit of happiness to find ourselves, more depressed and more anxious than ever.

For we ask happiness to do something it was never meant to do. We begin to believe the lie that happiness is this natural state of being, and not only secular culture but Christian culture as well. The music should make us feel happy, the preacher should make me feel happy and if I don’t feel happy then something must be wrong.

But if there’s one thing Jesus did not promise it was happiness. He did however promise joy. But for it to be joy it must include pain, it must include suffering. For it to be joy there has to be something that stands outside and above, something that is transcendent of our circumstance that we can hold onto.

Today, I hope to offer a simple challenge. To take every advantage of this great country we live in, to experience the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of JOY.

2. Secondly, we need to give up our pursuit of happiness and follow Jesus to the cross..

The rich young ruler, enslaved by his pursuit of happiness, was unable to seek the Goodness of God in following Jesus. Root writes “He must find his life in Jesus who is the very fullness of the Goodness of God. In finding his life in Jesus he must abandon his pursuit of goods, and rather pursue the gift of the goodness of God, which is found on the cross.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer described discipleship “When Jesus Christ calls a person He calls them him or her to come and die.”

Luther said “The flesh cries out against the belief that God is good, but the suffering Savior brings consolation that this is indeed true.” Through Christ people can grasp with assurance that God is Father and cry out, “Abba, dear Father.””

Jesus said ““If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?” (Matt 16:24-26)

But here is the really ironic thing, we find our highest good, not by pursuing happiness but by following Jesus to the cross and in following Him into death, we experience the Joy in living in the goodness of God.

The rich young ruler, in his pursuit of happiness, security, power, pleasure, walks away sorrowful…

I can hear this theme of Jesus throughout His gospel, to the woman at the well he says “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” John 4:13-14

To the crowd that followed him in John 6, Jesus says “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.”

To the Pharisees in John 10 Jesus, says The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. John 10:10

Happiness, what a small view of what Jesus desires to give to you and to me. No, Jesus desires to give us JOY.

Instead of viewing our life through the lens of our own happiness, what if we began to view our life through the lens of the cross.

Jesus, although God, did not view equality with God as something to be grasped…which means that Jesus died to himself.

What if we began to live like that. Dying to our own comfort and pride to love our spouse and children. Dying to our own busy schedules to help our neighbors. Dying to our sense of financial security to give in abundance to the kingdom of God. Dying to our own self-promotion in order to see God’s purpose in someone else. Dying to our own will to pursue that which is God’s will for us.

In verse 23, “And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” 24 And the disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God! 25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”(Mk 10:23–25).

The difficulty is not because riches are evil and disqualify those who possess them, but because we are tempted to depend on our riches for security, leaving it hard to see our desperate need of God.

In the same way Happiness is not evil. If it comes it should be welcomed and even celebrated. But happiness cannot be the end game, it is not something worth aiming for in order to reach a well lived life. it is fleeting, it comes and goes.

(when we pursue happiness as our summon bonum, it is dangerous.)

Look how today's section of scripture ends, Mark 10:28-31,

Peter began to say to him, “See, we have left everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.” '

The people that Jesus describes here in this section share one thing in common, they all suffer loss.

When we follow Jesus to the cross we do not find ourselves in a happy place, but we find ourselves in a good place.

I LOVE what Calvin says on happiness, “For until men recognize that they owe everything to God, that they are nourished by his fatherly care, that he is the Author of their every good, that they should seek nothing beyond him- they will never yield him willing service. Nay, unless they establish their complete happiness in him, they will never give themselves truly and sincerely to him.”

The Rich Young Ruler was unwilling to recognize the Author of his every good and thus unwilling to relinquish his happiness in possessions to find his true happiness in Christ alone.

We must seek nothing beyond the cross of Jesus Christ for our happiness. In Him and Him alone, we don’t simply find happiness, but we find joy, unending.

Amen.