Joy in Life or Death
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Introduction
Introduction
This morning we are continuing our series on the theme of joy from the book of Philippians. If you have your Bibles turn with me to chapter 1, verses 18-26
What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.
Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance, as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith, so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again.
Body
Body
We are going to look at 3 reasons for joy from this passage:
Joy in the exaltation of Christ
Joy in living for Christ
Joy in our faith in Christ.
Last week, Pastor Sergio showed us how we can have joy during times of suffering by maintaining a divine perspective like the apostle Paul. Now in order to have this divine perspective, we need to understand Paul’s attitude towards life and how he viewed his own personal relationship with God. And what is evident in his writing, especially here in the book of Philippians, is the fact that Paul was completely sold out for Jesus and the Gospel, nothing else really mattered to him apart from that. Not the discomfort of being imprisoned, nor the pain of being betrayed, nor even the threat of death, could take away the joy of seeing Jesus Christ being exalted and glorified. There was a singular focus that Paul had in his life and that was Christ and Christ alone. And whether other Christian leaders were preaching Christ in truth or pretense didn’t hinder Paul’s joy because the gospel was still being proclaimed.
In our current times, there is so much news about prominent pastors and Christian leaders that have fallen into scandal and allegations of abuse. Names like Ravi Zacharias and Carl Lentz have become familiar to us for all the wrong reasons. Some of these scandals have hit close to home for some of us. Even within AMI we had one of our founding pastors fall into adultery and subsequently removed from his church because of his refusal to accept the required process of discipline and restoration. We had a guest speaker at the last congregagtional retreat who we found out afterwards was part of a growing scandal at his church. We were so angry that he wasn’t forthright about what was happening in his church. Unfortunately, these things happen in our world because as Paul points out, not everyone has the right motivations for doing what they do and that includes Christian leaders in ministry. But do these people with bad unintentions undo the good work that God is doing in our lives? Absolutely not!
Now, I don’t want to minimize the emotional damage and hurt that some of us have experienced at the hands of abusive leaders especially if you have been impacted directly. There is a lot of emotional and spiritual healing that you will have to go through to regain trust and we need to be absolutely sensitive to that . I would suggest seeing a Christian counselor or at the least come and talk with someone on our pastoral staff. But for those of us who are more on the sideline, observing these situations play out from afar, you can go in one of two directions. You can either become jaded, cynical, and suspicious of Christianity and anyone who is a spiritual leader or you can take joy in the fact that even in the midst of great sin, God’s plan of redemption cannot be undone. People are still being saved and Christ, somehow, against all odds is being exalted. That is still something to rejoice in. If your faith can be undone by these scandals that are bound to happen because of the mixed motives of people’s hearts then your faith is not anchored in the right place. I know a number of Christians who were a part of churches that came apart at the seams. Some fell away while others grew in their faith despite the difficulties and perhaps even because of them. And I feel like the main difference was the simple fact the latter group could still rejoice in God for the good that He was doing even in the midst of bad situations. Like the apostle Paul, our faith cannot be overly dependent on right circumstances or good leadership or having the right Christian resources. Those things can be of help but in the end, there is nothing that matters more than Christ and His gospel.
And this leads us to our second point which is finding joy in the life of Christ. In this passage, we see the reslience and the joyful attitude towards life that we can possess if we simply recognize the truth of what Jesus teaches us in the gospels.
For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
In the life of the apostle Paul, we see someone that is a living proof of this spiritual principle. In Christ, Paul has found the ultiamate reason for his life. Which then begs the question for all of us, “What gives ultimate meaning to your life?” Now there are many things that give meaning to our lives, our work, our children, our families, the good causes that we are passionate about but at the bottom line, what is the foundation that the entirety of your life is built on? This morning if you are a Christian, we all know at least theoretically that the ultimate meaning of life is found in the person of Jesus Christ. (Hopefully, you realize that!) As Paul states succintly but profoundly, “For to me, to live is Christ”. This is the very essence of Christianity and it unlocks the door to a life of joy and fulfillment.
(Now if you are non-believer today, I’m so glad that you are here with us to listen to this message because Christian or not, every single person has to come to terms with this question. In order to be a functioning human being in society, everyone has to attach some reason for their existence and whatever you decide will inevitably shape the rest of your life here on earth but more importantly, it will dictate what happens for eternity. Unless, you are an ardent atheist, the question of ultimate meaning and your eternal fate are closely linked together. They cannot be independent events. All the world religions including Jesus Christ makes this clear connection.) Jesus states his case this way:
Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.
And as astounding as it may seem that anyone could attach the ultimate meaning of life to their relationship with Jesus Christ, Paul takes it even a step further and says, “To die is to gain.” And it’s not becasue, he’ll enter into eternal bliss or escape all the pain of this world or receive some great heavenly reward but for the sole reason that he will finally be with Christ and see Him face to face. Paul is so certain of this fact that he states that it is his genuine desire to depart, which is a nice way of saying that it’s better for him to die, to be executed so that he can be with his Savior. And it’s not even a close comparison because in Paul’s mind and heart, to depart this world is far better for him personally. Modern therapists would probably say that Paul was borderline depressive/delusional but ironically it’s exactly the opposite, in Paul’s pursuit of joy, death is simply a door that crosses into the fullnes of life with Christ. This is why Paul could say emphatically:
“O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
But Paul also recognizes this is probably not the right time for him to depart because he still has work left to do with the Philippians. He needs to be there to help them to mature spiritually and to find joy in the faith just like himself, which brings us to our last point finding joy in our faith in Christ. As we mentioned in previous message, the Philippians were being persecuted for their faith and so their levels of joy were probably at a low. So Paul wants to see them again so that they could have reason to have joy in their faith once again.
We know that the pursuit of joy is a universal human phenomena, everyone wants to be happy in life. Misery might be our reality but joy is our goal and closely linked to this desire for happiness is our desire to find some meaning in life. And I would argue that the one thing that gives meaning to our lives is love. In this world that seems to offer so much pleasure, we assume that there are many sources of joy but I believe that the ancient philsophers correctly identified joy as the natural by product of love. In other words, love is what gives meaning to our lives, and it becomes the source of our joy. Now here is the caveat, what you love will determine the extent of the joy you have. If your greatest love is I-phones and the latest gadgets, your joy will be as fleeting as the next release of updates. If you love success, your joy will be as temporary as your next bad performance review or the next time someone jumps over you in a promotion. Even if you love something as worthwhile as your children, your joy lasts about as long as they are willing to behave, which probably means your joy leaves when they become teenagers. But if you set the core of your heart on loving Jesus, that love will produce in you joy that cannot be taken from you, joy that is not here today and gone tomorrow but one that remains. This love of Christ leads to a type of joy that is described by the Greek word, plerow, which means complete, lacking in nothing, and to its fullest measure.
If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.
As you might imagine, Jesus does not give us an ordinary type of joy that the world gives but his desire is to release the fullness of joy into our lives. If we keep the commandments of Christ out of deep love for him, we will experience incredible joy.
The Scriptures describe it as joy inexpressible, meaning a joy that cannot be described by the words of the most eloquent tongue. The fullness of joy is not simply a theological truth that needs to be rationally understood, it is a spiritual reality that has to be experienced in the heart, mind, and soul. Blaise Pascal, the famed French mathematician and philosopher is known for what has been called Pascal’s wager. As a mathematician, he came up with this idea that our lives are like a wager on the existence of God. If you live life as if God exists and He doesn’t, well you will then incur some finite losses. But if you life as if God doesn’t exist and He does, well your losses then are infinite. I think a good number of Christians live in this manner but if you think about it at any level, you can’t have a real relationship with God based on some cosmic wager on his existence. And this attitude towards God, certainly can’t give you any sense of meaning. In fact, even Blaise Pascal had a completely different experience in his personal journey of faith. As he writes in his own memoirs:
“This day of grace 1654; from about half past ten at night, to about half after midnight. Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God Jacob, not of the philosophers and the wise. Security, security. Feeling, joy, peace. God of Jesus Christ. Thy God shall be my God. O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee, but I have known Thee. Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.”
Here is arguably one of the greatest minds in history and somehow this experience of God’s presence reduced him down into this inarticulate, blubbering mess. It almost seems as if his spirit could hardly contain this fullness of joy that was being poured into him. To give this a biblical framework, Pascal is simply experiencing what Peter describes in his first epistle and there we read this:
Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
And again we see this connection between love and joy and what we can ultimately deduce from this is that where there is little joy, there is little love. Although joy is always secondary to love, joy serves as the accurate measure of love. So many times, Christians of a certain temperament and religious background will argue that responsible service and dutiful obedience are the true measures of love and I would argue that it is not! And here is why?
Let’s pretend that two couples are celebrating their tenth year anniversary. Both husbands give their wives equally extravagant gifts and both wives ask the same question, “Why did you give me such a beautiful gift?” The first husband’s answer is “I gave you the gift because it is my duty and responsibility to honor 10 years of marriage with this act of service.” The second husband gives the normal answer of “It is my greatest joy to give you this gift because nothing makes me happier than celebrating 10 of the best years of my life with you.” In this story, which wife leaves the conversation feeling more loved? But more importantly, if both husbands are expressing their genuine feelings which husband loves his wife more? This answer is a little more difficult especially for men who are out of touch with their emotions but it could be argued that the first husband actually loves himself more than his wife and through the gift he is giving more honor to his morality and to his own goodness as a husband rather than expressing love for his wife. Many times, we treat the lover of our souls in this exact same manner.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Julian Huxley, a famed evolutionary biologist, once predicted that in the absence of a real reason for joy, we could simply produce artificial ways to stimulate feelings of joy through drugs and electric therapy to certain centers of the brain. By and large, this is true and technology has given us countless ways to produce artificial feelings of well-being and happiness but nearly 1700 years ago, well before this technological revolution, St. Augustine gave this hopeful assessment of the average man. “There is no one who would not prefer to endure pain with a sound mind than to rejoice in madness.”
Some people would argue that love is not only the source of joy but it is also the source of grief and sorrow. In my opinion, CS Lewis does the best job of describing this reality in his book the four loves and there he writes:
“Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.”
This is one of my favorite quotes from CS Lewis but it produces a paradox because how can love both be the source of our greatest joy and our deepest pain. The best way to understand this is in three parts:
1. The opposite of love is not hatred, it is despairing indifference and living as if no one is worth loving and nothing in this world matters. In his classic novel, Brother’s Karamazov, Dostoevsky defines hell as suffering from the inability to love.
2. It is possible to have love that is free of pain but it is impossible to have love without joy. Love and joy are inseparable. Therefore pain that has its source in love still has residues of joy.
3. The pain that has its source in love still leaves us with more joy than the joyless state of someone who has never loved.