Ridiculous Joy (Part 8): In Values

So there's something that I believe is nearly universally true.

And that is most people prefer joy to sorrow.

They prefer happiness to sadness.

Now I say it's nearly universally true that most people do that because there are some people who kind of enjoy when they're sad because they get to be the victim and get attention.

But aside from those individuals, most people say if I had my choice, I'd rather be joyful than sorrowful.

I'd rather be happy than sad.

Well, we started a series earlier this summer that we called Ridiculous Joy, and what we're doing is we're working our way through the New Testament book of Philippians.

It's a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Philippi.

And the reason we've called this ridiculous joy is Paul wrote this from prison.

His circumstances were not to his liking, and yet this book is saturated with joy.

He repeats the theme over and over again where he talks about being joyful.

And when we come to chapter 3, verse 1, we're looking at chapter 3, verses 1 through 11 today.

You heard this read.

He starts out by saying, I want you to rejoice in the Lord.

It's no trouble for me to write this to you again.

He says, but rejoice in the Lord.

And in the original language, this is a command.

It's in the imperative.

And what jumps at me as soon as I read this is the idea of commanding joy.

Commanding rejoicing.

If you've had kids and you ever said to your kids, hey, you need to go clean your room, most of the time that and joy don't go hand in hand.

And if you were to say to your children, go clean your room and you better like it, that doesn't work as a parent.

You learn very quickly that you can ask them to clean their room, but you can't ask them to clean their room and like it.

And sometimes when we hear this phrase, rejoice in the Lord, we think of it a little like God saying, Go clean your room and like it.

Go live your life and rejoice, whether you have anything to rejoice about or not.

And the challenge that we have is we tend to think of our emotions as being something that just are, not something that we can control, meaning, I am happy, I am sad, I just am, I don't have any control over it.

But in the Bible, emotions are actually commanded.

There are 14 different emotions that are commanded in the Bible.

Things like don't be anxious and rejoice in the Lord.

And what that means is that the fact that the Bible commands our emotions, it means that we have the capacity to not just simply say, my emotions are just my emotions, but we have the capacity to do something about our emotions.

That's what that means.

And here's what is probably challenging, and that is for some of us, when we think about our emotions, we think, okay, so if I'm being commanded to rejoice in the Lord, then that means that I just put on a happy face, even if things aren't happy.

But you know, as well as I do that that doesn't really work.

I had an illustration of this in my life recently on a different level.

In our house, we have gutters that are around the house.

Most houses do in Pennsylvania.

Um I call them eavetroughs at an earlier service.

I guess that's a Midwestern thing where I grew up.

They're gutters, okay?

And uh and so right above our bathroom window, there's a gutter that has a seam in it.

And a couple years ago I noticed that there was a leak.

And what would happen is the water would pool in that gutter, and then when it would stop raining, the water would still be there and it would leak down onto the roof line that was below it, and it would would kind of like like drain on the shingles there.

Now, this on our house is on the second story.

Our first story is elevated, and then the basement is exposed.

So this is three stories up, and so it's a big drop, and and our roof is pitched pretty severely.

So this isn't just something that I just quickly say, I'll go up there and fix it.

And so I did what I have done many times as a homeowner, and that is I've looked at something and said, I should fix that.

And watched it for a long period of time, and then finally one day I said, Okay, I must fix this.

Uh whatever it is.

So I climb up on the roof and I get down kind of to where this is, I clean it out, and I had bought some of that flex spray, flex seal kind of stuff.

Have you ever seen this on TV?

Like, you can take a boat that has a leak in it and spray the edge, and then you can get back in the boat and go about your business.

I'm like, this should work great.

So so so I so so I clean it out and I spray the stuff in, and then I go back and I wait for the next rain to come, and sure enough, it continues to leak.

So this is not a testimonial for their product, evidently.

And and it leaked, and so I did what you know I do as a homeowner.

I said, I should fix that.

And about a year later, I'm like, okay, I have to fix this or it's going to stain the shingles here, so I have to do something with this.

So this time I said, okay, I'm not going to try to climb from up top because it was probably human air, if I'm honest.

I probably didn't clean it out well enough, get it dry enough, spray it well enough.

And so I come from the bottom this time on a ladder.

I got a ladder that was tall enough to get up there, I clean it all out, and I got flex tape this time.

And I put the flex tape down, flex seal tape, thinking that this would work.

And so far, it has.

But here's what I'm suspecting will happen.

At some point, that's going to leak again.

And here's why I believe this.

Here's what I know about this gutter, and that is the fact that the water is pooling, somehow over the years it's no longer draining completely correctly.

And in order to get this to really stop, what I need to do is take the gutter off, get it to have the correct trajectory, and reseal the actual seam that's there, or it will leak again.

In other words, I have put a band-aid on my leak in my gutter.

Now, the reason I tell you this is because what many of us do when it comes to joy is we constantly put band-aids on something that has a deeper fix.

And what I think Paul is doing in Philippians 3 is he's not saying, rejoice in the Lord, put a little something on that so that you feel better, but he's giving us something that that will fix us at a level that will let us be truly joyful if we'll understand this.

And I know that it isn't readily obvious when you read this text, because even when it was being read, my guess is many of us glossed over.

We're like, Paul's talking about being a Hebrew of Hebrews and being circumcised on the eighth day.

What does this have to do with me?

And joy.

And beyond that, when we read it, there are these kind of obscure warnings that are in here.

And so what I'd like to do is show you that I believe that what he's doing is he's showing us two values that, if we will embrace these values, can bring real joy to our lives.

But they aren't the kind of things that feel like just putting a piece of flex tape on a real problem.

These are structural things that may take some bigger work on your part and my part.

Here's the first, and that is when we are able to value knowing what justifies, then we can find a joy that transcends our circumstances.

And we see this in verses one through six, and then again in verse nine.

I I read and talked about verse one.

Further, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord.

It's no trouble for me to write this to you again.

And then he says this, verse two, watch out for those dogs, or beware of those dogs, some translations say.

Those evildoers, those mutilators of the flesh.

In the original language, it is actually the word watch out or beware that's in the imperative, and it appears three different times.

For stylistic reasons, the NIV and some other modern translations just translate at once.

So it says, beware of the dogs, the evildoers, the mutilators of the flesh.

But in the original, it's beware of the dogs, beware of the evildoers, beware of the mutilators of the flesh.

So here's what he does He says, Rejoice in the Lord, but watch out for dogs, for evildoers, for mutilators of the flesh.

Now again, it doesn't matter kind of where you come from.

You hear that and you're like, that's just kind of bizarre.

Like, what's he talking about?

We tend to think of dogs as cuddly pets.

But in that culture, dogs were generally mangy wild beasts that brought disease and were unwanted visitors to your home.

So when he says, watch out for dogs, he's not saying, watch out for your little pet that you love.

He's saying, watch out for something that will bring an unwanted disease to your home.

And then he says, These evildoers, he says, beware of evildoers.

He calls people evildoers, and then he says, mutilators of the flesh.

Now that is a bizarre phrase.

What's a mutilator of the flesh?

In all likelihood, this is a play on words, because in the next verse he says, we are of the circumcision.

So what was happening in that time is when people would come to faith in Jesus Christ, some of the Jewish believers would say, that's good, but in order to really be a follower of Jesus Christ, you must be circumcised.

And so they were adding to faith in Jesus Christ alone with this law about being circumcised.

And what Paul is doing is he's saying, I want you to beware of the dogs who will bring an unwanted consequence, the evildoers, the mutilators of the flesh, people who are insisting on something that isn't necessary for your salvation.

And what he's doing, I believe, is he's showing us that one of the biggest thieves of joy is not understanding or not savoring what really justifies us.

And then he goes and he tells us his resume.

This is the autobiographical thing.

He says, verse 3, for it is we who are the circumcision.

The real circumcision isn't those who are physically circumcised, it's those who believe at this point, who serve God by his spirit, who boast in Christ Jesus, who put no confidence in the flesh.

And he says this, though I myself have more reason to put confidence in the flesh.

I was circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, in regard to the law of Pharisee, as for zeal, persecuting the church, as for righteousness, based on the law faultless.

So he brings up circumcision again.

He says, I was circumcised.

On the eighth day, I did it right.

I am of the tribe of Benjamin, one of the preferred tribes.

I'm a Hebrew of Hebrews.

I've I've been more Jewish than all the other Jewish people.

And then he goes on and talks about being a Pharisee and persecuting the church and says, I've kept the law perfectly.

Gerald Hawthorne, who wrote a commentary on Philippians, put it this way.

He said, Not content to merely obey the law of Moses, the Pharisees bound themselves also to observe every one of a myriad of commandments contained in the oral law, the interpretive traditions of the scribes.

The most ardent of the Pharisees scrupulously avoided even accidental violations of the law and did more than they were commanded to do.

Paul, a son of Pharisees, Acts 23, 6, and a disciple of the great Pharisee Gamaliel, Acts 5, chose to be a Pharisee himself and set himself to be the most earnest of the earnest observers of the Jewish law.

So Paul is saying, You know what?

I kept the law better than any of you.

And then he says this, verse 9.

He says, And be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but which comes from faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.

So here's ultimately what Paul's doing.

He's saying, He's saying, I want you to rejoice in the Lord, watch out for the dogs, the mutilators of the flesh.

I had all kinds of reason to put my confidence in the flesh, but my real confidence is in God because it's God who justifies.

I don't justify myself by keeping the law.

That's Paul's argument for joy.

Now you may say, what does this have to do with my joy?

Like, even if I understand that, so what?

Well, here's what justification looks like for us.

It's wanting to say, I'm right, I'm in the right, and I know I'm in the right.

And here's what modern spirituality is like in many places, inside the church, outside the church.

And that is we decide what's moral.

We say, here's my morality, here's the morality that matters to me.

And then we say, if I keep that morality, and then I have uh the assumption that I'm really good.

So I have a moral code, I define morality, I keep it, and I assume I'm good.

Here's how this works.

Somebody will say, Well, I'm a moral person because I decided that being moral means being honest.

And so at work and in all my business dealings, I'm honest, therefore I'm good.

Somebody else will say, That's good, but for me, being really moral means being tolerant.

I accept people wherever they are.

Me and my friends, that's what's important to us, and so we accept people.

Somebody else may say, well, being moral means means having a right sexual ethic, or somebody else may say being moral means caring for the poor and taking care of the poor in my life.

But let me just ask you, why does that not lead to joy?

Even if your moral code is right, why does it not lead to joy?

And the reason it doesn't lead to joy, the reason that Paul says, beware of the dogs, the mutilators of the flesh, is because what you're doing is you're using your morality to justify yourself and to say, I'm good.

And what you can't know is if you've ever been moral enough that you're certain, like if your morality is honesty, how many times do you have to shade the truth until you're no longer honest enough to be acceptable to God?

If your morality is being tolerant, how many groups do you have to be intolerant of who don't practice the tolerance that you tolerate that you practice to say, you know what, maybe I'm not as tolerant as I think I am?

How many times do you have to have a sexual thought that's outside the purview of sexual ethics to say, I crossed the line one too many times?

Or if you're about caring for the poor, how many times do you go out to dinner and order something that's maybe just slightly more than you need when that money could have been given to the poor, and you say, even though I care about the poor and I've and I've oriented a lot of my life around it, maybe I've spent too much on me.

Do you see why that's a problem?

You can't be joyful as long as you're saying I'm justified based on what I do, because justification in the Bible is based on what Jesus Christ has done, a righteousness that doesn't come from me following the law, verse 9, but from God through faith in Jesus Christ.

And not only does it not bring us joy because we can't be certain, but it can't be sustained.

All of us, whatever our morality is, will have moments where we fail.

But beyond that, I also don't think it's joyful because what we end up doing is we end up creating a better than list.

In other words, what we'll do is we'll have a probably not in writing.

If you have it in writing, that's a whole nother level.

But but but in our minds, we we have a list where we say, I'm not like the other people at work who aren't honest.

I'm not like those people who are intolerant, they're the bad people, I'm the good.

I'm not like the people who don't care about the poor.

I care.

I'm not like the people who who sexually will watch anything on on Netflix.

I'm different, I'm better than.

And the reason that saps our joy is because there's something in us that wants to cling to our own goodness instead of surrendering and saying, it's the goodness of Jesus Christ that makes me right, it's not what I have done.

And so joy, real joy, isn't simply saying, just be happy with your circumstances, but it's knowing to the core of our being that our justification is rooted not in what we've done, but what in Jesus Christ has done.

If I were to put it like this, if God's standard were to stand on this stage and jump and touch the ceiling here above my head, and I probably should have measured this, this is probably 40 or 50 feet above my head.

Here's what would be true if we said, okay, everybody, take your turn, come up here and jump for the ceiling, okay?

No trampolines allowed, no uh, no extra apparatus, just jump, and if you touch the ceiling, then you've met God's standard today.

Some of us would come up here and our jumps would be really embarrassing.

We'd be like, uh, I haven't jumped in a long time, that's not real.

Some of us uh might come up here and have a surprisingly good jump.

But you're still not jumping 40 or 50 feet in the air.

LeBron and Giannis aren't jumping 40 or 50 feet and touching the ceiling.

And that's the point of joy is it's not being able to compare distances and say, look at how much better I am than the next person.

Our joy comes from saying, I have my standing, my status in Jesus, not in my performance.

It will change fundamentally where you get joy.

But here's the second thing.

And that is not only will we find joy in knowing what justifies, but I also would say in knowing what satisfies.

And we see this in verses 7 through 11.

Here's how Paul puts it.

He says, For whatever were gains to me, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.

What is more, I consider everything lost because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, from for whose sake I have lost all things, I consider them garbage that I may gain Christ.

So Paul talks about loss and gain.

And then he goes so far in verse eight as to say, I consider everything that I had before to be garbage.

If you ever read the old King James Bible, it said, I consider it to be dung.

D-U-N-G, dung, is what he considered it to be.

And that's probably a better translation.

The word means anything that the body eliminates that's not useful.

Okay?

So there's not really a polite word for that.

That's why the NIV says, oh, it's garbage.

The King James tried the slightly more politically correct word, dung.

I'm not even going to try to find a good English word for it.

Because it's a little weird to say any of the words that I could say are a good translation.

Paul, though, is saying, everything that my life had, I consider loss, I consider it dung garbage compared to the greatness of knowing Christ.

His life before as a Pharisee meant he had great social standing, he had economic well-being, he had comfort, and now he's saying, compared to that, knowing Christ is actually better.

And then in verse 10 and 11, he says, that I may know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering.

So now not only does he say, I came to faith, but he says, even suffering is better than what I had before.

He doesn't say, I came to Jesus and now I'm living my best life.

He says, I came to Jesus and I want to know that the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering, that's gained to me.

Unless you think that just being in prison was all that Paul experienced, in 2 Corinthians chapter 11, verse 23 through 28, we see him talking about his suffering.

2 Corinthians 11:23–28

Here's what he says.

Verse 23 Are they servants of Christ?

I'm out of my mind to talk like this.

I am more.

I've worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again.

Five times I received from the Jews 40 lashes minus one.

Three times I was beaten with rods.

Once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked.

I spent the night and the day, a night and a day in the open sea.

I've been constantly on the move.

I've been in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles, in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea, and in danger from false believers.

I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep, and I've been hungry and or had known hunger and thirst, and I've often gone without food, and I've been cold and naked.

And besides everything else, I face the daily pressure of my concern for all the churches.

What Paul does is he says, all of this is way better than everything I had before, because it's tied to my knowledge of Christ.

And I say, What?

And what he's doing is he's saying, when I let go of one thing, even if it doesn't seem better in the moment, I know that there's something that is truer and more satisfying that's beyond.

I was thinking about this this.

Week there's the Olympics that are happening, and there's a young man who grew up here at this church who's competing in the Olympics in Tokyo this week.

He uh grew up uh kind of his family around here, and he's on the rowing team.

And he was a contemporary of one of my sons, and so I knew him and his family as they were growing up.

And here's what I know about his life, but not as much just about his Olympic athletes in general.

In order to become an Olympic athlete, most of the athletes have to give up a lot of normal things in life in order to compete at that level.

And for this particular young man, he chose rowing early on, and it meant going to rowing practice often at five in the morning, working out around the clock, not playing football, not eating certain things, eating other things that were uh intended to help his body be at peak condition so that he can compete at the highest level.

And so he gave up things in college, in high school, and after college in order to compete.

And all the time what he was doing is just letting go and saying, this is a loss to me so that I can gain that.

Now, I don't know how it will end for him in the Olympics, but here's what I know about Olympic athletes.

Some Olympic athletes train and don't make the team.

Some Olympic athletes train and they get hurt and don't get to compete.

But what Paul does here is he says, when you let go of something, you have the guarantee from the scripture that this is gain, even if it doesn't seem like it today.

Now let me give you just another analogy because maybe that one lands a little a little off.

When my kids were growing up, sometimes we would go through a fast food drive-thru or stop at a fast food place.

And my kids, like a lot of kids, would say, Can we have the happy meal?

You remember the happy meal, right?

I think they still have it.

The happy meal is where they upcharge you a couple dollars and they put a cheap little 30-cent plastic toy in the thing that's supposed to make the child happy, and therefore you pay extra money, get the cheap toy.

Well, I was one of those parents who was like, you're getting the nuggets in ice water.

And you can ask my kids.

That's real.

And every now and then they'd be like, Come on, dad, can we get the happy meal?

Well, I have four kids.

You know, you pay three, four extra dollars for a happy meal, you're spending fifteen dollars you don't have to spend for fast food.

So I'm like, no, okay, this time we'll get the happy meal.

And so I'd get the happy meal now and then, but let me let you in on a little secret.

There's not a single happy meal that I bought my kids that helped them gain lasting happiness.

Because what would happen is they'd get the happy meal and they'd go like, this is awesome, and 30 minutes later they'd be fighting over the toy, or the toy would break, and they wouldn't be happy anymore.

And not only that, not only that, the next time we would go, they would say, Can I have a happy meal?

It's brilliant marketing, by the way.

Here's what a lot of us do with our souls.

And that is we constantly think, if I can just get a happy meal, then I'll be really happy.

And what we'll do is we'll say, if I can date this person, if I can get this job, if I can retire, if I can have enough money, if we can get into this school, if only this would work out, then I'll be happy.

And we keep grabbing for things that don't have the capacity to fill the depth of need within us, thinking this will bring me happiness, and all we're doing is we're covering the leak with flex tape or buying a happy meal and saying, this is going to satisfy me.

When what we really need to do is say, my real satisfaction is found in knowing the God of the universe, the one who created my soul and made me for a higher purpose than simply to exist and buy another happy meal for myself.

But the challenge is when we're going through the drive-thru, metaphorically speaking, we think I need the happy meal right now.

And I know that some of us who are here would probably say, you know what?

I tried this God thing before.

I tried to say I'm all in, and I wasn't happy, I wasn't content, I didn't find the joy and satisfaction you're talking about.

And I understand that, but let me just simply say there's a chance that, like the Olympic athlete or the happy meal purchaser, you gave up way too early and said, I'll just buy the happy meal, or I'm not going to train, because the satisfaction that Jesus talks about, that Paul talks about, that Jesus gives, is not a satisfaction that you look and say, Oh, the leak is taken care of.

It's a process of rebuilding the gutter.

But when it's rebuilt, what happens is we can say, because I'm justified by God, because God is the satisfier of my soul, then I can have real joy, real happiness, a ridiculous joy in the face of things in my life, things in the world that don't seem to add up.

And I know that probably most of us would say, that's what I prefer.

So I'm guessing that today some of us who are participating in Orchard Hill here online would say, I am not sure that this is where real joy is found.

But I also want to encourage you to say, maybe today is a day for you just to say, God, I've tried to justify myself through my own behavior, my own beliefs.

And today might be your day just to say, God, let Jesus be the one who makes me righteous on the basis of faith, not my works.

And you can do that by just saying, God, I trust you.

Or maybe you're here and you say, you know, I've believed that, but there's a piece of me that's gone back to the I'm better than list.

Savor the justification of God.

Let that be joy to you.

But maybe you've also been somebody who says, I believe that, but my satisfaction has been constantly kind of trying to find a new happy meal.

And maybe today is just a day to say, God, not that those happy meals are unimportant, but God, I want to find my truest satisfaction in you and not in the trinkets and the tape jobs that I put over the things that are deeper in my life.

And you can just say, God, I'm giving this to you again and asking you to bring a deeper, more abiding joy into my heart.

God, we thank you that you do offer joy.

And God, I pray for me and for each person who's part of Orchard Hill this weekend that you would help us to find the deeper, truer joy that you offer.

And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thanks for being here.

Have a great week.