Exponential Happiness

Amen.

Man.

One of my favorite moments during that last song, if you ever see the um little code pop up that says PW2PR, you probably see that.

You're like, what is that?

That one kid.

Like you think there's not one kid is really, really mean, because those are usually kid codes.

But that that means uh prayer warriors to the prayer room, which means we have so many people that need prayer, want prayer, that we need to get more people in there to pray, which is always really exciting.

Because you know, that if you look at our building from a blueprint standpoint, the prayer room is in the the exact center of our building.

That's how it was was built.

Because we believe so passionately that prayer works, that prayer is is answered.

Um so I don't know, I just felt led to say that because if you are here this morning and you need prayer, you need someone to come alongside you and go to God with you, we're we're here for you.

And you need to know that.

We're here for you.

Um, before we jump into the message this morning, I want to start by by actually uh giving an apology.

So it's really important that what I say up here is accurate.

Like I very much value accuracy.

I do a lot of reading and studying and all kinds of stuff to make sure what I say is accurate.

Remember a couple weeks ago, if you were here, I talked about Paul and I said he was in prison.

He was in Mamertine prison.

Was anyone here for that that Sunday?

Yeah, it was kind of a big part of the message, like I showed you a picture of it and everything.

Um I was like, I got real fired up.

I was like, he was in Mamertine prison.

So it turns out Paul was not in Mamertine prison when he wrote Philippians.

Now, he was he was in Mamertine prison.

It was just when he wrote a different letter, it was 2 Timothy.

He was in prison a lot, wrote a lot of letters in a lot of different prisons.

He didn't write Philippians sipping margaritas on a beach.

He was in prison.

Okay?

So the point of the message still stands, like be focused on Jesus no matter where you are.

He was in prison.

He just wasn't in Mamertine prison.

He was there later.

So that's that.

I'm sorry.

Um, I really am.

And I guess even more importantly than just saying that is I want to make sure we always remember a big part of the culture of this church is that we're about honesty and transparency and openness and even vulnerability.

And a prayer that God put on my heart years ago was this is something I pray pretty often because I need to, was Lord, humble me before I humiliate myself.

Humble me before I humiliate myself.

And thankfully, he provides many opportunities on a weekly basis for me to be humbled.

He answers that prayer often.

And this is just one of those.

But I actually just want to make sure that we all know that you know, leadership here at the church, whoever we are, like we're not above making mistakes, but we're also gonna own those mistakes, even if it's something small, like I got the wrong prison, right?

Like it's not a huge deal.

Um, but it is to me, and I just want you to know that even in moments like that, we'll just be honest and open with you and say, hey, I'm sorry, because we're we're people and and we really value being honest and direct and open.

So I hope you can forgive me.

If you can, let's talk about happiness this morning.

All right, we good.

Some of these people, if you're new, you're like, how do we trust anything he says?

How do we even know?

And you should always read it for yourself.

That's actually really important.

All right.

We uh we have been talking about happiness, like Katie said, for the last several weeks.

Uh, we're in a series based on a very simple question.

Are you happy?

And it is a simple question that does not have a simple answer.

If someone asks you the question, are you hungry?

that's a simple question with a simple answer.

Yes.

Like that's always the answer.

Yes.

I'm hungry.

I can always eat.

It's never a complicated answer.

No one ever comes to you and says, Hey, are you hungry right now?

And you go, well, you know, I just, ooh, it really depends.

Um, in some ways, yes, in some ways, no.

But if someone comes to you with the same question, the same simple question, just replace hungry with happy, are you happy?

You're like, ooh, well, yes, I am, but kind of no, I should be more happy than I am, and I'm frustrated about this, but it's really not that big of a deal.

It gets very complicated.

Happiness is a big deal.

We live in a world with a happiness problem.

Everybody wants to be happy.

Everybody's trying really hard to be happy, but very few people actually seem to accomplish happiness, to find what they're looking for.

In fact, so many of the things that we try to do to have more happiness end up sabotaging what little happiness we think we have.

Happiness is so elusive, but it's so important to God that we live with real happiness, with a lasting joy.

In fact, in Nehemiah 8.10, we've looked at this verse practically every week, and we probably will as we continue.

The Bible says, Don't be dejected and sad, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.

We don't often equate happiness with strength.

But you may have known someone in your life that had an unusual joy.

You may have known someone at some point in time that had a life that on the outside was not even as blessed as yours, but they possessed a joy that was uncommon to you, that was like some foreign object that you'd never seen before.

And they could they could go through horrific situations or really challenging circumstances, and they could go through it without some fake joy where they just smiled and acted like everything was okay.

But no, no, they had like real joy, real happiness, and you didn't understand it.

You're looking at your life, going, I'm not that happy, and my life's going pretty well compared to them.

What do they have that I don't?

And the answer is the joy of the Lord.

There is this joy, this happiness that is so real, it is so powerful, it is unbreakable.

And you're meant to have it.

God wants you to have it, God wants you to be strong in him.

And the joy of the Lord is our strength.

So we're on a pursuit as a church to have real happiness.

We believe that God desires that for us, that it's okay for us to desire that for ourselves.

But what does it mean to actually have it?

Now, this morning we're gonna talk about a concept that I like to think of as exponential happiness.

And so this is not about getting more happiness.

That's how we tend to think about happiness, like addition.

I need to find something that will add a little bit more happiness to my life.

That's not what today's about.

Today's about how to how to multiply your happiness and your joy at an exponential level.

But before we get into what that really means and the ins and outs of that, I want to do a little experiment, if you'll just humor me.

Um, here in a second, I'm gonna ask our awesome sound team to play a song, and it's just an instrumental song, it has no words, and for 99% of us, it will mean nothing.

You'll be like, what, this isn't even good music, and it's not really.

But if you're like me, and this is what I'm trying to figure out, if you're part of a very specific demographic of people in this room right now, this song will bring joy to your heart, like it will for me.

And I'm just curious if anyone recognizes it, if it has the effect on anyone else in the room it has for me.

I might be the only one.

This might just be purely indulgent.

I'm sorry.

Okay?

So go ahead and play that, and then I want to hear if anyone else gets excited.

Couple people.

Yeah, all right, all right, you can bring that down, you bring that down.

Okay.

All right.

Someone yelled, and either you're just being excited for being excited, or you you know what that is.

Can you yes, thank you, sir.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the theme song to the X-Men cartoon that originally aired on October 31st, 1992, when I was nine years old, and I was there.

I saw the original episode, and it changed my life.

Okay?

See?

When I was a kid, I didn't know what the X-Men were, and and you might not know what the X-Men are either.

We kind of live in this superhero saturated world right now, where for every superhero there's like 50 movies.

But 20 years ago it wasn't like that.

You knew who Spider-Man, Superman, and Batman were, and you knew that Aquaman was dumb, and everyone knew that, okay?

But beyond that, it was kind of a crapshoot if you understood who certain superheroes were.

There hadn't been like 15 X-Men movies.

But when I was a kid, I didn't know who the X-Men were.

I didn't read comic books.

I had no idea what X-Men were at all until one day I'm at Aladdin's Castle, which was the name of the arcade in the Springfield, Missouri mall that my parents would drop me off at with my older brother and sister.

They dropped me off there, and I had a bunch of quarters, and usually I just play skee ball.

This is like in the early 90s, late 80s, right?

I'd play ski ball, I'd get tickets, I'd use those tickets for some cheap prizes that you could go buy at the dollar store, but they cost like$300 in quarters at the arcade.

And I just lived to play skee ball.

One day, though, I'm at the arcade, my dad had dropped me off with my older brother and sister.

They were watching me and I see this new game.

And it's it has all this buzz around.

It's this big arcade cabinet, and there's there's six people playing at once.

It had six players at one time.

I was like, that's amazing.

And I walk up to it and I have all these quarters, and I just stay stayed there the whole day.

I just played this one game, and it was the X-Men arcade game.

And I didn't know what the X-Men were, I had no idea what their names were, I just knew it was really cool.

And I got home and I told my mom, I said, Mom, there's this game at the arcade, and you could you can be like this one guy, claws come out of his hands, and this other guy shoots laser beams out of his eyeballs.

It's amazing.

Mom, it's so amazing.

And she was just like, shut up.

Because that's I just talked a lot, I still do.

But I was so excited about X-Men.

And that's all I knew.

I just knew that the X-Men were an arcade game at Aladdin's Castle, and I couldn't wait for the once-a-month opportunity I had to go and play the X-Men game.

And then one Saturday morning, I'm watching Fox Kids cartoons like I did every single Saturday, like every kid in the early 90s did.

And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, that music starts playing.

And right before my eyes are those same superheroes from the arcade game.

And in my brain, I'm like, they made a cartoon out of that game! They made a cartoon out of that game.

This is amazing.

And I'm yelling up to my mom, and I watch this cartoon, and it's amazing.

And for the next four years, I basically measured time by every Saturday morning at that one time slot that the X-Men cartoon came on.

Like I lived for that cartoon.

It was on one time a week, one time, Saturday morning in this one 30-minute window.

And I remember seriously being like, I cannot wait for the next one.

And I would just pray, I hope it's not a rerun.

I hope it's not a rerun.

And if my mom were to make plans on Saturday, that was a big deal to me.

Because my mom was like, hey, we're gonna go visit your grandma on Saturday, I'd be like, What time are we leaving?

Because mom, because you know, X-Men comes on at 9:30, and we can't we can't leave until the X-Men's over.

Don't we can't leave till 10.

We're not, I'm not leaving till 10.

Like, that's how intense I was about that cartoon.

I loved it.

And what's so funny to me is because my my son now, you know, he's he's in first grade, and he's now at the age where he's got some cartoons that he's really into.

But his experience is very different than mine.

The idea of Saturday morning cartoons makes no sense to him.

That's not a thing anymore.

The idea of having to wait an entire week to watch one 30-minute episode with commercials, right?

And to only be able to watch that one episode and then wait another week like that.

That's so foreign to my son that it does not even compute because he has Netflix.

He has on-demand TV.

Every show he likes is on all the time.

Whenever he wants it to be.

It actually makes parenting really hard if you have a child right now, because you can't look at your kid and be like, hey, there's nothing good on TV, go outside and play.

Because there's something, there's always something good on TV.

Now you just have to be like, no, go outside and play.

See, he he lives in this on-demand world where everything is at his command.

In fact, this last week we were we were on vacation and we drove to Savannah and we drove my in-laws' car.

They they were really nice and they let us use their car because their car has a built-in DVD player and all this cool stuff.

And so we're driving, five-hour drive, and my son has a tablet that it's my tablet, but he's using it.

It has all these games on it.

My daughter has her own little tablet.

She's two.

She's two.

She has a tablet.

And they're both playing games, watching a movie, watching Disney movies are playing, they're playing games, and they're like, we're bored.

We're so bored, you know?

And I'm sitting there, I'm remembering back to like when I was a kid and we took road trips.

And by the way, isn't it really funny how at some point in time you get to an age where you start to do that whole when I was your age thing?

It's just getting way less epic.

Like, my my parents used to say to me, When I was your age, I had to get up at five and milk the cows because they grew up on farms.

And I would I would be so frustrated as like a 12-year-old because we didn't have cows.

I was like, what do we what do you want me to do?

Just get up at five and go stand on our property and just be like, I'm guarding it.

Like, what do you want?

I we don't have cows, mom and dad.

I can't do anything at five in the morning.

But but but it used to be that people could say, you know, back when I was a kid, I had to walk 10 miles to school, and now I'm like, back when I was a kid, you had to you had to wait a week to watch that cartoon.

You know, I'm like, back when I was a kid, you couldn't play games on a tablet.

You had a Game Boy, and that thing ate up double-A batteries.

Like, you cannot believe.

All right, you can't even imagine the battery consumption on that stuff.

It's just way less cool to say that than I walk 10 miles to school.

But I'm thinking back to the road trips I had when I was a kid, and it was just me and my brother in the backseat of the car listening to my parents' CDs of Three Dog Night and Fleetwood Mat for 15 hours.

Okay?

I know, I know.

If you put on a like most people in the room, if you're a certain age, don't even know who Three Dog Night are.

Like, I will challenge anybody.

I know, I know that, I know every Three Dog Night song.

I know all about that stupid bullfrog and all that stuff.

If you're getting this, just try I I know it better than you, because they just listen to it on repeat over and over again.

My kids, they they've just grown up in this on-demand world.

And the truth is we we all we've all gotten used to that world, right?

We've all gotten used to this on-demand society that we live in.

It's not just the media that we consume, it's not just the TV shows that we watch, when we want to watch them.

It's everything.

Oh, it's everything.

It's like Amazon Prime two-day shipping.

I'm so used to that.

If you're someone like me and you you purchase things online, that if I see that something is not free two-day shipping, I'm offended.

I'm like, oh well, paying for shipping?

That's ridiculous.

Think about what it takes to buy something on your computer that's like that far away and for it to get to your house in two days.

Think about all the logistics that have to take place for that to happen.

And in my mind, I'm like, that should not cost me a dun.

That's ridiculous.

Like, I just I get offended at the idea of not getting free two-day shipping because I live in an on-demand world.

Nathan made a great point a couple weeks ago.

We were talking, and he said, hey, this is the first time in history where you can be a picky eater and still get whatever you want whenever you want it.

I mean, right now we can be like, hey, I um I'm in the mood for Mexican for lunch.

And then for dinner, I'm thinking Italian, you know?

I'm thinking something else the next day.

We can just literally go, what am I in the mood for?

And we can go get it, and it's it's it's right here, it's right now.

We just get offended if we have to wait 20 minutes.

We're like, oh my 20-minute wait.

Should we, should we, should we stay or should we go in the car and drive for 20 minutes somewhere else?

And then go right in.

Like, what should we do?

We've all had these conversations because we live, we live in an on-demand world.

Like 50 years ago, that concept would have been so foreign.

50 years ago, people are like, what are you gonna eat?

Whatever grew, that's what we're gonna eat.

Whatever season it is, whatever we have, that's what we're gonna eat.

If you don't like it, be hungry.

But we live in this on-demand world.

And and part of the side effects of living in an on-demand world, this is something all of us deal with, is that we begin to develop an on-demand mentality.

We begin to sort of believe, we wouldn't say this, we would never say this consciously, but we sort of believe, subconsciously at least, that the world revolves around me.

That the world around me exists to give me what I want when I want it.

The world is for me.

And like I said, we wouldn't say it, but think about this phrase.

We've all used this phrase, we've all at least thought it.

Think about the phrase makes me happy.

How many things have we thought or even spoken out loud and said, it doesn't make me happy?

This this person doesn't make me happy, this job doesn't make me happy, this house doesn't make me happy, this doesn't make me happy, that doesn't make me happy.

And if we stop and go, well, who said it was supposed to?

Where is it written that these things exist for my happiness?

Nowhere.

But I believe, because I live in an on-demand world, I believe that the things around me in my life should be constantly adding to my happiness.

And when we think that way, when we have any any tidbit of an on-demand mentality in our brains, what we begin to do is we begin to prioritize our own happiness above all else.

And what I want us to understand this morning as we as we begin to look at what we're gonna look at, the least happy people in the world are the people who prioritize their own happiness.

See, in this on-demand culture we're part of, it teaches us that that our happiness is the goal and that everything around us should exist to make us happy.

On demand, when we want it.

I want this food, I want this to watch, I want this person to do this, I want this, and we get really frustrated.

We get really frustrated whenever reality sets in and we find out that those things in our lives are not making us happy, nor do they seem to care to make us happy, and that's not actually their job.

We get mad because of that mentality that we have, we find ourselves frustrated.

And so we get into this sort of never-ending cycle.

We we try harder and harder to prioritize our own happiness, but our happiness becomes more and more elusive because the more you prioritize your happiness, the less happy you will be.

It's like it's like backwards.

It should be that the more you prioritize your happiness, the happier you will be.

Because the more you prioritize financial health, the more financially healthy you'll be.

You'll save money, you'll spend less money on things you don't need.

The more you prioritize your physical health, you eat better, you work out more, the healthier you will be.

But the more you prioritize your own happiness, the less happy you will be without fail.

The most miserable people in the world are the people who care the most about their own happiness.

I see Jesus, he operated completely differently.

That's something we always have to remember about Jesus.

As something as a church, I think it's really important that we just stop and reflect on often.

That Jesus is different.

He is so completely different than this world.

And there's a there's this big push, and I get it, I get it, I understand why, it's a big push in church culture to just try to make Jesus look more and more like the world we're part of.

Almost so we can say to the world, hey no, Jesus, he's cool.

And he is cool, by the way.

But not because he's trying to be.

Because actually, if you try to be cool, you're not.

I learned that in middle school.

Now, see, we try really hard sometimes to make Jesus look like the world, but what makes Jesus relevant to the world is that he doesn't look like the world.

He's different.

And as a Jesus follower, if that's who you are, if you've claimed to be a Jesus follower, to make him the Lord of your life, you've got to understand that he's different.

If you don't know Jesus, if you haven't made that decision yet, you're still on the fence, you need to understand from the get-go, Jesus is different.

He is not going to have you live life in a way that looks like the way the world works.

In fact, Jesus is going to ask you to live life in a way that's so different than the way the world lives that it's going to look wrong.

Seriously, Jesus has us do things that are like upside down to the world.

And so the world looks at us sometimes and goes, hey, you're upside down.

But the reality is the world's upside down.

It's just that the world's gotten so used to its upside-downness that it thinks its upside downness is actually right side upness.

And so when the world sees Jesus' right side upness, it thinks it's upside downness.

And that makes sense if you think about it.

Okay?

Just let it sink in.

Jesus, he's so different.

And he calls us to live a completely different life.

A life that is so different to the world that it looks upside down, but it's not.

It's right side up.

And so take that on-demand mentality where our own happiness is here.

And everything around us exists to feed our happiness and turn that on its head.

You're not turning it upside down, you're actually turning it right side up.

Or you now exist not to be served, but to serve.

And you don't see the people around you or the world around you as something that exists for you, but you see yourself as something that exists for the world.

And Jesus teaches us that if you really want to experience life the way God intends, if you really want joy, if you really want real joy and happiness in your life, live that way.

If you want to see your joy exponentially multiply, live that way.

Serve people.

Put others' needs ahead of your own.

That's how Jesus lived.

He didn't have an on-demand mentality.

In fact, he put himself at the demand of other people all the time.

One of my favorite things about the Bible is that we get all these different views of the same events.

And it's not because the Bible doesn't know what it's talking about or it's wrong or anything like that.

You can take the Gospels, for example.

When we say Gospels, we mean the four books of the Bible that tell the story of Jesus: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

They all tell the same story.

They just tell the same story from different viewpoints.

And it's awesome because we put all those viewpoints together and we get the full story.

It's almost like if something happens and you have to interview all the different eyewitnesses so that you get the complete picture.

We get the complete picture when we put them all together.

The last night that Jesus was on the earth before being crucified was a really interesting night.

Some big things went down that night.

In fact, the whole Lord's Supper thing that we do pretty much every single week, where we take the bread and the juice, that happened that night.

That's where that began.

We read about this in Matthew chapter 26.

Matthew 26 · chapter mention

We read about this dinner.

Matthew's account tells us this when it was evening, Jesus sat down at the table with the twelve.

And while they were eating, he said, I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me.

Greatly distressed, each one of them asked, in turn, Am I am I the one, Lord?

And that's interesting, right?

Because that means that they must have all thought about it at least once, to be concerned.

And he replied, One of you has just eaten who has just eaten from this bowl with me will betray me.

For the Son of Man must die, as the scriptures declared long ago.

But how terrible it will be for the one who betrays him.

It would be better off if that man had never been born.

Far better off if that man had never been born.

Judas, the one who would betray him, also asked, Rabbi, am I the one?

And Jesus told him, You have said it.

Jesus goes, Yep.

That was an awkward moment.

Long, awkward silence.

As they were eating, Jesus took some bread and he blessed it.

And he broke it in pieces and he gave it to the disciples, saying, Take this and eat it, for this is my body.

And he took a cup of wine and he gave thanks to God for it.

He gave it to them and said, Each of you drink from it, for this is my blood, which confirms the covenant between God and his people.

It is poured out as a sacrifice to forgive the sins of many.

Okay, so here we have Matthew's account.

What happens that night?

Right?

Jesus is with the disciples, they're having dinner, he breaks the bread, he gives the wine, and he says, Hey, one of you is going to betray me.

And they move on.

But Luke gives us a few more details.

In Luke's version, we get some new some new little little details to look at.

Luke 22.

We'll start here in verse 19.

He took some bread and he gave thanks to God for it.

And then he broke it in pieces and he gave it to the disciples, saying, This is my body which is given for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

After supper he took another cup of wine.

He said, This cup is the new covenant between God and his people, an agreement confirmed with my blood, which is poured out as a sacrifice for you.

But here at this table, sitting among us as a friend, is the man who will betray me, for it has been determined that the Son of Man must die.

But what sorrow awaits the one who betrays him?

The disciples began to ask each other which of them would ever do such a thing.

Then they began to argue among themselves about who would be the greatest among them.

And Jesus told them, in this world the kings and the great men lord it over their people, talking about their authority, their greatness.

They lord it over their people, yet they are called friends of the people.

But among you it will be different.

Those who are the great who are the greatest among you should take the lowest rank, and the leader should be like a servant.

Who's more important?

The one who sits at the table or the one who serves?

The one who sits at the table, of course, but not here.

And he's saying, not the way God works, not God's way.

For I am among you as one who serves.

So Luke gives us more of the story.

Not only does Jesus say, one of you will betray me in the midst of the Lord's Supper, when he says that, they begin to argue about which of them will be the greatest.

This is not the first time this argument has taken place, by the way.

They do that a lot.

They're always at each other's throats, they're always reminding each other about what they've messed up, what they've struggled with, they're always trying to fight for positioning with Jesus, and they just don't understand him that well.

John gives us even more details.

John kind of completes the picture for us.

In chapter 13, it says, before the Passover celebration, Jesus knew that his hour had come to leave this world and return to his father.

He had loved his disciples during his ministry on earth, and now he loved them to the very end.

It was time for supper.

And the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus.

Jesus knew that the Father had given him authority over everything, and that he had come from God and would return to God.

So he got up from the table, he took off his robe, wrapped a towel around his waist, and poured water into a basin.

Then he began to wash the disciples' feet, drying them with the towel he had around him.

When Jesus came to Simon Peter, Peter said to him, Lord, are you going to wash my feet?

And Jesus replied, You don't understand now what I'm doing, but someday you will.

No, Peter protested, you will never ever wash my feet.

And Jesus replied, Unless I wash you, you won't belong to me.

So Simon Peter exclaimed, Then wash my hands and head as well, Lord, not just my feet.

And Jesus replied, A person who is bathed all over does not need to wash except for the feet to be entirely clean.

And I think Jesus at this point is going, Why are we having this conversation?

Like, why are we still talking?

Just let me wash your feet.

That's how Peter was.

He says, All of you disciples are clean, but but not all of you.

You disciples are clean, but not all of you.

For Jesus knew who would betray him.

That's what he meant when he said, Not all of you are clean.

Now, after washing their feet, he put on his robe again and he sat down and he asked, Do you understand what I was doing?

You call me teacher and lord, and you're right, because that's what I am.

And since I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other's feet.

I've given you an example to follow.

Do as I have done to you.

I tell you the truth, slaves are not greater than their master, nor is the messenger more important than the one who sends the message.

Now that you know these things, God will bless you for doing them.

So we have these three different vantage points of the same moment.

We put them together, and what we see happen is this.

It's kind of a crazy picture to think about.

They're having dinner.

Jesus does the whole thing, this is my body, this is my blood thing.

And then he says, Hey, by the way, just a little bombshell, one of you is about to betray me.

And they fight.

We get that from Luke's account.

They fight, they start to argue.

No, it's not gonna be me, because you know, hey, I'm the one that's always been with Jesus.

I was the first disciple, I was the first one that followed him.

You didn't even follow Jesus until he was already popular.

Like you're that person that gets mad when people start listening to a band you started listening to before they were popular.

You know, you're like, you're not a real fan, you're not a real fan, uh-uh.

You're just you just started because it was easy.

Like they're fighting, they're having this argument, and here's Jesus.

This is his last night on the earth before he dies, and he's going, This is how I'm spending my last night.

This is it.

I picked the I picked them.

This is the way my wife must feel about me.

This is why I think all women look at men and go, I picked, I picked him.

I chose, I had a choice.

This is what I chose, right?

A lot of men are not clapping right now, but they're going, like, yeah, yeah.

Sort of how it is.

So Jesus is sitting there, he's watching this argument take place.

And while they're arguing, they're they're at each other's throats, they're yelling at each other, I'm the greatest, no, I'm look, I'm the one that always does this, and I'm the one that I'm the one Jesus comes to and he's really upset.

I'm the one, and they're having this big fight, and all of a sudden Jesus just gets up and he goes and he takes this basin and he fills it with water and he goes to them, and while they're still arguing, totally oblivious to what's going on, because Jesus isn't saying anything yet, he just starts washing their feet.

And there basically there was one of the disciples is literally going, No, no, no, no, what is going on?

Oh, Jesus.

And Jesus is washing his feet.

And guys, you've got to understand, washing feet is gross, right?

Because feet are gross.

Like they're they're they're not gross when they're little baby feet.

I have a son that's six months old, his feet are just cute, right?

But after a year, all feet are gross.

My feet are gross.

I'm I'm open with y'all.

I have really bad athlete's foot in my right foot right now.

It's because I'm so athletic.

It's just attracted to me.

My wife says it's about my hygiene habits.

I say no.

It's called athlete's foot.

So it's it's like a fungus complimenting me, is what it is.

It's saying, wow, you're such a good athlete.

I'm gonna hang here for a while.

And what I need you to understand as you vomit your mouth a little bit, is that my feet are nothing compared to the feet of dudes living in the first century walking around on dirt and mud all day long without shoes to cover their feet, just with sandals.

I mean, these are these are gross, gross feet.

I'm pretty sure that toenail clippers had not been invented yet.

I'm just saying.

Just saying.

Washing feet was viewed as such a menial task.

It was a big part of Jewish culture, a big part of their their culture, but it was viewed as such a menial task that if you had servants in your household, if you were Jewish and you had Jewish servants, you would not even ask a Jewish servant to wash your feet.

It was viewed as too small a task to even ask a fellow Jew to do.

So they would always go to a person outside of their heritage to wash feet.

That's how lowly they they viewed the task.

And here's Jesus.

And he's washing their feet.

And Peter's shocked, the rest of them would have been shocked as well.

And when he's done washing their feet, I'm so glad John gives us that story because it's missing in Luke's.

Luke tells us about the argument and then he tells us about what Jesus says, but John gives us this middle act that Jesus does.

Jesus washes their feet and he sits down.

He says, Do you guys realize what I've done?

Do you see?

You're all about you.

You're always arguing about who's the greatest.

You're always thinking about yourselves.

You're always you're always focused on what you're gonna get.

That's not how I live.

Jesus is saying, look, while you guys were arguing about who among you was the greatest, the one among you who is the greatest washed your feet.

I didn't come to be served, Jesus says.

I came to serve.

My joy, my joy comes from seeing you washed clean, not from seeing me have what's due to me be given to me.

The apostle Paul really understood Jesus' mentality.

In Philippians chapter 2.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

Philippians, I don't know if you guys know this, but Paul was in prison when he wrote Philippians.

It wasn't mamartine, but prison is prison.

Okay.

Philippians 2, 3 through 8, Paul says, Don't be selfish.

Don't try to impress others.

Be humble.

Thinking of others as better than yourselves.

Don't look out only for your own interest, but take an interest in others too.

You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.

Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to.

Instead, he gave up his divine privileges.

He took the humble position of a slave, and he was born as a human being.

When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God, and he died a criminal's death on the cross.

When we think about the sacrifice of Jesus, we always think about his death on the cross.

Paul's reminding us that long before the cross, Jesus sacrificed everything for us.

I mean, Jesus was in heaven.

He was worshipped.

Because he's the king of kings, he's the Lord of Lords, He's the one that holds everything together.

There has never been a person greater than Jesus.

There will never be a person greater than Jesus.

And Jesus, God Himself, came to this world and he didn't come to be worshipped as a king, he came to serve.

Jesus came to serve you.

He's still washing feet today.

Jesus came came to serve, and he tells us that that's the way you live.

He says, look, flip it upside down.

I mean, Jesus said things like this all the time in Matthew chapter 20, verse 16.

Matthew 20:16

Jesus says, the last will be first and the first will be last.

That is so confusing.

If you're a good Christian, you can kind of game that system.

Like when I'm at a line to eat at a meeting, I always wait till the end.

And everyone's like, oh, Justin, you're just, you're waiting.

That's so nice of you.

And I'm like, uh-uh, I'm gonna be first in heaven.

Like y'all are gonna have to wait so long in heaven.

If I wait till the end now, Jesus says that in heaven I'm first, and so I don't know if there's a big buffet up there or not, but I'm getting I'm I got dibs on that one.

That's what I'm doing.

I'm just gaming the system.

But no, Jesus says, look, it's upside down.

This world's upside down.

So so the first will be last, the last will be first.

He says, look, turn it, turn it the right way.

You want to be great?

Serve.

You want to have joy in your life?

You want to live a life full of joy, then live for the joy of others.

Live for the joy of the people around you.

Paul put it this way in Philippians chapter 4, verse 1.

Philippians 4:1

He says, Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stay true to the Lord.

I love you and I long to see you, dear friends, for you are my joy.

And the crown I receive for my work.

Paul is in prison when he wrote this, if you didn't know.

And he's saying, Look, you're my joy.

I have joy in prison because you're my joy.

Paul's joy was not his own.

Jesus' joy was not his own.

He lived to serve others, and when he saw others happy, when he saw others succeeding, when he saw other people experience joy, it was joy for him.

In fact, Paul and some other church leaders wrote this in 1 Thessalonians chapter 3.

1 Thessalonians 3 · chapter mention

He says, it gives us new life to know that you are standing firm in the Lord.

I love the way the message puts it.

He says, simply hit a button and I can't see it.

In the middle of our trouble and hard times there, here, just knowing how you're doing keeps us going.

Knowing that your faith is alive is what keeps us alive.

Paul lived for the joy of other people.

Lived for it.

So the reason he was so full of joy is because his joy was not his joy.

His joy was the joy of others.

And that means that his joy was exponentially multiplied by however many people he lived to serve.

The most miserable people in the world are the people who value their own happiness the most.

The harder you try to have happiness, the more you prioritize your own joy, the less you'll find it.

But if you can take a page out of Jesus' book, which is called the Bible, and you can flip it around.

Not upside down, but actually right side up.

And understand that if you live like Jesus lived, like Paul said, having the attitude of Christ, if you live and you don't see yourself as a person that needs to be served, but if you see yourself as a person that needs to serve and you see the other people around you, not as people that need to do whatever they need to do to make you happy, but as people that you can't wait to help, as people that you want to pray for, that you want to help out, that you want to be generous with, if you will live that way, your joy will be exponentially multiplied.

Take every person in your life whose needs you put above your own, that that is how much your joy is multiplied because their joy becomes your joy.

I want to make sure that this is really practical for us today.

And there's nothing more practical than math, right?

And everybody loves math.

So we're gonna make this like a mathematical formula.

And I have no, I don't really know much about math, so if you're really into math, this is probably wrong.

But just I think it'll make sense.

So picture like H to the X, okay?

H to the power of X.

That's an exponential formula, right?

So H is happiness, and that X, that X is whatever number of people you have prioritized joy for in your life.

Right?

That's what the X is.

So your happiness will be multiplied by however many people whose joy is a big priority to you.

Most people live this way.

They live like H to the one, and that one is themselves.

The one person whose joy they care about is their own.

And we've all known people like that.

We've we've probably all had moments where we've been those people.

I have.

When you're that person, you're really happy when something good happens to you.

But let's say something really good happens to someone else, maybe it's even the thing you want to happen for you happens for them, you're not happy, are you?

You're kind of upset.

You'll act happy, you'll be like, oh, I am so happy for you.

Way to go.

But in the inside, you're just like, oh, I can't, I hate you.

A little bit.

I kind of kind of hate you right now.

Right?

Like, I've told this story before, but when I was in high school, I played basketball, and uh, and even though I've I've uh played sports my whole life, I just always had a little extra right here.

Just a little extra, just to keep me humble.

And uh and one of my friends on the team, we're we're doing a weigh-in my senior year of high school, and uh and I weighed less than him.

I'd lost like 15 pounds, I was our starting point guard, so I played I played the most minutes on the team.

I'm like running up and down like crazy, and I still had a little bit of a little bit of pudginess to me, and he was like super skinny and he had like abs and stuff, and so he looks at me when he finds out that I weigh less than him and he goes, Wow, you weigh less than me.

That's weird.

And then he just went, huh?

I guess, well, I guess muscle weighs more than fat.

And I was like, I played it off, like played it cool, like yeah, what you know.

He barely even played on the team, it wasn't that good.

But uh, so I'd throw that in there.

But that that really that really bothered me.

And then, like 10 years later, we bumped into each other, and he was in impeccable shape, and it angered me so deeply.

Like, I said, I'm not I'm just saying this, I'm being honest.

Had I bumped into him and he had gained like 50 pounds, I'd have been like, so good to see you.

I am so how are you?

Let's let's hang out, let's go have lunch.

I'll buy.

Let's go hang out.

It is so good to see you, right?

Like if he had been in worse shape than me, but he wasn't.

He was in fantastic shape, and it ticked me off.

Because like what he said to me just stuck in my mind.

I wasn't happy for him.

I was, I was, I was living like this, H to the power of one.

My own happiness was the only happiness I really cared about in that moment.

And so his success was like a thorn in my side.

Just, oh, it angered me.

And we've probably all experienced moments like that.

We we feel underutilized at work, and someone else gets a promotion, and we're like, yay, great.

We've had all had experiences like that.

That's because the world teaches us to live this way.

And by the way, the world isn't happy.

But what if what if you live like this?

What if it was h to the power of 10?

What if there were 10 people in your life that you cared about so much that you put their joy ahead of your own?

It's easy to think about this when you're a parent.

Because when you're parents, your children's joy is your joy, right?

Sometimes to the point where we have to like pull back a little bit and be like, hey, it's their life.

Okay?

If you watch the Olympics, oftentimes they'll show the reaction of parents when their kids win the gold medal, and the parents are flipping out.

The parents seem more excited than the person who won the.

I'm like, they're the one that ran.

You realize you're not taking home that medal.

You didn't do you didn't do anything.

But the parents really did a lot, sometimes too much.

And and the parents, but they're feeling that joy, right?

Their children's joy is their own.

And they're feeling the same amount of joy as if they had won the race themselves.

That's how it feels when you put other people's joy ahead of your own.

And if you want to make your own joy, just be selfish.

If you want your own joy to be exponentially multiplied, just increase the number of people whose joy matters more to you than your own.

It's not an easy thing to do.

But seriously, if you made a list today, how many people in this world, how many people can you honestly say their happiness matters more to me than mine?

If I'm being honest with you, I would probably be sort of ashamed if I had to make that list today.

Because not even all my family is gonna make that cut.

You know, my kids and my wife, sure, but like beyond that, it sort of depends.

You know?

And I'm just being honest, like it's I have to really challenge myself to say, how many people do I really place above me?

And however small that number is, that that's just how small my happiness is gonna be.

But what if we made it our prayer to say, God, show me someone that you want me to serve this week.

If you've ever been a person that said God doesn't answer prayers, you've never prayed that prayer.

Because you start praying prayers like that, you're like, man, does God answer prayers fast?

You start praying, God, show me someone to serve, and all of a sudden you're like, dang it.

I you forgot, I was gonna say tomorrow, show me someone to serve tomorrow.

You should show me to serve right now.

But you start praying, God, God, I need more joy in my life.

And I realize that this on-demand mentality that I have isn't working.

God, give me someone, put someone on my heart right now that you want, you want me to put their joy above my own.

You show me that person, and I'm telling you, before you even get the words out, a face is gonna be on your mind.

And it may even be someone you don't like very much.

Just trust God.

But if you start to live like Jesus lived, if you start to say, hey, their joy, their joy is my joy, I'm gonna wash their feet, I'm gonna serve them, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do whatever I can to see their happiness become reality.

All of a sudden, their happiness becomes your happiness, their joy becomes your joy.

It's like a business having multiple revenue streams.

All of a sudden, you're getting joy from this person's life, and you're getting joy from this person's life, and you're getting joy from this person's life.

You're not even doing anything, you're just loving these people and serving them, and they're having success, and good things are happening, and you're like, yes, awesome, wonderful.

I got so excited to hear that.

That's amazing, and you're filled with joy because your joy is their joy.

You live like that, you live like that, you will be an exceptionally, unusually, passionately happy person.

Because that's the way God has designed it.

That's what Jesus showed us when He said, Look, the first will be last, last will be first.

He says, Hey, y'all are upside down.

Let me fix that for you.

It's tough to live that way, but it's so possible.

It just takes us committing to that and praying for that and asking God to help us with that.

This week, I want to encourage you and challenge you to think about what your factor is.

What is in that X spot on our formula, H to the power of what?

To be honest about that.

And if it's one, it's one.

If it's five, great.

But whatever that number is, make it your purpose this week to increase it by one.

Because that's how exponential factors work.

It's not just like it adds a little bit more.

It's like compound interest.

You you increase that by one, that's a big leap in happiness.

That's a huge leap.

Increase it by one.

Pray this week.

God, show me one more.

One more person whose joy I'm gonna put above my own.

And this week I'm gonna live to serve them.

I'm gonna look for every opportunity I have to serve them.

I'm gonna pray for them every single day.

And then you do that, when you find out something good happens in their life, you're like, yes, it's like it's happening to you.

We're gonna wrap up with worship, because it's what we do.

It's funny to think about what it would have been like had Jesus lived with an on-demand mentality.

If Jesus was like most people in the world and he just lived to be served.

Because the funny thing about Jesus is he could have lived that way and it would have been accurate.

Because if we say, hey, the world exists for me, we'll look at that and go, oh, well, no, it really doesn't.

But Jesus could say, hey, the world exists for me, and he's kind of right.

Because he's God.

And he created it and he made it and he owns it.

He like he owns the world.

He's he's he's allowed us and all of humanity to have it and to work on it, but like at the end of the day, it's his.

And there will be a day when Jesus returns and takes it and makes it what it's meant to be.

There will be a day that Jesus comes back and he claims what belongs to him.

And the Bible says that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Because in the presence of Jesus, no one will be able to keep to their feet.

But on this side, on this side of that moment, there is a joy.

There's a joy that awaits us that's literally ours for the taking.

If we can just be like him and put someone else's joy above our own.

Exponential happiness, that's what we're going for this week.

And it's gonna take prayer and it's gonna take focus, and it's not easy, but it works, people, it works.

So let's pray together and let's ask God to get that going for us right now.

Jesus, thank you so much for this church.

I love this place, I love these people.

I love being part of a place and a family where we can talk about life as it is, where we don't have to pretend, we don't have to sugarcoat anything, and where everyone can know that I have athletes' foot right now.

Which is true.

Jesus, I pray seriously, I pray, Lord, that you would put people on our hearts this week.

Even right now, Lord, I pray that as we're praying, you would put people on our hearts that we need to serve.

Because that's what you do.

Lord, I just I picture you on the cross.

And while you were on that cross, it was it was us that was on your mind.

It was it was every person that you love so much.

And as you as you died that death, you thought about us.

Our faces were on your mind.

And although what you were going through was pain, you considered it joy.

Just like you said, consider it joy when you face trials.

Consider it pure joy.

Lord, we we want pure joy in our lives, and we know that that only comes when we live to serve.

So, Lord, put someone on our heart right now, put a face in our mind right now, and every single person in this room, I pray that right now there is there is a person that comes to the forefront of their mind, and they know that this week, that's my person.

This week, that's my person to serve.

This week, their joy matters more to me than their own.

This week, Lord, we're gonna serve those people.

And we're gonna see our own happiness exponentially multiplied, Lord.

Because that's what you want for us.

And we just pray this in your name, Jesus, we love you so much.

Amen.