The Call of Christian Love

I want to begin tonight in our third session on Christian Hedonism by reading a verse from Matthew 13, a very familiar one, Matthew 13, 44. It was one of the verses that sparked my thinking on these things early on and became a centerpiece in my whole understanding of motivation. The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up.

Then in his joy, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. So you have treasure. When you find the kingdom, you know you found infinitely valuable treasure.

So that when you sell everything else to have it, you can do it with joy. That's the link here. He went and he sold everything he had.

He sold his house. He sold his car. He sold his extra clothes.

I presume he sold all of the peripherals of life and he didn't do it begrudgingly. He did it with joy because he had found the treasure that would satisfy him forever. So let's start with prayer and ask the Lord to open our eyes to the value of what we have in the kingdom.

Fathers, we begin this third session now tonight on this tremendously important topic of pursuing our joy in loving others. I pray that the value of the kingdom would be revealed to our hearts. Many times we stand before infinite value and we are blind to it.

And I pray that our hearts would be made sensitive to value. You are of infinite worth, Father, your rule and your reign in the world and your saving work to draw us to yourself and give us your fellowship forever and ever in the kingdom cannot be bought with any price if we could pay everything. You have given it freely to those who will receive it and relish it.

And so grant us tonight to see, to believe, to feel, to relish, to receive. In Jesus name I ask it. Amen.

Let me try to orient tonight's emphasis in relation to last times. I distinguish between vertical hedonism and horizontal hedonism. We've been talking mainly about vertical hedonism.

Now, let me summarize what that is and then bend it out into horizontal hedonism tonight. Vertical hedonism is the conviction that everybody longs to be happy. That that happiness is found only in God in its fullest and longest lasting dimension.

And that therefore you shouldn't try to restrain that desire for happiness, but you should glut it on God. And that God, in fact, is honored when you do that. I just found this week a quote from Spurgeon in his commentary on Psalm 20, verse five.

He said, if joy were more general among the Lord's people, God would be more glorified among men. The happiness of the subjects is the honor of the sovereign. In other words, God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in him.

Or to use the question of the Westminster Catechism, what is the chief end of man? The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying him forever. I got a letter a few weeks ago from a man doing some research and he wanted to argue that's exactly what they meant by and. Well, I don't know for sure if that's what they meant, but that's biblical truth to say it that way.

God is glorified by your enjoyment of him. And we use different illustrations and I may use one before we're done tonight. When you take delight in somebody like a wife.

That person is honored by you, and if you only do things with them and for them out of a sense of stoic duty, they are not as honored. They don't feel like you treasure them as much. And so it is with God vertically.

So vertical hedonism argues that we put God at the center of life and glorify him best when we don't try to restrain our desire for happiness, but give leash and rain to it and feast it on God himself. He's like a fountain of living, everlasting water. And the way to glorify a fountain is to get on on your face and to put it in the water and to drink it in and to stand up and say, oh, that's good.

I love that. That satisfies my thirst. The fountain is very, very honored when you do that.

Now, that's vertical hedonism. Now, tonight. I want to bend this vertical hedonism outward into horizontal hedonism and ask this question.

Is it true that you should pursue your happiness horizontally? Just like I've been commending that you pursue it vertically. I might win your approval by saying, yes, when you go to God, you should go to get joy in God, from God, which glorifies God. I might win that and yet have you questioning inside.

But horizontally, when you help a person change a tire or when you go to be a missionary or if you become a pastor or if you witness to a friend at work or if you go visit somebody in the hospital, should you be pursuing your pleasure in that? Is that genuine love when you pursue your satisfaction and your pleasure in the manifold ways of love? Or should we use the phrase, the old tried and true ethical phrase, benevolent disinterestedness? It's an old phrase that theologians used to use disinterestedness. I wish I had time to talk about that that phrase. I don't like it.

However, I know that some people used it, like Jonathan Edwards, who did not mean what it sounds like it means. I don't like it because it sounds like in order for something to be truly benevolent and loving, you must have no interest in it. You must be disinterested, sort of, I don't even know how to put it in a positive light, I feel so negative about it.

But somehow not doing anything so that you get any benefit or joy or satisfaction in it, but only do it because it's right and because others might benefit from it. Now, I'm going to argue here's my thesis tonight. I've stated it before, but I want to work on it tonight.

The pursuit of pleasure is an essential motive. Essential is a key word there, an essential motive for every good deed. And when I say pursuit of pleasure, I do mean the kind of pleasure we've been talking about up till now, namely pleasure in God, the pursuit of more pleasure in God.

Through good deeds is an essential motive for those good deeds. If you don't have that, in other words, they cease to be good. They become.

To use Paul's phrase, I believe, works of the law, legalism or to put it positively. Or is this negatively? This is negatively. If you abandon the pursuit of full and lasting pleasure, you cannot love people or please God.

That's my thesis now tonight, and I want to work on it with you from text. So if you have a Bible or if you want to reach for one under the pew there, we're going to look for some evidences of this thesis in Scripture. And I direct your attention, first of all, the second Corinthians, second Corinthians chapter eight.

What's happening here in second Corinthians eight, in fact, eight and nine, is that Paul is writing to the church in Corinth to stir them up, to be generous in their giving. And to motivate them to be liberal with a collection that he is taking for the saints down in Jerusalem. And he has just done that up in Macedonia and he uses the Macedonians as an example to the Corinthians for how to give.

So now here's a model of love. When I read this with you, ask yourself, what is love and what are the motives that move a person to be generous with their money in acts of love for other people? Second Corinthians eight, one. We want you to know, brethren, about the grace of God which has been shown in the churches of Macedonia.

So we begin with the grace of God being poured out on these churches in Macedonia for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy. And their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of liberality on their part. Now, I'm going to drop down to verse eight just to show you that he's talking about love here.

He says, I say this not as a command, but to prove by the earnestness of others, namely those Macedonians I just referred to, that your love also like theirs is genuine. So he what he just described in verses one and two, he now defines as love in verse eight. So what is love? It's got several parts.

Let's just look at them. Love begins with the grace of God poured out in your life. You can never truly love another person until God's grace is shed abroad in your heart until you are loved.

In other words, by God and his love and his grace are filling you. The next step in the text is that joy overflowed in the midst of affliction and poverty. Now, notice the joy that they had that began overflowing for others did not come because their outward circumstances had changed.

They were still poor. I don't believe in prosperity theology. I don't believe God holds out to Christians that they will get rich.

In fact, I think he warns us, beware of the desire to get rich. And he tells us what to do with money if we start to get rich, namely, get rid of it fast. That is, become a channel.

God may keep pouring it in. You may have a stunningly successful business. No sin in that.

Hoarding it is sinful. Well, these people didn't get a stunningly successful business. They stayed poor.

At least for a season in their extreme poverty, their abundance of joy overflowed. Now, here's the third step in a wealth of liberality to others. So you got God's grace flowing in joy, rising up and liberality overflowing.

To meet the needs of the poor saints that Paul is collecting this money for down in Jerusalem. Now, notice something else in verse four. I didn't read this, but notice it.

It says they begged Paul earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints. Now, when you beg somebody for something like if my child were to say, oh, let me go again on the roller coaster, Daddy, please let me go one more time on the roller coaster. He is not acting out of a sense of duty.

When he talks like that, he's not stating a moral conviction. I really should ride on the roller coaster. It's God's will that I ride on the roller coaster.

You are a preacher and you believe in the will of God and I'm your son and all these reasons would persuade you to give me money and I will get on the roller coaster. So that's not the atmosphere, nor is that the atmosphere here. They begged.

They begged Paul earnestly for the favor. Take another offering. Please take another offering.

This is really strange. These are weird people. They are people who have been so unbelievably graced.

They are so staggered by the grace of God. They are willing to let goods and kindred go and live on God in their poverty that they say, please let us give a little more. Isn't that wild? I just think this is amazing.

Now, what's your definition of love on the basis of those several verses? I would put it like this. Love is the overflow of joy in God, which meets the needs of others. Do you think that's fair inference from those verses? Grace coming down, verse one, joy rising up, liberality overflowing, a heart that begs to be more liberal, and then in verse 80 says, I want to test to see if your love is just like their love was genuine.

Genuine love operates from impulses like that. It's not duty laden. It's not works oriented.

Genuine heartfelt love says, can I do a little more? Can I do a little more? God has done so much. So the vertical hedonism of joy in God is bent out or the other metaphor is overflow. It overflows and love by definition is the overflow of joy in God, extending or expanding to draw others into it.

Or another way to say it would be love is the grace driven impulse to enlarge our joy in God by bringing others into the enjoyment of it. You got that? Love is the grace driven impulse to enlarge our joy. There's the hedonism of it to enlarge our joy in God by drawing others into it or by reaching others with it.

That's my definition of joy. Now, I mean of love. Now, I want to raise a question that I raised and dealt with a little bit last time, namely this whole issue of feelings.

Remember, I referred to Joseph Fletcher and his argument that love couldn't be a feeling because love is commanded and feelings can't be commanded and therefore love can't be a feeling. And I rejected that argument on biblical bases, namely feelings are commanded in the Bible, many of them, and I listed off a dozen or so in the last talk. What you can see is that love, the way I've defined it, has a strong emotional component, a strong heart component.

Mere acts don't get called love in my vocabulary. And I'll try to show you from Paul that they don't get called love in his either. For example, why did Paul say in 1 Corinthians 13, 3, if I give away all that I have, that sounds like what they were doing in Macedonia, if I give away all that I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned but have not love, so you can give away all that you have and you can give your body to be burned and be a loveless person.

That's scary. That's scary. Love is not mere action.

Even the most radical sacrifice of laying your life down may not be love. Why not? Because love has a God component, grace flowing in. It has a heart component, overflowing in liberality.

Please let me do more. Love has to do with what's going on in here with God and delight and satisfaction in Him as well as what's going on out here when you give away all your goods to feed the poor and give your body to be burned. You know, there's a God-centeredness to all of this that I want to kind of stick a parenthesis in here to emphasize.

My burden in these talks, in fact, my burden in all of life and ministry, is to put God back at the center. I have a feeling that in evangelicalism across America, perhaps around the world, our intellectual force is not as strong as it could be, and our purity of life is not as strong as it could be, and our power in mission and our authenticity and intensity in worship isn't what it should be because God isn't where He should be in our lives. I think in evangelicalism in general, and this is just a broad generalization with no fingers pointed at any particular ministry, in general, it seems to me that we are a fairly man-centered, technique-oriented group of people, not ravished with God, not bent on delighting in Him above all else.

It seems to me that we are not as centered on Him in our preaching as we should be, but it tends to be very relational, I think, in many, many churches. Our counseling tends to be self-esteem-oriented rather than God-esteem-oriented. Our Sunday-stool curricula tend to be moralistic, like you take the story of the boy with the fishes, and what's the point you get? Share your lunch.

That's not the point of the story, folks. The point of the story is Jesus Christ takes little and by miraculous sovereign power multiplies it for the smallest, most insignificant person to do wonders. But we're not God-centered enough to see that or to say that for our kids.

Our mission strategies tend to maximize anthropology and all kinds of techniques. Our social agenda with justice and equality doesn't seem to be as Godward to me as it should be. Our church growth efforts seem to ignore the supernatural and the miracle of conversion and talk about all kinds of sociological dimensions.

Our gospel tends to be decisionistic and man-centered rather than emphasizing the glory and power of God in producing converts. We are not, by and large, a God-besotted people. And my aim in these talks, it may not seem as clear to you as it does to me, I hope it will before we're done, is to put God back at the center.

To put God back at the center. And so when I define love as the overflow of joy in God, I have tried to put God at the center of the definition of love. You see that? So many people try to define horizontal love, the experience of love like this, without ever putting God in the equation.

And so he just vanishes in all our good deeds. And when he vanishes, they cease to be good. Acts that are not Godward, rooted in God, resting in God, defined and guided by God for God's glory are not good.

They're not ultimately valuable. And so I hope you can see one of my agendas in this whole enterprise of Christian hedonism is to put God back at the center of all of our motivation. Now, I want to move to another text to try to undergird what we have seen.

I'm arguing that an essential motive for every good deed is the quest of your own pleasure. And I hope you can already see that in the definition of love. You want more of God.

It's floating and you want to let it out, let it expand, draw others into it and enjoy him more. Now, stay right here in 2 Corinthians with me and drop down a chapter to chapter nine, verse seven. Paul is still arguing and motivating about money.

If you ever thought, oh, we shouldn't talk about money so much or whatever. I don't think we do talk about money a lot at Bethlehem. We probably should talk about it a lot more if we were to be balanced in a biblical way.

These two chapters are all about money. They're as God-centered as you could ask money talk to be, but they are all from the beginning of chapter eight to the middle of chapter nine, at least, or maybe the end, an effort to motivate the Corinthians to give generously. Verse seven, each one must do as he has made up his mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

Now, I take that to mean that God is not pleased when people act benevolently, but don't do it gladly. God is not pleased when people act benevolently, when they do nice things for other people without gladness in it, which means this comes right to the heart of my thesis. Which means if you are indifferent to whether you experience gladness in and through, and because of an act of justice or kindness or love, you are indifferent to what pleases God.

And that is sin. To be indifferent to what pleases God is sin. And what pleases God is your gladness in giving.

To say it isn't important what I feel when I give, it's only important that I give, is simply to say that you are indifferent to sin. When you see something like that, it just blows you away, blows me away, to be indifferent to the quest for gladness in giving or cheerfulness in giving. To come into the church on Sunday, knowing there'll be an offering, and to say to yourself, because you've been taught by Immanuel Kant or picked it up from the atmosphere or the air or wherever, it doesn't really matter here what I'm feeling in this service.

What matters to honor God is that I do the will of God, and the will of God is that I tithe and therefore I put my check in and God will be pleased with me. Well, that just totally ignores the Bible. That's philosophy.

This is what Paul meant when he talked about vain philosophy. That's philosophy. It's bad philosophy.

There is good philosophy, but it's not biblical. What happens is as you see the offering coming and I bow up here and I ask God to come and make this an act of worship, I'm always meaning the same thing. You should be saying if you don't feel any desire to give, oh, God, I am so sorry.

Forgive me for my lack of heart engagement with what I'm about to do. Next thing you should do after repentance is plead for a kindling of your heart. Lord, come, give me a heart like you did the Macedonians.

You poured out your grace upon them. I know you've been gracious to me. Open my eyes to it.

Help me to see and feel how wonderful you've been to me in my life and how many good things have come my way and what a great hope I have in heaven Release me from this disinclination to give right now and help me to want to as well as to be able to. That's the second prayer. And then when you act and you do it, whether the feeling came or not, you bow and you thank the Lord that he gave you the grace to do at least as much as you could do.

But to settle for gladness giving is to settle for what displeases God. I found today, if I can find it here, there it is, a copy of something that I had forgotten that I received in the mail years ago from a friend of mine named Don Westblade who teaches at Hillsdale College. Don used to work at the Beinecke Library in Yale on the Jonathan Edwards manuscripts.

There are probably 1,200 sermons of Edwards that have never been printed. They're all in this little tiny scrawl in the basement of the Beinecke Library at Yale University and they are slowly chipping away at these, getting them transcribed and edited, and Yale plans to publish three volumes of these sermons. One of them, and I'm not even allowed to quote this in print, I think, I hope I'm allowed to quote it in word, is a sermon on Song of Solomon, chapter 5, verse 1, which closes with these words, eat, oh friends, and drink.

Drink deeply, oh lovers. I can't imagine what Edwards does with that. Here's the doctrine.

Edwards always begins with a doctrine and then he unfolds the doctrine, then he applies. Here's the doctrine that he states on the basis of that verse. Doctrine, that persons need not and ought not to set any bounds to their spiritual and gracious appetites.

And then let me just read you a couple of choice paragraphs. If you ever wondered if Jonathan Edwards, the greatest theologian that this country has ever produced, was a Christian hedonist to the core, you will not doubt it, I hope, after I read you a couple of paragraphs. Men may be as covetous as they please.

If I may so speak, I can just hear the criticisms, you know, that I get for hedonism, and here he is commending covetousness. Men may be as covetous as they please after spiritual riches, and as eager as they please to heap up treasure in heaven, or ambitious as they please of spiritual and eternal honor and glory, and as voluptuous as they please with respect to spiritual pleasures. Oh, Edwards is good.

Next paragraph. They may indulge those appetites as much as they will in their thoughts and meditations, and in their practice, they may drink, yea, swim in the rivers of spiritual pleasure. And then he concludes with these four points.

Endeavor to increase spiritual appetites by meditating on spiritual objects. Two, endeavor to promote spiritual appetites by laying yourself in the way of allurement. Three, watch the first beginnings of the exercise of these inclinations and promote them.

We are to note the first beginnings of lustful inclinations to suppress, but we here are to do the contrary, stir up the proper inclinations. Four, live in the practice of these inclinations. To be indifferent to what pleases God, namely cheerful giving, is to be indifferent to sin.

The opposite is to be like Jonathan Edwards. Don't be indifferent to whether you have a heart desire to give. When you detect the slightest little glimmer in your life that the Holy Spirit is working such a generosity, fan it, blow on it, stoke it, pour gas on it, oil, do anything to rise those affections, raise those affections.

Okay, we are not to be indifferent, and that's where I get my thesis, namely that the desire for pleasure in God is an essential motive for every good deed, not an optional one. Now, let me take you to several texts that are designed for vocational Christian leaders. Elders, missionaries, pastors, they are not uniquely adapted to us.

They are relevant for you, but it just so happens that the New Testament seems to put some store by talking to people like me that I ought to have a certain kind of motive in my ministry. You can apply it to your ministry and your motives, but the Bible is especially eager that pastors and elders and missionaries have right motives. Okay, 1 Peter chapter 5 verse 2 says to elders, Peter says, I'm writing to you elders as a fellow elder, tend the flock of God.

Those of you who are here at Bethlehem, that's you. Tend the flock of God that is in your charge. He's talking to me, telling me how to be a shepherd here.

Not under constraint, that is, I'm not supposed to act under constraint like God has a whip over me, but willingly, not for shameful gain. Money isn't to be my motive, but eagerly. Now, take those two words willingly and eagerly.

Don't you think that's Peter's way of saying the Lord loves a cheerful pastor? Paul said the Lord loves a cheerful giver. Peter says to pastors and to elders, don't do your work under constraint, do it willingly. Don't do your work for money, do it eagerly.

In other words, want to do it, like your job, love the ministry, delight in it. Let me read you this quote from Phillips Brooks, who I think he's the pastor who wrote Old Little Town of Bethlehem about 100 years ago, worked in Boston. Here's a great quote.

I remember reading it when I first came to Bethlehem, and it stirred me to want to be a good pastor and to love the ministry. It still does. I think, again, that it is essential, he says, to the preacher's success that he should thoroughly enjoy his work.

I mean, in the actual doing of it, and not only in its idea. No man to whom the details of his task are repulsive can do his task well, constantly, however full he may be of its spirit. He may make one bold dash at it and carry it over all his disgusts, but he cannot work at it year after year, day after day.

Therefore, count it not merely a perfectly legitimate pleasure, count it an essential element of your power. If you can feel a simple delight in what you have to do as a minister, in the fervor of writing, in the glow of speaking, in the standing before men and moving them in contact with the young, the more thoroughly you enjoy it, the better you will do it all. Now, I think that is a paraphrase of 1 Peter 5, 2. And therefore, I commend all of you who have any measure of leadership at all, that if you are indifferent to whether you're happy in that, you're indifferent to what displeases God.

To do the work of the ministry in a gutting it out, begrudging, dutiful, but joyless way does not honor the Lord. Also, it doesn't make for a healthy church. Let me show you that from Hebrews 13.

Let me read you Hebrews 13, 17. Obey your leaders. Now, this is an address to the church, but really it comes back on the leaders and describes the way they ought to do their work.

Obey your leaders and submit to them for they are keeping watch over your souls as men who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not sadly, for that would be of no advantage to you. Now, think about that for a minute.

Let pastors, leaders, elders do their work with joy. Not with sadness. Why? Because then they would be unhappy and quit and go to another church.

No, because that would be of no advantage to you. Therefore, love in the heart of a pastor demands that he not be indifferent to whether he does his work sadly or gladly. If it is no advantage to his people, when he does it sadly, and he says to himself, it doesn't matter whether I do my work sadly or not.

What matters is that I do it. He's not caring about his people because the Bible says they get no advantage when he does it sadly. And if he's for their advantage, he must be for his joy.

Get it? He can't be indifferent to his joy in the ministry if he's not indifferent to their advantage. If I love you, I must love the ministry. I must delight in my ministry.

Why would that be? I wonder. It's really not hard. A church with a happy pastor is a healthy church by and large.

You don't find many churches with a thriving, happy pastor or pastoral team that's not a healthy church. It rubs off. A murmuring pastor, a pastor who uses his pulpit to constantly be whipping up on the people that criticized him the week before or who is manifesting his self-pity because they're not giving enough or because they don't witness enough.

I mean, it all comes through. People can hear that. This guy's not happy.

And he doesn't like us. And therefore, I'm not happy. And I think this is not a good place to be.

So it just pays in numerous ways to be an authentically happy, happy leader. Now, here's the third text related to elders. It's found in Acts chapter 20, verse 35.

You know this. This is one of the most famous verses in the New Testament, I think. But you might not have noticed one or two words in it in their connection.

Acts 20, 35, Paul is speaking to the elders at Ephesus just before he leaves them at that poignant moment. And they kiss on the beach. And he never returns, perhaps.

He says, in all things, I have shown you that by so toiling, one must help the weak. Remembering the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, it is more blessed to give than to receive. Now, the word I want you to see in this text is the word remembering because there are so many philosophers who have drawn their ethics out of the air of their speculations rather than out of exegesis of texts who will tell you if you desire reward in an act of love, you destroy its moral beauty.

The desire for reward wrecks your love. Now, if that were true, Paul would have to have written in all things, I have shown you that by so doing, one must help the weak, forgetting the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said it is more blessed to give than receive. Did I miss you there? What he would have to say is.

We all know that Jesus said it's more blessed to give than receive, but we know that wrecks morality to think about such things because he's promising the reward of blessing when you do good to people. And of course, that promise ruins everything. And so by all means, forget what Jesus said.

And then you will be able to love purely without any desire to be blessed in loving. Well, I don't think that's exegesis, that's philosophical manipulation of texts. What the text does say is.

If you're hard put to love somebody, like if it's eleven o'clock at night and you're getting ready to go to bed and the phone rings that somebody just went into the hospital, a car accident, maybe, or it's your day off. This is a real one from two weeks ago. Not last week, Lily.

It's your day off. You get the phone call, Lily Harding's just in an automobile accident. How serious? Well, we're not sure.

Now, at that point, as you're wrestling with whether to do something like go to Ramsey Hospital or not on your day off and you don't feel like it, you remember what the Lord said and you say, do you believe it? Do I believe you, Lord, that for me to go and spend a couple hours with John and Leah praying because it really was quite serious? And even if it wasn't, they needed somebody. That that would hold out to me vastly more happiness than what was I doing? I can't even remember that afternoon on my day off. You argue with God's word and promise it's going to come back to you.

Now, let me tell you this. Do you think as I walked in to the emergency room over there, took me five minutes, they wouldn't let me in at first. I said, well, I'm a preacher.

I'm a pastor. They want me in there. Let me in.

So finally, they let Dean and me in there. And Leah, of course, you know what she does like this. And now, if I were to say to them, didn't come to my mind to say I had other things to say.

But if I had said to them, you know. At first, I didn't really feel like coming. And it's not an admirable confession, but I didn't.

But I prayed and the Lord brought to mind Acts 20, 35, that there's tremendous blessing in this. And it just flooded over me, Leah, that my joy would be tremendously increased. By coming and spending time with you.

And I'm so glad that I've come. Do you think she would say to me, you are so selfish. All you ever think about is your own happiness.

I don't think she would. In fact, if I had said. Leah, I didn't feel like coming, but I realized feelings don't matter to my duty to be here.

And I'm here as a pastor and don't feel anything particular right now at all. But I'm here. In other words, a person feels loved more when that love is overflowing joy than when it is the demonstration of duty, merely.

They really do. To walk into a hospital room and have a person look up in your face and say, Pastor, you didn't need to do this. Why did you come? And to answer them, I really enjoy coming to talk to you.

It brings me pleasure to see you. I hope I can be used by God to strengthen your faith. I get kicks out of strengthening, hurting people's faith.

Nobody's going to take offense at that and call you a selfish person. Even though it is raw hedonism, it is more loving to go joyfully. To a hospital room than to grow, to go merely dutifully to a hospital room.

My conclusion so far and what we've seen is that the hindrance to loving people is the same hindrance that we saw to worshiping God. And it isn't that everybody in this room and everybody in this church and around the world. Wants to be happy.

That is not the obstacle that everybody's pursuing their own happiness. That's not the obstacle. I will never criticize you as a church for pursuing your own happiness.

I will only criticize you for pursuing it in the wrong place. And what we've done this week is add the. Horizontal dimension that if you really want to maximize your joy in God, you will draw others into it.

You will let it spill over to other people. So I just cry out to America, you're not nearly hedonistic enough. Come on, lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.

Sell your possessions, give alms, lay it up there where there's no. Moth or rush to corrupt and no thief that breaks in and steal all your joys down here are going to fade the grass withers, the flower falls. But the word of the Lord and all those joys that flow from it abides.

Forever. So we get good news. Let me take you to a few more texts.

I think we've got a little more time here, and there are some absolutely stunning texts in Hebrews chapters 10 and 11 and 12, which just undergird this thesis that an essential motive for good deeds is the pursuit of your own joy. And if you try to abandon that pursuit. You will wind up not pleasing God who loves cheerful givers, and you will wind up not loving people who know that they are most loved when you come to them with joy rather than begrudgingly.

If you have a Bible, turn with me to Hebrews 10, 32 to 34. We'll just read how the early church was motivated to lay its life on the line in love. How was it motivated to lay its life on the line in love? Starting at verse 32, recall the former days when after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with suffering, sometimes being publicly exposed to abuse and affliction and sometimes being partners with those so treated.

For you had compassion on the prisoners. Now, what's this? You had compassion on the prisoners and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property and the world since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. So here's the situation.

Some of the Christians had been arrested and put in jail. It was a dangerous question. If we go to visit them, they might throw us in jail.

Should we go underground or should we go public? Now, how did they make that choice? It says they thought about their. Reward, since you yourselves have a better possession and an abiding one, they said they looked at their own lives and they said the steadfast love of the Lord is better than life. And then they looked at their possessions and they said, we got a better possession in heaven.

And then they looked at their children and they said, thinking ahead to Martin Luther, let goods and kindred go this mortal life also the body they may kill. God's truth abideth still. His kingdom is forever.

And they went. And when they went, they plundered their property. They burned their house or threw their furniture out.

I don't know what they did. They plundered their property. And when they turned and saw it, what does the text say they did? They rejoiced.

You joyfully accepted the plundering of your property. Now, if you would ask me then tonight, whence, Pastor John, is the source of power to risk your life in the cause of love? I would say, get real clear the source of joy in the kingdom. Get real clear how glorious your reward is.

Get real clear the promise of Jesus that it is more blessed to give than to receive. Look down at chapter 11, verses 24 to 26. Watch Moses.

He does the same thing. This author is very consistent in this hedonistic motivation. By faith, Moses, when he was a grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to share ill treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.

He considered abuse, suffered for Christ, greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt. Why? Because he looked to the reward. So he denied himself the fleeting pleasures of sin in Egypt.

He embraced abuse for 40 years with his recalcitrant people. And he got his strength by looking to the reward that God had promised him. And that's where you'll get your strength too.

And Moses did not cease to be a loving man toward Israel when he looked to the reward, because the reward was God. And what he was offering Israel was God. And the more he could have of God, the more he could give to them.

It's all one. And then chapter 12, verse 2, again, Jesus, this time, look to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross. The greatest act of love for people that was ever performed by any human being, namely the death of Jesus, was performed in the strength of hope for Jesus.

And the joy. And if you are not going to criticize Jesus for that, then don't criticize yourself either. Let me close with just an illustration or two of how this has driven the missionaries who have sacrificed most.

Howard Taylor was the son of Hudson Taylor. Here's a quote from what happened to him and his wife. In the province of Henan, the tailors opened two mission stations.

Life was sometimes difficult. At one of these stations they were robbed and beaten. Later, Geraldine, his wife, wrote, after a riot when our lives had been saved by a miracle, when we were sitting bruised and bleeding amidst the ruins of our home, in that hour heaven itself was open to us, and we tasted then and afterwards a joy so marvelous that I scarcely like to speak about it here as we realized we had been permitted to suffer something for Christ's sake.

That's the way those who have suffered most have spoken. And Jonathan Edwards wrote in his resolutions, to endeavor to obtain for myself as much happiness in the world to come as I possibly can with all the power, might, vigor, vehemence, yea violence I am capable of or can bring myself to exert in any way that can be thought of. He was driven by his hope in God and in the pleasures of a world to come, and that does enable you to tremendous sacrifice, although both David Livingston and Hudson Taylor came to the ends of their lives and said, I never made a sacrifice.

And I hope you could unpack why that is on the basis of tonight's message. Let's pray. Lord, I give you these friends and all who will watch this video and ask that you would open our eyes to the joy of heaven and release us from the fear of death and the fear of poverty, the fear of loneliness, the fear of any loss.

Release us for love, the horizontal work of Christian hedonism. In Jesus' name, amen.