Sermon Tone Analysis

God

Jesus

Spirit

Word

Church

Disciple

Magnify…mangylo phil i 20

Christian Hedonism Isn’t Cute

Our Good, His Glory

I realize that the word hedonism may cause some of you to think, “Piper, don’t you know what happened 180 miles west of here in Sutherland Springs last Sunday?

And you still want to be cute with your little pet phrase Christian Hedonism?”

No.

Under the call to preach the word of God this morning, and in the context of God’s people gathered for corporate worship, I don’t do cute.

I am aware that 26 or our brothers and sisters — from infants to the elderly — were murdered in the house of God.

And I am aware that between then and now 7,000 people have died in America every day — hundreds of them in excruciating pain, and most of them probably without any hope of heaven.

And that Hurricane Harvey may cost your region $190 billion, and massive hardship on the lives of thousands.

The Sonoma County wildfires in California caused damages of $2.8 billion, ruined 14,000 homes, and killed over 40 people.

I know that President Trump and North Korean Chairman Kim Jong-un go back and forth with provocative warnings, and put us on the brink of nuclear war.

And I am aware that Charlottesville has pulled a thread on the fabric of racial harmony that, if God doesn’t stop us, could unravel what we have worked toward so hard for decades.

And I know that in a room with this many people, the sorrows are incalculable: cancer, divorce, a runaway teenager, a lost job, perhaps your first Sunday back after the most painful season of your life.

This is our world, our life.

I don’t do cute.

And I get angry at churches that do.

Our Good, His Glory

I’m going to talk about something John Piper calls Christian Hedonism this morning...not to be cute or trendy or because I think John Piper is the only person who knows how to explain the Bible in a way that makes it change everything…although there are sprinkles of truth in that statement...

I am going to talk about this this morning because there are six things we need to understand if we are to speak truth to this world.

This view of Biblical truth gave me the biblical answer to one of the most difficult problems in my all of life and subsequently this treasure of truth opened up all of life to me as Biblical truth…and especially these specific areas.

These two truths have shed more light on God’s word in God’s world than anything else in myh entire life…and I don’t talk about them enough…and we are going to be digging in a trasure field of these truthsin Pauls letters…and this isthe message I believe we are called to bring to our Macedonia…Fall Creek Wisconsin.

I honestly…with no doubt in my mind…beliveing and knowing theses truths and difining six biblical based on these biblical truths will change everythingfor you…for us…and therefor for our life....mission…and the people in our atmosphere.

And I am going to talk about Christian Hedonism because if, by the power of the Holy Spirit, it took root in your life, it would change everything for the better — for your good and God’s glory.

So, let’s take those two reasons one at a time.

Unresolvable Tension

First, Christian Hedonism gave me a biblical answer to one of the most difficult problems in my life almost fifty years ago.

I grew up in Greenville, South Carolina in a Southern Baptist Church, in a happy, gospel-saturated home.

And I am deeply thankful.

But when I went off to college, there was a tension deep in my soul I could not resolve.

I knew two things.

I knew from the Bible and from my father that God intended me to live for his glory.

My dad would say, “Whatever you do, son, ‘whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God’ ().”

I knew that John Piper wanted to be happy.

I could no more not want to be happy than I could not hunger if I skipped two days of eating.

The first truth was part of what it means for God to be God.

The second truth was part of what it means for me to be human.

And I could not fit the two together.

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There seemed to hang in the air the assumption that, if I did something good in order to be happy, the God-centered morality of it was compromised.

All I could remember were the preachers who said, when they summoned me to live for God’s glory, things like, “Put your will on the altar and do God’s will.”

In other words, there’s always tension between my desire to be happy and God’s desire to be glorified.

One of them has to go.

And then, when I was 22 years old, over the course of several months, my professor in seminary, Daniel Fuller, together with C.S. Lewis and Jonathan Edwards, conspired to make me a Christian Hedonist and rescue me from a terrible misunderstanding of how God is glorified.

They pointed me to the Bible in a way I had not noticed.

Even Death Is Gain

I invite you to open your Bibles to .

And I will try to condense into a few minutes what took me months to grasp.

It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored [or magnified] in my body, whether by life or by death.

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

Notice in verse 20 that Paul’s all-consuming passion in life is that Christ would be magnified.

That’s what my father had taught me.

I saw that in the Bible.

I knew that’s why I should live.

I wanted to live that way.

I wanted Christ to be seen and known as a magnificent Savior and a magnificent King and a magnificent Friend through my bodily life, whether I lived or whether I died.

But I had never followed Paul’s logic in verses 21–23.

Follow it with me.

As soon as he says in verse 20 that Christ can be magnified in my life or my death, he adds verse 21 and gives the basis for how that can happen.

And notice how “to live” in verse 21 corresponds to “by life” in verse 20, and how “to die” in verse 21 corresponds to “by death” in verse 20.

So, he’s explaining in verse 21 how it is that Christ will be magnificent in Paul’s body both in dying and in living.

No Comparison

So, how does that work?

If you see this, and if it penetrates to the center of your soul, you’ll never be the same again.

How does it work that Paul’s dying will make Christ look magnificent?

Paul’s answer is, “My death will make Christ look magnificent because ‘for me to die is gain.’

I want you to see this for yourself, and not take my word for it.

Leave out, for the time being, the issue of how your life makes Christ look magnificent.

Collapse verses 20 and 21 to just explain how death works: “Christ will be magnified in my body by death, . . .

for to me to die is gain.”

Now when you die, your spouse is gone, sex is gone, the children are gone, the dream retirement is gone, hobbies are gone, and until the resurrection, the body, with all its pleasures, is gone.

So, what does Paul mean that all this loss can be called gain?

He gives the answer in verses 22–23,

If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me.

Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell.

I am hard pressed between the two.

My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.

When Paul compares all the pleasures that are confined to this physical world with the pleasure of being with Christ face-to-face, he calls death, which takes all those pleasures and gives him Christ, gain.

Just like he says in , “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”

Duty-Bound to Delight

So, according to the logic — the flow of thought — from verses 20–23, how is Christ shown to be magnificent in your dying?

Paul’s answer is that Christ is shown to be magnificent in our dying when we experience him as more satisfying than all the pleasures that life in this world could give.

Or to state it as my life motto: Christ is most magnified in me when I am most satisfied in him, especially through suffering and death.

That is what I mean by Christian Hedonism.

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And you can see immediately how it solved the ache of the tension in my heart.

All too slowly, I came to realize that God’s passion to be glorified and my passion to be satisfied were not alternatives.

Paul said, Christ is magnified not instead of my being satisfied in him, but by means of my being satisfied in him.

My satisfaction in Christ above all this world, at the point of suffering and death, is what makes him look magnificent.

Therefore, my pursuit of satisfaction — my pursuit of happiness — is not just permitted.

It is mandatory, because glorifying God is mandatory.

And you cannot glorify God in your heart if your heart does not find God more satisfying than everything else.