Finding Godly Joy

Good afternoon, everyone! I hope everyone's had a good week. Take just a minute here to get the technology set up. Good to see everyone here today. Hopefully keeping the lights down won't be a bad thing. If anyone starts nodding off, we'll just crank the sound off and get some feedback to keep everyone away. There we go. I see some dim lights coming up.

Anyone want to guess what the topic is for today? I want to speak today about the topic of joy. As a starting point in thinking about it, we look out at everything going on in the world around us today and what people spend their time doing and thinking about.

There's a lot of hunger out there for people to find true joy. Happiness, contentment, however it is that people think about verbalizing it. But when we think about the people we rub shoulders with on a day-to-day basis, whether that's at work in our neighborhood, at school, the challenge is to find joy. We live, of course, in a very turbulent world. So when we think about all the things that are going on, whether it's things that go on in our own lives, and we know that there's plenty of turbulence and trials in many of our lives right now as a congregation, but then we also look around at things going on in the world at large and things that people struggle with all the time, finding a sense of fulfilling and enduring joy is a challenge that people face. I'd like to read a short article that I found on the Internet. I find all these stories floating around. But this one is called The Businessman and the Fisherman, and it kind of attacks this topic as well from a slightly different angle. The businessman, it says in this story, was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The businessman complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. The Mexicans replied, well, only a little while. The businessman then asked why he didn't stay out longer and catch more fish. The Mexicans said he had enough to support his family's immediate needs. The businessman then asked, but what do you do with the rest of your time? And the Mexican fisherman said, I sleep late, I fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening, and I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and a busy life. The businessman scoffed, I'm a Harvard MBA and I could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds buy a bigger boat. And with the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats. Eventually, you'd have a fleet of fishing boats. And instead of selling your catch to a middleman, you could sell directly to the processor and eventually open your own cannery. You'd control the product, processing a distribution. You'd need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City. Then LA and eventually New York City, where you could run your own expanding enterprise. The Mexican fisherman asked, but, Senor, how long will all this take? To which the businessman replied, 15 to 20 years. But what then, Senor? The businessman laughed and said, that's the best part. When the time is right, you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions. Millions, Senor? Then what?

The businessman said, then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village, where you would sleep late. Fish a little. Play with your kids. Take a siesta with your wife. Stroll to the village in the evenings, where you could sip wine and play guitar with your amigos.

And the fisherman, still smiling, looked up and said, isn't that what I'm doing right now? So, things we do, and stories like that sometimes underscore some of the futility we'll go to in our lives, right? To find joy, to find something that gives us fulfillment. And that's the topic that I'd like to explore a little more today, the idea of finding godly joy.

And we'll go at it in three dimensions here. The price of admission, it's all about the dirt and the sun, and optimism, the enemy of joy. I'm sure that all makes a lot of sense to you. Either that or you think I've taken leave of my senses. But let's get into it, and I think it'll make a little more sense as we go along. So let's talk first about the price of admission. So what do I mean by the price of admission? So, to get into an amusement park and ride all the rides that you can, you've got to pay the price of admission to get into the park, right?

So what is it that we need to foundationally understand and consider when it comes to the topic of joy? Let's turn first to 2 Timothy. 2 Timothy 1 or 3 verses 1 through 4. It talks in this passage, I think we know, about things that will be happening at the end time, and the types of behaviors, moods, the way people will be in the end times. And in verse 1, but know this, that in the last days perilous times will come. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disbeaded to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanders, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, and lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.

So one of the signs here, along with all of these other terrible actions and activities, is that people will be lovers of pleasure. So obviously showing that we should not be lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. By contrast, though, when we look in Galatians 5 and we read the fruits of God's Spirit in Galatians 5, 22, and 23, we see very clearly that joy is one of those fruits, which has to lead us to answer the question, what is the difference?

There clearly is a difference between pleasure and seeking pleasure and finding joy. And that's what we need to foundationally think about and understand. So clearly there's a difference between them. And we'll explore in a few minutes an example that will walk us through that difference. But when we think about it, and I've read some interesting articles as I was preparing for this message, one stuck with me in particular, and it talks about the makeup of the human brain.

And it talks about the center in the brain that is there for pleasure, and it's part of the brain that feels pleasure. And it talked about the fact that in today's world, we're almost oversaturated by different stimulus to the point where we're just searching for one thing after another that's going to trigger that stimulus, that pleasure in the brain.

And you can talk about it in all kinds of different ways. There's articles and write-ups out there, for example, about video game addiction and how people will sit for literally hours on end and play video games, even to the extent where they won't eat, sleep, or go to the bathroom for hours on end. And it causes this chemical stimulation in the brain when you combine the vision and the sound and everything else going on.

And what that does is overstimulate portions of the brain, and it's not just video games, it's other things that people do, whatever it might be that people can become addicted or hooked to, and it can overstimulate those pleasure sensors in the brain to the point where nothing else going on in normal life gives that sense of pleasure. To where, in some ways, people become numb to what's going on in everyday life because it doesn't have those same pleasure stimulators related to it.

And that's one of the things that we have to think about as well in our lives, and as we go through and consider the topic of joy, is our joy and how we feel about life, our relationship with God, our purpose, connected to the things that are going on around us and the things that we're experiencing moment by moment, or are they connected to something bigger? So I'd like to go over to the Feast of Tabernacles as an example, because the Feast is a command in the Bible that the Feast has a command that goes with it, which is that we're to go and to rejoice.

And I think a couple of the things that happen during that Feast are instructive for us to think about in this topic. So we'll start with Leviticus 23 and verses 39 through 43. And let's contemplate briefly the Feast command and what is it that goes on around this idea of rejoicing at the Feast.

So it says here, And you shall take for yourselves on the first day the fruit of beautiful trees, branches of palm trees, the boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God for seven days. You shall keep it as a feast to the Lord for seven days in the year. It shall be a statute forever in your generations. You shall celebrate it in seventh month, and you shall dwell in booths for seven days.

All who are native Israelites shall dwell in booths, that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, for I am the Lord your God. And this is a picture, one sort of depiction set up in this case in a synagogue of what a booth would have looked like. But what I'd like to focus on for a minute is when God brings this festival, this time to rejoice, He tells people to go and to go live in one of these makeshift huts.

And in the last verse that we read, the reason for it was, in part, a reminder, a reminder about how God delivered Israel out of Egypt. And that was to be the source of joy that they had, this idea and the understanding that God had delivered them out from Egypt, from sin, and taken them into a Promised Land. Now, most of the time, when we think of festivals that we have, most festivals you're going to see are right there where you live, right? So, if you're around here and you've got a harvest festival in the fall, when the harvest is coming in, if you go to wine country somewhere and they're making the new wine, those festivals are all right there on the farm, in the homestead, where everything is, right?

Where people can sit back, they look at everything they've brought in, and they celebrate with their neighbors. But God set up a different way of celebrating for the Israelites, one that wasn't focused just on the things that they had and what they'd built up around them, but focused rather on the salvation that God had given them, the fact that He'd taken them out, and even though they were living in flimsy dwellings like this, gave them shelter from the elements and everything that was around them.

Of course, we have to think about how that changes in time. Nowadays, you can go to Sukkah Depot. Sukkah is the name of a booth in Hebrew, so if you go to the right neighborhood, you can just stop by Sukkah Depot and buy one for yourself, so you don't have to make one.

Let's look at one more passage along these lines as well that gives us another element of rejoicing, in this case, at the feast in Deuteronomy 14. And here we'll read verses 23 through 25, Deuteronomy 14. Here it says, But if the journey is too long for you that you're not able to carry the tithe, or if the place is too far from you, then you shall exchange it for money, take the money in your hand, and go to the place which the Lord your God chooses. So again, here it's underscoring not only where they live in booths, but He was taking them away from the place where they live.

So it wasn't like nowadays happens in most places. If you look at Jewish culture, they'll set up a sukkah like we saw, and they'll set it up on the balcony of an apartment building. They'll set it up in the backyard of their house. The command here, in this case, was to go up, and they always went up to Jerusalem. And again, to leave their immediate surroundings.

So the two things that went along with the idea of rejoicing at the feast were actually leaving your home, and living in a temporary dwelling, and one that showed and signified God's blessing and His supernatural protection on people. So again, it took them away from all of the things that they had, all the plenty that they had just done, and the things that they'd done in their fields, as though they had to step back from that a step or two, and reflect on it, and the fact that that was a blessing from God.

Rather than walking out, coming out of their house in the evening, looking out at the fields that they'd tilled, and thinking about all the hard work that they had put in, it made them think about where the blessings came from, and the fact that it was God that brought those things to them. So as we wrap up this first part of it, and thinking about the price of admission, it's the understanding that joy is different than fun. And it results from our relationship with God, and not from our physical surroundings or stimulation.

And so as we think about this idea of joy, and the extra word that I put in the slide, we need to remember and think about the difference between those two things. And the source of joy, in the end, comes from our understanding of God as our sustainer, and despite the fact that our lives might have ups and downs, He's there to sustain us and take us forward. We think also, for example, about Paul and what he wrote, when he said he'd been afflicted, he'd had times of plenty, and he talks in this case about the idea of contentment, the fact that godly contentment is great gain.

And he's really saying the same thing. It didn't matter what kind of physical situation he was in, his faith in God, his understanding of what God was doing in his life and where that life was going, was what gave him the deep and enduring joy that he had.

So let's go to the second point. And for those of you who are keeping pace, like I used to when I was a kid growing up in the church, I'll warn you that the third point is much longer than the first two. So, second point, it's all about the dirt and the sun. So what in the world does that mean? Staying on the theme for a moment of the Feast of Tabernacles, the Book of Ecclesiastes is a book that's traditionally read at the feast time.

And I've wondered about that and puzzled about that for a long time, because when you read the Book of Ecclesiastes, it's kind of depressing, really. Because you're reading this story about Solomon and all the things that he tried to do in order to find joy and to find happiness. And what he, in the end, concluded was it was all futility, and he was just having a difficult time finding anything lasting in what was going on around him physically. Let's look at a few verses that depict this. We'll start in Ecclesiastes 1.

So here you see three key terms that are going to come up, and you see recurring all through Ecclesiastes. I found an interesting article on the site that's noted below. It talks about these three key terms. As we go through Ecclesiastes, it talks a lot about the human. Solomon, in this case, has a human and his musings on life. And vanity, as we saw in these passages we just read a moment ago, comes up over and over again as a topic, as well as the sun. So where do these things come from? What do they mean, and what do they have to do with joy? The word human comes from the word adam, or atom, meaning human or man or human being. And it comes from the word adamma, which means earth, which as we understand from reading in Genesis and the account of the creation, we were made as mankind from the dust of the ground. And what I find interesting is this next point that's brought out in this article, which is that earth is simultaneously an ordinary clot of dirt and has unlimited potential. So when you think about it, you know, dirt is at one time the things we brush off our shoes, we try not to bring into our house. We have to sweep it up every week as the house gets dirty after we've done work in the garden and whatever else. But at the same time, when we go out into that garden, whether we're growing flowers or fruit or just a nice green lawn, the potential that's locked up in that dirt, when you drop a seed in it and when it begins to sprout, when it brings that nourishment for life, two very different things, all ingrained in that one piece of dirt. So this idea of human or Adam, especially when it's used here in Ecclesiastes, conveys a meaning of a being whose potential is limitless, but who needs a great deal of work in order to attain it. Of course, we understand, probably in a way you wouldn't in a Jewish sense, how the Spirit of God that was given to us after the death of Jesus Christ is what allows us to attain that, to be more than just a worthless clump of dirt. I think we've all seen the statistics and the stories that are out there in terms of what the value of a human body is, in terms of the trace elements and the minerals that are in our physical bodies. And I guess it depends on inflation and the price of commodities and things, but as I recall, it's somewhere under $20. If you break down, simply the physical components of our bodies and what they're worth. But of course, we know with the mind that God has given us, with the Spirit that He's given us, we have much greater worth to God, and we're worth much more than the sum of just our physical parts. The next term that repeats throughout the book of Ecclesiastes is vanity. Vanity comes from another Hebrew word, hevel, which means breath, like the breath that you see for a moment when you exhale into the cold air.

Of course, in this part of the country, that doesn't require an explanation, does it? We experience that all the time. But it's gone very quickly, isn't it? And that's what's meant by this term vanity when it's used in the book of Ecclesiastes. And there, in the book, life or material existence is talked about in these ways, like a shadow that passes, like a mist that dissipates, a dream that vanishes, and an existence that's just about vanity or hevel is a vain, empty experience, no matter how well one is off in a material sense.

Again, coming from this article. I find a lot of truth in that, and I think we see that as well in the world around us. And the more that people leave even a foundational, basic understanding that God exists and there's some purpose for human life, and as less and less people believe in that purpose for human life, I think we see a lot more people living lives that are like this, and see people questioning this whole that they can't really identify that makes their life seem somehow just a passing shadow, moving from one thing to the next, where they can't find lasting meaning.

Hopefully our lives are not that way, and that's what this message is about, is how we make sure that it's not. Lastly, the word for son. In Hebrew, the word for son is shemesh.

And through the written and the oral Torah is used as a metaphor for physical life. The son, in a physical sense, controls our life. It gives light and heat, it makes things grow, it makes life possible. So son, in this case, is a metaphor for the human existence. So what does all this mean when we put it together? Everything that is done under the son is futile and meaningless. And we see that written about quite a bit in Ecclesiastes.

Let's look at an example in Ecclesiastes 2, verses 10 and 11, and how these ideas of the human vanity and being under the son come together. Ecclesiastes 2 and verse 10, So if you'll forgive the expression in modern parlance, Ecclesiastes and these verses is basically saying, life sucks and then you die. And plenty of people have that approach to life these days, I think. But that's really when you're living a life under the son.

That's essentially what's being said here. You do all these things, you work hard, you sweat, you have some good times, you have some bad times, you have some bad times, you have some bad times, and when you look back at it all, it's like the breath that you breathe when you walk outside on a cold day, and you see it and a couple seconds later it's gone.

But as we know, life is worth much more than that. And Solomon at this point concludes, I hated life because the work that was done under the son was so distressing to me for all his vanity and grasping for the wind. I'm trying to reach for something that just isn't there. Pinning Jello to the wall might be a common phrase we would use today. So again, the point that I want to focus on here is the things done under the son are vanity and grasping at the wind. And this is what I thought was the incredible insight from reading this article, which is what is done above the son conversely has meaning.

So the key to join our lives is whether our lives are being lived solely under the son. Are our lives about everything that's in this physical and material world? And this ultimately determines if we're going to live lives of great potential or simply live as clods of dirt. And so we have to think about our viewpoint and our lives and whether they're being lived under the son or whether we're taking a different mindset that is above the son beyond what's in this physical world that we have around us and the existences that we have to lead.

Let's see where Solomon ends up with this near the end of Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes 11 verses 9 and 10. He ends up saying, Rejoice, young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth.

Walk in the ways of your heart and in the sight of your eyes. But while you're enjoying life, know that for all these, God will bring you into judgment. Therefore remove sorrow from your heart and put away evil from your flesh, for childhood and youth are vanity. But he makes the conclusion in the end in Ecclesiastes 12 verses 13 and 14. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man's all.

For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil. So his conclusion was, live above the sun. Don't use all of the time to search after all of the things that he did, trying to build palaces and collect all of these exotic things and how many hundreds of wives and concubines that he had. And all of those gave him nothing but a passing joy, just a passing vapor. But it was when you turn your mind, and as he says here in the end, fear in God and keeping His commandments, and that being the sum total, that he knew that something different could be found.

So in summary, for this section, as humans, we have to realize that we're simultaneously worthless and of infinite value. And it all has to do with how we live our lives and our relationship with God. Approaching our life with a view only of what's under the sun is going to bring us emptiness.

But when we live our lives above the sun, it releases us from that futility of everything going on in our physical existence. And it helps us to realize that there's a greater purpose for what's going on with us. So let's look at the last section, optimism, the enemy of joy. Now, some people might get mad about this because we're all supposed to be optimistic, right?

But let's think about that, and let's consider it in light of another story that I'll read you. I don't know how many of you enjoy following politics, but kind of a hobby of mine is to do that. I remember back quite a number of years ago, a gentleman named Ross Perot ran for president. And the first time he ran for president, he had a running mate named James Stockdale. And a few of you might remember watching a famous televised vice presidential debate where James Stockdale, Al Gore, and I believe it was Dan Quayle, were on stage together debating. And this man, James Stockdale, got pretty much ridiculed after that debate because he stood up there, he looked a bit like a daughtering old man, kind of kept fumbling with his glasses, taking them on and off, but had some very interesting things to say.

And for those of you who like the comedian Dennis Miller, Dennis Miller went on one of his rants talking about James Stockdale and said, here you have a man who's probably most qualified above anybody else to be the president of the United States. And he committed the cardinal sin of American politics. He looked bad on television. So why did Dennis Miller say this about James Stockdale? Let's read the story. This is from the book Good to Great by Jim Collins, and it's titled The Stockdale Paradox. The name refers to Admiral Jim Stockdale, who was the highest-ranking United States military officer in the Hanoi Hilton prisoner-of-war camp during the height of the Vietnam War.

Tortured over 20 times during his eight-year imprisonment from 1965 to 1973, Stockdale lived out the war without any prisoners' rights, no set release date, and no certainty as to whether he would even survive to see his family again. He shouldered the burden of command, doing everything he could to create conditions that would increase the number of prisoners who would survive unbroken while fighting an internal war against his captors and their attempts to use the prisoners for propaganda.

At one point, he beat himself with a stool and cut himself with a razor, deliberately disfiguring himself so he could not be put on videotape as an example of a well-treated prisoner. He exchanged secret intelligence information with his wife through their letters, knowing that discovery would mean more torture and perhaps death. He instituted rules that would help people to deal with torture. No one can resist torture indefinitely, so he created a stepwise system. After a certain number of minutes, you can say certain things.

That gave the men milestones to survive toward. He instituted an elaborate internal communication system to reduce the sense of isolation that their captors tried to create. It used a 5x5 matrix of tap codes for alpha characters. Tap, tap equals the letter A. Tap, pause, tap, tap equals letter B. Tap, tap, pause, tap equals the letter F and so forth for 25 letters with the letter C doubling for the letter K.

At one point, during an imposed silence, the prisoners mopped and swept the central yard using the code SWISTSWASHINGOUTWE LOVE YOU to Stockdale on the third anniversary of his being shot down. After his release, Stockdale became the first three-star officer in the history of the Navy to wear both aviator wings and the Congressional Medal of Honor. You can understand, then, my anticipation at the prospect of spending part of an afternoon with Stockdale. One of my students had written a paper on Stockdale who happened to be a senior research fellow studying the Stoic philosophers at the Hoover Institution right across the street from my office, and Stockdale invited the two of us for lunch.

In preparation, I read the book In Love and War, which he and his wife had written in alternating chapters, chronicling their experiences during those eight years. As I moved through the book, I found myself getting depressed. It just seemed so bleak. The uncertainty of his fate, the brutality of his captors, and so forth. And then it dawned on me. Here I am, sitting in my warm and comfortable office, looking out over the beautiful Stanford campus on a beautiful afternoon. I'm getting depressed reading this, and I know the end of the story.

I know he gets out, reunites with his family, becomes a national hero, and gets to spend the later years of his life studying philosophy on this same beautiful campus. If it feels depressing for me, how on earth did he deal with it when he was actually there and didn't know the end of the story? I never lost faith in the end of the story, he said when I asked him.

I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which in retrospect I would not trade. I didn't say anything for many minutes, and we continued the slow walk toward the faculty club, Stockdale limping and arc-swinging his stiff leg that had never fully recovered from repeated torture.

Finally, after about 100 meters of silence, I asked him, who didn't make it out? Oh, that's easy, he said. The optimists. The optimists? I don't understand, I said, now completely confused, given what he'd said 100 meters earlier. The optimists. Oh, yes, they were the ones who said, we're going to be out by Christmas. And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go, and then they'd say, we're going to be out by Easter. And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again, and they died of a broken heart.

Another long pause and more walking. And then he turned to me and said, this is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end, which you can never afford to lose, with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they may be. To this day, I carry a mental image of Stockdale admonishing the optimists, we're not getting out by Christmas, so deal with it.

So from this, Jim Collins put together what he calls the Stockdale Paradox. Stockdale Paradox says, number one, retain the faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, and at the same time, confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they may be. So I'd like to spend the rest of the message today just unpacking those two parts of the Stockdale Paradox and talk about how they relate to us as Christians and the idea of finding joy in our lives.

First of all, let's just think about whether this is a biblical principle to begin with or not. I'd like to use just a couple of examples to consider that. The first one, the fiery furnace. So we all recall the story of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, his fellow Israelites or Jews that were in captivity, and how the king said that you have to come and everyone has to bow down to the statue that I've made.

So when you hear the flutes and the harps and all the music play, everyone has to bow down. The word does not bow down, it's going to be thrown into the fiery furnace. And three young men knew, of course, that they were not going to do that because they were only going to bow down to God. So let's look at how they handled the discussion in Daniel 3 when they were called to account.

Daniel 3. We'll read verses 17 and 18. This is instructive, I think, in terms of what they say. They say, God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us from your hand, O King. But if not, let it be known to you, O King, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image which you have set up.

What they said basically demonstrated exactly what we read in the Stockdale principle. They had full faith and knew that God had the power to deliver them, and that they knew that their lives were in God's hands. They also didn't know that in this situation, whether or not God would save them from the fiery furnace. In the end, of course, He did miraculously, and to me it's one of the incredible stories of the Bible. In fact, the combination of a guard dying because the fire was so hot when He was throwing them in, and then seeing a fourth person walking in the fire with them, which just gives me chills, that they looked like the Son of God, and the incredible power of what that showed when God did decide to intervene for them.

But look at what they said. They realized the seriousness of the situation they were in. They realized that God might choose not to deliver them from it, but they had full faith that God was going to do what was right for them and had their best interests in His mind.

Let's look at another example. David Goliath. Now, you might ask, why would this be an example of what we were talking about? So we know, of course, that armies of the Philistines were coming up against the armies of the Israelites, and the Philistines had this huge guy Goliath, head and shoulders, and more, taller than anyone that the Israelites had, and everyone was afraid to face him. But finally, David said, you know what? I'm going to stand up and do it. God's delivered me from the hands of lions and from others, and He could deliver me from this. So in 1 Samuel 17, verse 40, he demonstrates a similar type of attitude. He took his staff in his hand, and he chose for himself five smooth stones from the brook. And he put them in a shepherd's bag, in a pouch which he had, and his sling was in his hand, and he drew near to the Philistines. How many stones did he take? How many stones did it take to kill the giant? Why did he take more stones than he needed? Did he know for sure that God was going to kill the giant through the stone that he fired out of the sling? Did he know that it was going to be the first one? My view of this is that he didn't. He chose five stones because he thought he might need five stones. And I think that David was mature enough, spiritually, in his relationship to God, to know that there was a possibility that God would choose to deliver Israel in a different way, and not through his hands. But he had faith, and he knew that what he had to do was go up and face the giant, and count on God to deliver him. And I think he was ready for whatever answer would have come from that. So let's look at the two parts of the Stockdale Paradox a little more closely. And I'll look at them in reverse order, and let's talk first about the brutal facts of our current reality. The brutal facts of our current reality. Two points that I want to raise here is, number one, as Christians, we are promised suffering. And secondly, that God ends up working his will, and not our will, in our lives. That doesn't sound so pleasant, does it? But like Stockdale said, we have to face the brutal facts of our current existence. And I think, in some ways, modern Protestant theology has done all of us a disservice, of putting out this health and wealth gospel, and putting out this idea that so many people have today in this world, that one plus one equals two. And what do I mean by one plus one in this case? I show up at church every day, or every week, and I try to have a good life, and make those sacrifices or those acts in terms of my worship, and God will give me lots of money, and a fancy car, and make me rich. And there's certainly televangelists that we can turn on every week on television, who are going to preach this, as the saying goes, all day long and twice on Sunday. But this does us a disservice, because as we dig into the Scriptures, we see that this is not what we're promised. And I think we have to be realistic and understand and reflect on what it is that we're promised. Turn to 1 Peter 4, verses 12 through 14. 1 Peter 4, verses 12 through 14.

And I think, going back to Stockdale's words, we have to be careful not to be unrealistically optimistic, or said differently, not to put our faith in things that we want to happen, that might or might not be God's will. And I know that's difficult to think about sometimes, but I know I've certainly seen people in the years that I've been in the church, who get so fixated on the fact that they're certain that God wants a certain outcome in their lives, or that He will deliver them for a trial in a certain way, that when it doesn't happen, it shatters their faith. And you hate to see that type of thing happen, but when you take it apart, you realize sometimes that people have put faith in things that God has just not promised that He will do. We know that we will suffer things, and as unfortunate as it is, as human beings, we all will, at the end, die. But God has fantastic promises that He brings after this. So we have to think and be careful in our lives to make sure that we're focused on what His will is and where He's taking us.

And that's really the second part of this, is that we have to remember that God is working out His will and not our own will in our lives.

I'd like to go here as an example to a section that we might not have contemplated this way before, but what happened following the miracle of the loaves and the fishes? I don't know if any of you recall what happens after that. We're not going to go through the whole chapter. A lot could be said about the chapter of John 6. But I'd like to underscore something that happens within John 6.

So in John 6, multitudes are following Jesus Christ. He's around the Sea of Galilee, and He's with His disciples on the mountain speaking with them, and they see the multitudes coming from far away.

And they come and they sit down. They've been following Him. They've been wanting to see the miracles.

It doesn't say so specifically in the passage, but you could guess that there are probably people among them who are in search of healing, because Jesus Christ has been performing miracles all around that area, and they know of Him. So He's a bit of a local spectacle. He's something where people come to Him because they believe in Him. Others want healing. Others want food, frankly, as we see after this miracle has performed.

And He does this incredible miracle. It talks about 5,000 men. There's a little kid in the front with his lunch. He's got basically the equivalent of a sardine and a crust of bread, and it feeds everybody.

And they take up extra baskets of food afterwards when this miracle is done.

But after that, in verse 15, Jesus perceived they were about to come and take Him by force and try to make Him their king.

And so He departed to the mountain by Himself alone.

So why is this going on? If we recall, at that point in time, the Romans ruled that part of the world, and the Jews were going through different periods of people who would stand up and fight against the Romans and try to overthrow them in order to start a new kingdom, to have self-rule, to get rid of the Romans.

And what they saw in Jesus Christ was, if somebody can do these powerful miracles, let's just make Him our king, right? Because if He can do all of the things that He's been doing, He can probably overthrow the Romans. He can beat them in battle, and we're going to re-establish a Jewish kingdom in the Holy Land, rule Jerusalem, and the lands around it, like it used to be under King David.

But that's not what God had in mind, was it? That's not why Jesus Christ came.

And what Jesus Christ does next, immediately after this, is to start to talk to the disciples about what His real purpose is.

And He talks in verse 50, and He says, This is the bread that came down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die.

Again, they're talking about bread and fish, right?

I'm the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he'll live forever.

And the bread that I shall give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. The Jews therefore quarreled among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat?

They didn't have a clue what He was talking about. They really didn't understand.

And Jesus said to them, Most assuredly I say to you, Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.

And from that time, many of His disciples went back, and they walked with Him no more.

So what do we see here? We see a multitude of people that were following, enjoying the miracles, enjoying a good lunch, in this case as well, which He didn't always get in those days.

And they wanted to make Him king. And as soon as they realized, He's talking in these funky riddles, I don't really get what He's saying, and He's certainly saying He's not going to be our king right now.

And I don't need this. I've got other things going on. I'm going to move on and get back to my land, my donkey, whatever else I have, and live my life. So many of His disciples, after they realized that He was not going in the direction that they wanted to go, they left Him. They said, I've got my direction, He's got His, I can see they're not the same, and we're going to part ways.

And so the Twelve stayed with Him and some others that followed, but the group was much smaller after that.

So this idea that God is going to work His will is one that we have to accept as well, just as they had to accept it in that time, that Jesus did not come to overthrow the Roman Empire.

And the Romans continued to rule in Judea for a long time after that.

And the salvation that they sought, which in the end was much smaller than the salvation He came to bring, was not what He was all about.

Let's turn to Hebrews 11 and verses 32 through 40 and see one more section again about this.

And again, this is about the idea that we have to face the brutal reality of what our lives and our lives as Christians are about.

Hebrews 11. These passages make for great reading as we think about some of the things that God has done for the heroes of faith.

Verse 32 of Hebrews 11. What more shall I say?

Of course, this is after a whole chapter talking about all the different things that happened for the heroes of faith.

For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets, through faith they subdued kingdoms, they worked righteousness, they obtained promises, they stopped the mouths of lions, they quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, and out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle, and turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Fantastic.

Women received their dead, raised to life again. Others were tortured, though, not accepting deliverance that they might obtain a better resurrection.

Still others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were slain with the sword, they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, and tormented.

Of whom the world was not worthy, they wandered in deserts and mountains and dens and caves of the earth, and all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise.

God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us.

So what's being said in this passage at the end of Hebrews 11?

We've really got a couple categories of people, right? Some of whom received dead rays to life, overthrew oppressive people that were fighting against them, but others who went through terrible, terrible trials and died horrible deaths.

All equal in terms of having faith in God and all waiting for the same promise.

And what this tells me, and we know it on one level, but I think we sometimes don't always recognize it from a day-to-day point of view, there's not an equal outcome for these people, is there? They're all heroes of faith, but they ended up experiencing very different outcomes from the things that they experience in their human lives.

And so again, when we focus sometimes on a specific outcome that we want and that we think is going to happen for us, even here in Hebrews 11, it's telling us the reality that we have to face is the outcome that's going to come about is the one that God wants for us.

And He's going to make sure that the ultimate outcome is a good one.

So even the heroes of faith were not treated equally by God. He works His will individually in each and every one of us. And so what God might give or grant to somebody who's sitting next to us or behind us or in front of us is going to be very different than what He gives or grants to us.

And we don't know why. And sometimes it's perplexing, sometimes it's infuriating, other times it's fantastic, but it's different.

And God wants it that way for His reasons because He's working individually in each and every one of our lives in order to bring us to salvation.

So let's look at a summary then in terms of our brutal reality. God doesn't call us to deny reality. He wants us to face it.

Life is difficult and we don't always receive what we think we deserve or what it is that we want.

But, and we realize we can't be like those optimists expecting that God is going to give us the things that we want above the things that He needs to work out in our lives.

But let's turn here as we move towards the conclusion to the happier side of it, which is what we know is in the end that God wants for all of us.

Stockdale talked about faith in the ultimate outcome. He never lost sight of the fact that He was going to get released.

He never stopped hoping for it. He never stopped striving for it. And that was His purpose throughout His entire captivity. And that was an important piece of what He laid down in this principle as well, in terms of always having faith and understanding that the ultimate outcome is going to be good, despite the things that happened in between.

So let's look briefly at these three elements and remind ourselves what the ultimate outcome is and what great blessings and gifts God has, number one, given us now and number two, has in store for us going forward.

Let's think first about the forgiveness of sins. Just turn to one passage about this, 1 John 1 and verse 9. 1 John 1 verse 9.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

We won't dig into all of the different passages that relate to this, but there are a lot of different analogies used for this in the Bible, and they tend to be very strong analogies.

We hear about God removing our sins as far as east is from the west. We hear written about in Isaiah, though our sins are as scarlet, they will be as white as snow.

When we think of the offerings that were given and the white garments that people would wear, it says even though your sins are as strong as a bright red blood stain on a white piece of linen, He's going to clean it and wash it all away.

In other places, the analogy used is one of death. Baptism is talked about as death. Our old man dies and we come up as a new man, living a completely different life.

Again, that stark contrast between the way life was and the way life is after we accept Jesus Christ and repent of our sins.

We can take great hope in this in terms of what God has done. All of us as we reflect on our lives, what we were before and what we're able to be now because of Jesus Christ's sacrifice and the forgiveness that He's given us.

It allows us to live a new life. Along with that comes a commitment, a strong commitment to us that's unwavering.

Look in Philippians 1 and verse 6. Philippians 1 and verse 6 spoke at a lot more length about this in a sermon a couple of months ago.

But touching this one scripture, Philippians 1 and verse 6, it tells us we can be confident of this one very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.

How wonderful is that commitment that God has to us? The fact that despite the things that we might have to face in this brutal life and the realities of what's in it, God says His commitment to us is unwavering.

There's one thing that He wants for each and every one of us. It's that we receive salvation, that we're in His kingdom, that we use His Spirit to continue to grow and develop in that way.

And then thirdly, in terms of faith and the ultimate outcome, an eternal reward. So we all know that we look beyond this human life, which has suffering, it has pain, it has difficulties, to a new life as spirit beings in God's kingdom.

Romans 8, verse 18. Paul writes on this theme. Romans 8, verse 18. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that will be revealed in us.

We can think, you know, as low as the lows might be, the highs are going to be infinitely higher as we receive the rewards that God has in store for all of us as His people. And then Revelation 21, talking about the ultimate fulfillment of God's plan in this kingdom as that time comes. Revelation 21, verses 1 through 7.

And then he who sat on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said to me, Right, for these words are true and faithful. And he said to me, It's done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give of the fountain of water of life freely to him who thirst. He who overcomes shall inherit all things. And I will be his God, and he will be my Son.

Incredible promises. We can't lose track of that. So no matter how things might be difficult, how challenging they are in the meantime, again, as we read in the example in the Stockdale Paradox, that's the faith, that's the ultimate outcome that we have to hold on to and keep within our vision.

So as we wrap up in summary, we recognize that Christianity requires sacrifice and it acknowledges suffering. We know that it will happen. Unfortunately, as much as we'd like to, we cannot avoid it in our lives. And false expectations about those things can destroy our faith if we allow it to. And so we have to be careful and make sure that we have faith in the things that God has promised, but also realize that among those things are the sufferings that we'll face in this life. But finally, faith in God's promises allows us to find joy despite suffering.

So as we briefly wrap things up then, how much is our sense of joy dependent on our momentary situation? Something worth contemplating as we go through life. I know that our momentary situations are sometimes pretty bleak and it's difficult to keep joy in those situations.

First of all, the price of admission. There's a difference between seeking pleasure and finding joy. And what God is after is not the pleasure that so many people in today's world seek, but that deep-seated joy and understanding of what He has in store with us. That joy, as we learn through the commands for the feast and the things done there, results from our relationship with God, understanding Him as our protector and sustainer and reflecting on Him and not on the things that are going on around us.

It's all about the dirt and the sun. As human beings, we're simultaneously worthless and of infinite value. So approaching life only with a view of what's under the sun leads us to focus on just the dirt. But if we can live our lives above the sun, it releases us from that futility that Solomon talked so much about and brings us that deep-seated joy.

And then finally, recognizing that Christianity requires sacrifice and acknowledges suffering, but keeping that faith in God's promises so that we can find joy despite the things that we're dealing with in day-to-day life. So our physical condition, unfortunately, can change without warning, and it's not able to bring us lasting joy. It's not an understanding in the end, it's an outcome, joy is, of the understanding that we have of what God has in store for us. The wonderful plan that we're part of, what He's done for us to start that plan in terms of forgiving us of our sins, bringing us into His family, giving us His Spirit, and the incredible hope that we wait for as He works out His plan. So as we go forward in life and we all inevitably will face difficult times and good times, I hope we can focus on and hold on to the joy that God wants us all to have as a fruit and outcome of His Holy Spirit.

Thank you.