Intro: This morning continuing in a series I’ve entitled ‘The Pursuit of True Pleasure’. It’s my observation that we are living in a ‘Crisis of Contentment.’
- Our hope lies in hearing what God is saying to us as His people and our culture at large.
- We began last week asking the most primary question of all: “Is it okay to seek happiness at all? Is the pursuit of pleasure a proper consideration or is such a pursuit contrary to honoring God; as if God is only interested in our duty rather than our desires.
We discovered God is far more interested in our desires than we may think.
- Desire & Duty are two sides of the same coin
- That Holiness is all about our ultimate HAPPINESS
- That Faithfulness is all about our ultimate FULFILLMENT
- Any notion that “real” Christians… radical Christians aren’t concerned about enjoying God, but simply obeying God are false.
- God looks at our desires not as too strong, but as too weak… too weak… they have are suffering from amnesia… in need of being reawakened.
THIS morning, I want to take up the next logical question
“DO WE KNOW WHAT WE WANT?”
- May seem obvious enough, but it’s my sense it is the most important and unanswered question in all of life… a question Jesus often posed to those who called out in need.
- Our fundamental challenge is not one of doing more to be satisfied, but in deciding more deeply what satisfies.
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On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “If anyone is THIRSTY, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified. John 7:37-39
I want to consider what these living words tell us; first about ‘Discovering our Deeper Desires’ and secondly, about ‘Discovering Living Water’
1. DISCOVERING OUR DEEPER DESIRES
- Christ’s words are prompting enough, but particularly in this setting.
- Last and greatest day of the feast = Feast of Tabernacles… Jews from all over Judea…
o Here in the midst of a feast, Jesus calls out for anyone ‘thirsty’
o A word also used for appetite; speaking to every soul which could recognize what must be felt beyond any stomach.
- Not an indictment on such earthly pleasure
o Jesus loved feasts… friends… first miracle… wine at wedding… offending many religiously traditional ideas.
- He is not bemoaning pleasure, but rather beckoning perspective.
- He is not bemoaning desire, but rather beckoning distinction.
- He is calling forth discovery of our deeper desires.
- As Blasé Pascal, the early scientist & philosopher described…
“There once was in man a true happiness of which now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present. But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say only be God Himself.”
- Saint Augustine: “Thou madest us for thyself, and our heart is restless, until it rest in thee.”
- Restlessness… that feeling of never quite being settled… satisfied.
- It is precisely what Christ promotes as the door to our deepest desires.
- C.S. Lewis, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
- A spiritual restlessness because we were designed to exist in relationship to God; that is our primary nature, and only secondary as creatures of earth.
- Those feelings within of never being quite settled or satisfied in our basic existence, far from being something to be extinguished, are essential to our pursuit of our truest satisfaction as fundamentally spiritual beings.
- HEREIN LIES THE GREAT CHALLENGE IN WHICH WE ARE CONFRONTED IN OUR HUMAN CONDITION:
o Recognizing our deeper desires necessitates engaging the emptiness and void in our souls.
o Our restlessness calls forth the rumbling in our soul to face the very nature of our existence.
o Our deeper desires are those which dare to face the questions of our existence… the meaning of our lives & personhood.
Is there a basis for knowing that my life is meaningful? …that I’m accepted (vs. defective)? …valuable (vs. dispensable)? …even more simply put, “Is there a basis for knowing that I’m lovable… loved… and is a lasting… eternal love?”
- THESE ARE QUESTIONS THAT WILL IMMEDIATELY BE MET BY A CERTAIN SENSE OF DESPAIR APART FROM GOD.
- God longs for us to feel that sense of despair only because he longs for us to discover what lies beyond our despair.
- To sense despair is only a means to deeper discovery.
OUR CRISIS OF CONTENTMENT LIES IN THE CHOICE TO AVOID DESPAIR RATHER THAN INCORPORATE IT.
- In truth, most of us wrestle between both elements.
- We feel that despair deep within but fear it, and find that we have quite a feast at our own table to avoid it.
- We have numerous ways we can exchange satisfaction for stimulation; exchange our souls for our senses.
- What can be a part of such as “diet of diversion” to our deeper desires?
o Most obvious may be drugs…
o Most pervasive may be…Entertainment
o Possessions
o Attachments
o Knowledge
o Activity
o Thrills
o Causes (Political/Programs)
o Religious Duty
WHAT LIES BENEATH SUCH DIVERSIONS?
THE DISCOVERY OF LIVING WATER…
2. DISCOVERING LIVING WATER
…to those who are Thirsty, let them come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture says, streams of LIVING WATER will flow from him.
- In our longing to be restored in our relationship with God, Jesus is offering a flowing of that which satisfies such desires despite the temporal pain of earthly life… of a fragile & fallen world… Holy Spirit… of His indwelling presence in us.
- Perhaps what we haven’t fully reckoned with, is that HE OFFERS LIVING WATER ONLY TO THOSE WHO THIRST EVEN AT THE FEAST OF PLEASURES.
- The fundamental issue Christ places before us in our pursuit of pleasure is our need for a conversion from diversion.
- Again… he doesn’t bemoan our earthly pleasures, but beckons our perspective… doesn’t bemoan our earthly desires, but beckons our distinction.
…Consider the
- Parable of the Sower (Mark 4:3-20)
o Farmer sowing seeds, seeds which represent what? >LIFE, True life
o But (v 19) in describing those sown among thorns, “the worries of life (…temporal life), the deceitfulness of wealth, and the desire for other things come in and choke the word making it unfruitful.”
- Our concerns for temporal life can become deadly diversions from the seeds of true life
- …the truth which is given to provide life in our souls… the very seeds of heaven, can be choked by our desires on earth.
- PARABLE OF THE BANQUET (Luke 14:12-24)… in a feast unlike earth… it is a feast representing our very life with God
o Jesus replied: “A certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests. At the time of the banquet he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited, “Come, for everything is now ready.” But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said, “I have just bought a field, and I must go and see it. Please excuse me.” Another said, “I have just bough five yoke of oxen, and I’m on my way to try them out. Please excuse me.” Still another said, “I just got married, so I can’t come.” The servant came back and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and ordered his servant, “Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.” “Sir,” the servant said, “what you have ordered has been done, but there is still room.” Then the master told his servant, “Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in, so that my house will be full. I tell you, not one of those men who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.”
- Luke 14:26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.”
- Luke 14:33 “In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.”
- NO MIDDLE GROUND
- Read Revelations 3:15-20
- Again we see the absolute necessity for what we might call our ‘conversion from diversion’
- Christ is calling for an absolute reckoning to our true condition. Our conversion is not simply an assessment of what God can add to our lives, it begins with an assessment of what we have apart from him.
- To those who recognize our deep nakedness… poverty… WHAT DOES HE DO? >HE COME’S IN.
HE WHO COMES TO INDWELL US IS THE VERY PRESENCE OF THE FUTURE; THE POWER OF THE FUTURE AT WORK IN ALL WHO RECKON WITH THEIR PRESENT STATE AND CHOOSE THE FUTURE.
- Comes as the “Glorified Christ”
o Cross… Resurrection
o Death… Life
o Unless a seed falls to the ground and dies… it provides nothing more
o Set our eyes on the Author and Perfector of our faith
o Bore the cross… for the JOY set before him (Heb 12:2)
o In us… and our joy made complete
o I tell you these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble… but take heart, I have overcome…”
o As Paul said…(Romans 8:18-25)
- Sound too other-worldly?
- C.S. Lewis: Hope means a continual looking forward to the eternal world. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. AIM AT HEAVEN AND YOU WILL GET EARTH ‘THROWN IN.’ AIM AT EARTH AND YOU WILL GET NEITHER. (Mere Christianity p. 110)
… Lewis notes that God allows just enough pleasure in life to experience it as “pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home. (Problem of Pain p. 115)
- As I look at my sorting of expectations… desires… I wonder how deeply I’ve made the distinction in my soul.
- In fact, it is my belief that most of us think we’ve made the distinction but few of us as deeply and decisively as needed to enjoy all the Spirit of God offers our souls.
- I believe at some level, you and I may be trying to get the best of both worlds… which ultimately leaves us with the worst of both worlds.
- At some level we have wanted Christ to enhance this world… and a little peace to our pleasures; …get us a parking space when we need it…
- When we feel our restlessness again… are struck by the nagging pain of life, we think something may be wrong
o It can strike us like a spiritual mid-life crisis, from which I’ve seen people go in search of everything new to satisfy the void… when in fact the void may be the means to deeper desires and deeper life itself.
- There is no middle ground, that is why Christ confronts us with the fundamental question: Do we really know what we want?
- To those who reckon with our temporal life, what does Christ provide? HE COMES IN TO DINE WITH US… TO FEAST.
- Reminding us that Christ is not offering us merely a saving philosophy of life, but he is the provision of such life itself.
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For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God. John 3:16-21
- Christ has come to offer eternal life… the very nature of which includes having come as a light into this dark world to reveal our condition… a condition of darkness, death, and despair apart from God… a condition which often leads to rejecting the very light.
- One night my wife and I went out to a car auction one midweek night … on a weeknight way out in Pomona… got there late as it was sdark and the viewing time was ending. Dodge Colt… we shot out a bid… that became highest… shocked at what we’d just done… got it into the light… refused to believe…it was a completely stripped and cheaply repainted car… once stolen with some non-original engine ID. > There’s a lot in life we may buy that needs to be brought into the light.
- Story of two men in an old military hospital…one temporarily blinded… whose friend describe what beautiful things were outside through the window. Friend finally passed. Man’s sight recovered….climbs to window… discovers only an old brick wall. His friend had just been doing his best to help lift them from the despair they faced. Jesus comes to offer another window.
- We refuse to accept what we know to be true… we’re like those arranging deck chairs on the titanic… the Kamikaze pilot boasting of his many flights.
Do you know you want more? Today… be free to acknowledge that to God… let go of holding on to the temporary for what it’s not.
