Saving Faith as the Awakening of Joy in Jesus

0:00 Father, it has been said so clearly already that what needs to happen in this room, a sermon, a human cannot make happen. Taste and see that the Lord is good. There is a spiritual taste. There are capacities for enjoyment in the soul that cannot be awakened any other way than by the miracle of your indwelling, empowering spirit. So we invite you to come in power and to do that kind of awakening of joy in Jesus that is greater than joy in anything else. I ask this in his name. Amen. So the focus for the weekend is enjoying Jesus. And so I want to begin by making the case from the Gospel of John that saving faith in Jesus, as basic as it can be, saving faith in Jesus is the awakening of the enjoyment of Jesus. So I don't think the Gospel of John or the New Testament teaches that the enjoyment of Jesus is stage two. So first you get saved, you believe, and then maybe sometime later you learn that there's such a thing as enjoying Jesus. I'm arguing that to be saved, to be converted, to be born again, to have saving faith, is to experience an awakening of the enjoyment of Jesus.

1:49 And that can be very threatening, very unsettling to you, because there are genuine believers among you who think that you don't enjoy Jesus, and you've been scratching your head since you heard of this church and saw that. It's written right here, enjoy Jesus, make disciples. You've been scratching your head like, is that, how essential is that? And I've just said it's as essential as it can get, which is scary. if you are saying to yourself right now in this room, but I think I'm saved.

2:36 And I don't enjoy Jesus. A few weeks ago, I was in Washington, D.C., sat down at a dinner table. A man sat down beside me who loves our ministry in the 60s. He had gone through a crisis about two years earlier, and he just confessed to me. He said, Pastor John, I hope in the Lord. I trust in the Lord. but ever since that crisis, I don't experience joy in Jesus. here's a man who's been Christian for 50 years and he's telling me that he he doesn't enjoy Jesus and so I responded to him the way I would respond to you if you came up to me after this service and said I'm a Christian I know I'm a Christian I trust Jesus but I don't I don't enjoy Jesus I said to him, I don't believe you.

3:45 and over the next 15 or 20 minutes, I've said this to many people. For 40 years, I've said this to people. I don't believe you. For the next 10, 20 minutes, we're talking about this very earnestly. I drew out of him significant expressions of glad affections for God, for the goodness of God, for the patience of God, for the power of God, for the preciousness of Christ. Affections like thankfulness, like treasuring Christ, like hope in Christ. And I pointed out to him, and I'm pointing out to you now, that thankfulness is not a grim emotion.

4:44 It's a glad emotion. It is. And treasuring Christ is not a gloomy emotion. It's a glad emotion. Even if it exists in the midst of sorrow and there are tears on your face as you are thankful and treasuring Jesus. Hope is not a dark, cheerless emotion. It's a glad emotion. Even in prison, witness Paul, even in the hospital, even at the graveside. Hope is a glad emotion. In other words, I want to warn you here at the outset that some of you have conceptions of enjoying Jesus that are inadequate. You have conceptions, ideas in your head of what it means to enjoy Jesus that are inadequate to account for biblical reality. And I'm here to fix them.

6:01 Do you have a conception, indeed, do you have an experience of joy that can account for 2 Corinthians 6.10? Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. Sorrowful, yet always. Not after the sorrow, in, under, through the sorrow. Always rejoicing. category for that. You have an experience of that. If you don't, you will not be able to make sense out of this church or the Bible. do you have a category that makes sense? Do you have a conception of enjoying Jesus that makes sense out of 2 Corinthians 7, 4, where Paul says, in all our afflictions.

6:55 Now, you've got to pause there and remember chapter 11, chapter 6, where he lists 26 horrors that he walks through. Paul lived a life of continual threat and sorrow and grief and pain in and out of prison, in and out of beatings, in and out of lacerations on his back, in and out of conflicts. He lived a life of continual weeping, I would dare say.

7:21 And he says, in all our afflictions, we are overflowing with joy. And you just want to say, Paul, do you have a conception of joy that can account for that? Do you have an experience of joy that would make sense out of that? Or Ecclesiastes, I told the staff today, I was going to quote Ecclesiastes for the first time in defense of Christian hedonism. So here it is.

7:50 Ecclesiastes 7.3, sorrow is better than laughter. because by sadness of faith, the heart is made glad. You just want to shake your head and say, what possibly could that be? By sorrow of faith, tears stained face. the heart is made glad. Here's my paraphrase.

8:29 There are experiences of loss and grief in life that take you to depths of joy you could not have known any other way. If you're old enough, you know what I'm talking about. Brand new Christians, maybe not. But if you've walked with the Lord long enough, you know what he's talking about. There are dark nights. There are losses. There are griefs. There are struggles. There are sorrows. Where he shows up and he's tasted in that, in a way, he could not be tasted any other way.

9:10 So I'm asking you, do you have categories in your head? Do you have conceptions and ideas about what the enjoyment of Jesus is so that you don't jump to the conclusion, I guess I'm not a Christian because I don't. Are you sure? So let me work on this with you in John's gospel for a bit. And I'm hoping that by the time we're done, the only people that think you're an unbeliever in this room would be unbelievers. and we really care about you. This church cares about you and I care about you and we're praying. We've prayed weeks before and in the room earlier today that you would know him and enjoy him before we're done.

9:56 So all that by way of warning. I'm just warning you not to be too pessimistic about yourself as I lay out the argument that saving faith is the awakening of the enjoyment of Jesus. One of the most provocative statements about saving faith is that the book in the Bible that talks most about coming to eternal life through saving faith, namely the Gospel of John, never uses the word faith. in all 21 chapters and uses the word believe 98 times. The noun belief or faith does not occur in the Gospel of John. The verb believe occurs 98 times.

11:06 That cannot be an accident. And I've spent a lot of time thinking, I want to understand, John, why you did it that way. What were you thinking? That must have taken some effort to use the word pistouo 98 times and never use the word pistis, faith. so this message is an effort to explain why that is, and I make no pretense that I've got the whole thing figured out, because the Gospel of John, probably more than any other book in the Bible, has layers of meaning. It is a mysteriously layered book, which is why you give it to brand new believers.

12:06 and it's the deepest book there is, maybe. At least that's my experience of the Gospel of John. You take off, oh, I get that. For God so loved the world, he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him would not perish, but have eternal life. He doesn't give that everywhere, hanging over ball field fences.

12:29 And then you get this massive doctrine of predestination in chapter 10, and election and and then he's okay so that's the mystery for me 98 times the verb zero times the noun what's he up to sometimes scholars pastors will say okay what he's up to is that he's trying to show that faith is active active And that sounds right. Faith is active. But when you stay with that explanation a few minutes, what they usually mean is faith produces action. Meaning, if you believe in Jesus, you become a loving person, which is true.

13:28 It bears fruit. Now, that's true. I don't think that's what John is up to. I think John would say, faith is action. It doesn't just bring about action. that's where I'm starting. I'm going to check that out. Can you show that in the gospel, that faith in itself, before it produces anything, is a soul or a heart action. That's what I think is going on when he uses the verb 98 times and the noun never. the acting of the soul, the acting of the heart before there's any fruit. There clearly is fruit.

14:23 Love is the fruit of faith. Now keep in mind, before I show you some text to that effect, keep in mind we are talking about saving faith. Whoever believes in the Son, believes, verb, whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. He says that 336, 315, 316, 524, 640, 647, 1125, 2031. I mean, this book is about believing so that you have eternal life. It's a saving faith. If you don't believe, you don't have eternal life. You perish. This is a big deal. It's as big as it gets. We're not talking about a kind of faith that's kind of later. Maybe you pray and you're having a faith to heal somebody or something like that, a gift of faith. We're not talking about that. We're talking about the most basic experience of salvation, namely faith that brings eternal life. What is it?

15:23 What's the nature of it? What's it like? I'm just asking, because most of you in this room are believers. And you should know. In fact, you spend your life coming to know, what did God do to me? What's going on in me? This is a divine miracle. What is it? How do I experience it? So to answer that question, what is the acting of faith? Let's go first to John chapter 1, verses 11 to 13. Very familiar text. Even if you don't look it up, you're sure welcome to look it up and follow with me. But if you don't, you'll recognize it, probably. Jesus came to his own. This is John 1, verse 11. Jesus came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, now notice, you call that a positive in grammar.

16:28 To all who did receive him, comma, who believed in his name. So believing, receiving. interpret each other. He gave the right to become children of God who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. So John chooses to report this language to make plain, receiving Jesus is what believing does. So if you say, what's the action of believing? What does believing do? before it produces any action outside with the body, what does it do? And the answer is it receives Jesus. That's what it says in verse 12 there. But to all who did receive him, comma, who believed in his name. So believing is receiving.

17:23 And don't, even though it's right to apply this to conversion, don't restrict it to conversion. we could sing right now, Jesus, I do now receive him. More than all in him I find. He has granted me forgiveness. I am his and he is mine. I think a believer ought to sing that all day long, every day, every hour. Jesus, I do now receive you. I hope that right now as I'm speaking, I am receiving Jesus. As my mind is freed up, not to think about you, but to think about this text, I'm thinking, Jesus, come. Come. I need more of you. I'm utterly, totally reliant upon you. We heard from Jimmy, he upholds the universe by the word of his power. I have my existence, my being through the present working of Jesus Christ. I need you right now. I do receive you. You're not getting saved all over again. You experience the ongoing coming and presence of Jesus Christ in your life. So when I say believing is receiving him, I don't mean just at the beginning, I mean for the rest of your days on into eternity, we will be receiving Jesus. We will be utterly, totally dependent on the moment-by-moment work of Jesus coming into our lives to sustain us.

18:49 Now, double question in response to that statement, believing is receiving of Jesus. receiving as what? you receive him as what? That's the next question.

19:09 And what is the heart doing in the receiving of Jesus? What's the actual experience of receiving Jesus as blank? So let's try to answer those from the Gospel of John. So I'm going to give two answers, and I'm going to take you to some texts that support these answers. First answer. Receiving Jesus is the soul's drinking of the living water that Jesus is. Drinking with sweet soul satisfaction, or to use the language of this church, drinking with enjoyment. receiving Jesus is the drinking of the living water that he is to the soul's satisfaction in him or the enjoyment of him.

20:09 That's answer number one. Answer number two. Receiving Jesus is the soul's eating the bread of heaven, which he is to the soul's satisfaction of its hunger or the enjoyment of Jesus. So those are two ways in the Gospel of John to answer the question what is it to receive Jesus? Receive as what? Receive as living water receive as bread from heaven so that receiving becomes drinking and receiving becomes eating. The soul can eat. The soul can drink and be satisfied. So now we're at the key verse, if you want to look at it. This is chapter 6, verse 35. This verse has been powerfully effective in my life, transformative in the way I think about faith.

21:17 So John 6, verse 35, shows that Jesus is the eternally satisfying bread. He's the eternally satisfying water. water. Now if you just stop and think about bread and water, this is not the Lord's Supper. Just put that aside. Don't get mixed up with that. This is water, not wine and not fruit of the vine. This is water and bread. Water and bread are fluid and nourishment. You just die if you don't have either of them. Right? If you don't have fluid, you die. If you don't have nourishment, you die. That's true of eternal life. But you just have to ask, okay, to have eternal life, you've got to have the right fluid and the right nourishment. And what is it? It's Jesus. That's what he's saying. So let's read chapter 6, verse 35. I am the bread of life.

22:12 There it is. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger. And whoever believes in me shall never thirst. Wow. Now notice the parallel between coming and believing, right? Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and then he repeats it, only he replaces the word come with believe. Whoever believes in me shall never thirst. So I draw from that parallel what is believing, what's the action of believing. Believing is a coming to Jesus to drink to the soul's satisfaction. Coming to Jesus is to eat the bread of life to the soul's satisfaction. That's what believing is.

23:08 They run parallel here. There's no spatial, geographic, physical movement in faith. When I say there's an action, it's not like this. My hand is moving from here to here. There's no physical movement in faith. Faith is the movement of the soul. The soul is in a spatial reality.

23:40 It's the movement of hunger. It's the movement of thirst. That's the categories you have to have. When you think about the soul moving, coming to Jesus, coming to Jesus. Well, Jesus, where is he? Where is he? If he were here, I could walk over here and embrace him. He's not here like that. He's here spiritually. His spirit is here. To come to Jesus is an action of the soul, and the soul doesn't move geographically. How does it move? How does it come? It comes with hunger.

24:18 It comes with thirst. coming to water is the movement of thirst coming to bread is the movement of hunger these are soul movements not body movements they are heart actions desiring, longing, drinking, feeding embracing, treasuring, tasting, feasting I mean I'm sure if you come to this church long enough there will be a great vocabulary developed of enjoying Jesus. Lots of words. That was a bunch of them right there. Words by which the soul feeds on the bread of heaven and the soul drinks the water of life. now notice an implication in John 6 35 about eternity and never-ending satisfaction shall not hunger see that in the first part shall never thirst whoever comes to me shall not hunger, whoever believes in me shall never thirst. So the words not hunger, never thirst, imply coming to Jesus for soul food and for soul drink results in eternal life, right?

25:48 Not hungering ever again, forever. it's a glorious thing to interpret eternal life as being set aside forever I used to when I was about nine we had a spiral stairway that went up on the roof of our house in Greenville, South Carolina and I would go up there and lie down on the roof and look into the stars and it was so scary because it reminded me of eternity and I thought that's just got to be the most boring thing in the world. A nine-year-old has a very hard time getting his head around God being eternally satisfying, Jesus being eternally satisfying. We just don't, we're not old enough. We haven't grown up into the categories of spiritual reality.

26:49 but now it makes so much sense that if he's infinite, infinite corresponds to eternal, and it will take an eternity of days for the infinite riches of Christ to be spent on my soul in kindness. There's no boredom possible. It's inconceivable that eternity could be boring if we are never going to thirst, never going to hunger. We will always be receiving such that we are satisfied.

27:27 So I think you've got to be careful here. I think never hunger, never thirst doesn't mean, well, if you don't hunger, then you can't enjoy food. And if you're not thirsty, you can't enjoy a drink. I think the idea is just as soon as you experience it, it's full. you have arrived at the quest that you've been after all your life when you come to Jesus and it will always be perfectly satisfying forever so try to sum up a little bit what is believing in the gospel of John believing chapter 1 verse 12 is a receiving of Jesus a receiving of Jesus as what and I'm arguing from 635 now, it's a receiving of Jesus as water, the living water, and as the bread from heaven. And what the action is in the receiving is the drinking and the eating, which is the way you talk about the soul being satisfied with Jesus. And so it goes, right? I Now, that frame of reference on what saving faith is in the Gospel of John, namely it is a receiving of Jesus in such a way that you are receiving him as food and drink to the satisfaction of your soul.

28:53 Now, you read the rest of the Gospel and see if it turns up, and it turns up all over the place. So it is the motion. So believing is the motion of God-given thirst putting its lips to the fountain of received water. It is the motion of God-given hunger placing its tongue on the richness of received bread. It is the motion of the soul's embrace going out to enclose a received Savior. chapter 10 verse 9. It's the soul movement of leaning into light, chapter 3 verses 18 to 19. Received glory. It's the action of the glad and eager soul opening the door for a friend 15-15. A helper, 14-16.

29:48 The Lord, 13-14. The teacher, chapter 3 verse 2. The shepherd, chapter 10 verse 14. It is a receiving of all that God is for us in Jesus to the satisfaction or the enjoyment of our souls. So my partial explanation, that's all I'm claiming. I don't claim to have the whole answer to why 98 times the verb and zero times the noun. my partial explanation is John wants to foreground the fact that belief, that's a noun, believing in and of itself is active. Not to produce yet. That's another sermon at another time. They can preach it.

30:46 although we'll do a little bit tomorrow night. A believing is an action of the soul that crosses no geographic space, but welcomes, receives, embraces, drinks, eats Jesus as the satisfying bread of heaven and the satisfying water of life. it's not the movement of the body at all and it's not let me say one more qualification it's not a state you know i used to think this way i used to think that what i want in my life is the state of being satisfied so you say what is this condition or the state of your soul and I would say, satisfied. I think, I don't think John thinks that way.

31:42 It's not a state. It is a ever active receiving, constantly receiving Christ, which goes a long way, doesn't it? To explain chapter 15, I am the vine, you are the branches. what does that mean? I am the vine, you are the branches.

32:14 That means that the way we want to be is not a full cup. So my soul is a full cup on a table beside a full pitcher. That's Jesus, full pitcher, me, full cup. If I go empty, he pours in. That's just not the picture. The picture is vine, branch. And what's the difference? The cup can just sit there, and this sits here, and there's no active continual connection. That's not the way it works with vine and branch. If you are a branch in Jesus the vine, you are drinking all the time. it's not a state it's not a condition now let me feel like that's kind of a picky distinction maybe it helps me to think dynamically energetically livingly that moment by moment I am to be receiving all that God is for me in Jesus, and it will be that way forever. I will never be disconnected from the vine. My life is in the vine. My satisfaction is ever flowing from the vine. It's never a state, it's never a pool, it's always a river. The river of His delights is always flowing into my life, and I'm never self-contained. I'm never sufficient in myself. I think there's more to see, and I commend the rest of your life to try to answer the question better than I have. You should get a book and see what others have said about why is the verb believe used 98 times and the noun never used, and I've just given you my explanation, which is an explanation for why this church has chosen a remarkably

34:25 profound mission statement, enjoying Jesus, making disciples. Namely, that saving faith is the awakening of that thirst, that hunger, that enjoyment as it comes and drinks. Let me close like this. One of the implications, what would be one implication of taking this vertical enjoyment of Jesus as my soul is thirsting and hungering after him every day and finding him to be better than any other supply. What if I bend that outward into society and it's what would be an implication. I'll give you one. We live in a time, as you know, that is amazingly contentious and much conflict, much acrimony, especially if you're online, looking at your feeds, as Christians go at each other in various ways. Does this way of understanding saving faith have anything to do with that?

35:39 How you would respond to that? How would you live in that? And here's my answer. Two texts to broaden out. So John does this for us. I don't have to go like this. Oh, this is Piper's idea that you turn the vertical enjoyment of Jesus into the horizontal transformation of life. So here's John 4, 13. You know the woman at the well, and Jesus comes, and they have the conversation. and he says to her, everyone who drinks of this water in Jacob's well, everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again.

36:17 But whoever drinks of the water I will give him will never thirst again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water, welling up to eternal life. Like, whoa, that's a new thought. I thought we were just talking about Christ all satisfying, me receiving, eating, drinking. and now he says no it doesn't stop there if it stopped there it wouldn't even be christian it becomes a a well in here like in you i hope you i hope you know something like this in your life it becomes a well a well of water springing up to life what what does he mean i think he explains a little bit more in chapter 7 like this. This is 737. If anyone thirsts, let him come to me. So you see the connection again between thirsting and coming, this coming that's not a geographic coming. It's a soul coming. It's a hunger coming. If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the scripture says, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. That's amazing.

37:50 That's all believers. That's not preachers. That's not upper level saints. It says whoever believes, and he could have finished the sentence, has eternal life, but he says, whoever believes out of his heart, out of your Christian heart, flows rivers of living water. your life becomes life-giving.

38:25 People around you get life, don't they? You don't drain people. you give life to people. Christians give life their centers of energy, centers of life, a well springing up and a river flowing out. Now, what's that got to do with society? A contentious culture? It worked. I'll just give you my own personal testimony and we'll be done. so I stopped being a preaching pastor 12 years ago, and I have gone to my church that I pastored for 33 years and sat in my pew with my wife for 12 years. Happy, happy, happy.

39:20 I love these people. They love me. They leave me alone. Most people don't leave me alone, they leave me alone. I like these people. And we sit in our little pew back there. Everybody knows where we sit so they don't butt in. That's our pew. Of course, new students come and they're sitting there. We love new students so we don't complain.

39:46 So we're standing there because in our church we linger like you do here, I'm sure. We move toward God in songs. Chuck has been working. He was my partner in worship leadership for years and years, and he's still there. And he takes us Godward for 30 minutes or so, and people are engaged drinking. And I'm drinking. I'm drinking with the truth, the truth of these songs we're singing. I'm drinking in the spirit that's coming to me from the people around me who are clearly drinking. and when others drink around you and look like they're getting satisfaction, you're getting satisfaction in God from their satisfaction in God. These are sweet and glorious moments. And amazingly, in that moment, there breaks over me a river of affection for people that make me so angry online.

40:46 I read their Instagram feeds and their YouTube comments and their ex-comments and I get so ticked. and I go into worship with that tit, and then I start drinking, and there wells up within me a well of living water, and it begins to flow out towards these cantankerous people, these brothers and sisters in Christ. It begins to flow out a river. Now, here's reality. the disagreement politically or whatever doesn't go away. But the sinful elements of pride and anger and petty worldliness are washed away by the drinking and the feeding and the well of water that starts to come up and fill the satisfaction of your soul.

41:52 And it means to spill over, even if they're not there. And there might be some in the room that you feel the same way about, being as a spillover as a river of life. And you feel like, Lord, please, there is a way at this moment in our culture to disagree without those sinful elements. There just must be a way because that's what is happening right now as I'm drinking from Jesus. So I close by simply commending to all of you Jesus Christ as the satisfaction of your souls. I commend to you Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who loved us and gave himself for us, who rose from the dead, who reigns in heaven, who's coming again, who meets us, just like Jimmy so beautifully articulated, all his glories of Christ while we were worshiping. I commend to you Christ for the satisfaction of your souls, for the glory of Christ, and wonder of wonders, for the transformation of the way you look at the internet and the way you worship.