Finding Joy

Where do you find joy? It's a funny question these days, because joy is a quality that seems to have disappeared from our lives, or at least reduced significantly. Where do I find excitement? Well, give me some Grand Final tickets, that'll be exciting. Where do I find entertainment? Well, some cat videos on YouTube. Where do I find happiness? Give me a chocolate donut for breakfast.

But joy is a strange kind of word these days. Where do you find joy in life? Because it would be great if you could. So over these family services, the first Sunday in the month, we are asking this question: where do you find these things? Last time it was: where do you find beauty? Today: where do you find joy? Wouldn't it be great if you could find it?

The apostle Paul wrote a letter to a group of people who believed in Jesus. It's included in our Bible—it's the letter to the Philippians, and it is a letter that's full of joy. But before I get to that, I want to talk to you about some of the dead ends—the things that don't actually bring you joy.

Here's mistake number one: relying on yourself. Paul says this, he says:

"I myself have reasons for such confidence. If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, I was faultless."

Paul was confident. Now, there's nothing wrong with confidence—in fact, it's a good quality to have—but if your confidence is misplaced, it's not pretty to watch. In 2021, a US survey of 1,700 people found 6% of them thought they could win an unarmed fight with a grizzly bear. Confidence that is misplaced is not a good thing.

Another poll in the US in 2019 asked people if, playing their best tennis, could they take a point off 23-time Grand Slam winner Serena Williams? 7% said they could, rising to 12% if you're male, which kind of figures. And in a very famous study about 40 years ago, 93% of drivers considered themselves to be above average in driving ability. So for the mathematicians out there, you can realize just how silly that is—if 93% consider themselves to be above average, that means there's only 7% who are below average.

Paul had his confidence in himself. It talks there about a thing called circumcision, which is a weird thing to have your confidence in, but for him and for his culture and his religion, it was a sign of following your religion to the utmost. You were a blueblood follower of your religion, you were an Israelite through and through. He was living up to the traditions of his religion, and he says at the end, "I had confidence in the flesh." Some of these qualities that he talked about were inherited—he was just born into the right family—and some of them he worked very, very hard for.

Now, I love making seafood marinara. Used to be so simple to do it: I used to go down to Ferris Brothers in Marrickville, you get it for about $12 or $13 a kilo, you bring it home, you throw it in the pot, you throw in the tomatoes, and it's perfect—throw in the spaghetti, easy, easily done. However, then I talked to my friend Sylvia who's Italian, and she says, "No, no, no, you've got to cook it like this, you got to cook everything separately." "Oh, right, okay." So you get the octopus and the calamari, you got to sort that out, take that out of the marinara and then cook that in oil and garlic and chili, cook it separately. Then you get the prawns and you cook them in garlic and in oil. Then you get the mussels and fish—don't cook them in oil, you cook them in dry white wine. And then the onions, you've got to caramelize them, and don't overcook the tomato, because if you overcook the tomato too much, it goes bitter.

See, it used to be so easy to make marinara; now it is so complicated, because if you want to make it properly, then you have to do this, and you have to do this, and don't do it this way, you've got to do it like this.

And what Paul's getting at here is he's saying it's the same with religion. If you want to be a proper Christian, you got to do all this stuff: you got to be part of this church, not that church; you got to do confirmation; you got to do communion; you've got to do all these rituals. "Ah, that's not the proper church; if you want to go to the proper church, you got to go to this one; that's Christianity light, you've got to do it properly, you got to do it like this."

And Paul says, "Look, I'm going to give you my report card: my grade point average was amazing. You know, I'd done everything I could do in my religion, my conduct and diligence outstanding." He'd done it all. And at the end of it, he says—you see it here in verse 7:

"But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I've lost all things. I consider them to be garbage."

In other words, all those things he achieved, he thought were just junk and rubbish. Sunday night here in this part of North Sydney is bin night. Bin night is where you sort out the recycling: you throw the coffee grounds in the green bin, you put the bottles and the cans in the recycling, and you put all the other stuff in there—the bad sashimi that has been in the fridge for two weeks, that all goes in. It's a pretty gross sort of experience.

Yesterday, walking down the stairs down to the harbor, there was an auto bin that somebody had knocked over on Friday night, so the rubbish was strewn all the way down the stairs, and, you know, looks something like this. That's bad, unless you're an ibis—a dumpster duck. I think they probably knocked it over, although I don't know whether they were strong enough to do that, but that's my theory anyway.

And what Paul is saying is, "All that I achieved, it's like rubbish." The word he uses is the word skubalon. Whatever I considered profit, I consider loss. He looked at the balance sheet, and he thought he was in the black, but he was in the red. Why? Because when it comes to being right with God, those methods are hopeless; they're only going to let you down. You'll never find joy in your own righteousness; you'll never find joy just relying on yourself.

Well, that's the first mistake. The second mistake, and a little bit more quickly, is people say, "Oh, I'll just do what I want then." If doing all this stuff is not going to bring me joy, well, I'll just do whatever I want—must be the opposite. "I'll just do me." You know that saying, "I'll do me and I'll do it well."

Paul says this:

"I've told you before and I now tell you even again with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their God is their stomach."

He says their mind is set on earthly things—making their stomachs their God, their destiny is destruction. So if you're someone who says, "I'm not going to worry about the expectations of my family, I'm not going to worry about society or friends, don't worry about the expectations of culture—just be true to yourself, just do what you want to do, whatever makes you happy, whatever it takes in order to get the status I need, I'll do whatever I need to get it, success whatever it takes, freedom whatever it takes, do whatever you want, be true to yourself, do whatever makes you happy"—what's wrong with it?

Well, he says destiny is destruction; it leads nowhere. It's a little bit like junk food: it satisfies for a while, you eat it, but it's high GI, right, because you get very hungry very soon after—like having chocolate cake for breakfast. It sounds like a good idea until 15 minutes or half an hour later when you're super hungry again. Social status, that will fill you for a while, but you get hungry for more. A great holiday, that's good, it will fill you for a while, but you get hungry for more.

You won't find joy if you just go for the quick fix. If we make our God our stomachs, we'll always be chasing, always wanting more, and there's no joy there. I need something bigger than me, I need something truer than me, otherwise I'm empty.

Where True Joy Is Found

So there are two false trails which come out of this letter. Where do you find real joy? Where is it to be found? Well, Paul says this, he says:

"…that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection of the dead."

He says that real joy comes in knowing Christ. Talks about enjoying His righteousness—having the righteousness of God bestowed on you because of what Jesus has done. The same status of Jesus is given to us. The righteousness of God comes to us, where God says on one occasion in Jesus' life, "This is my Son whom I love"—He can say that of you: "This is my child whom I love", because Jesus' righteousness is bestowed on us. I get that He could say it about Jesus, but that He could say it about me is an amazing thing.

A good question for us this morning is to ask ourselves: are we more attached to the institution, the religious institution, or are we more attached to the Person? Because Paul is saying, "I want to know Christ"—that's the key for me. He also says that the key to this is being in Christ. Sometimes we talk about asking God to come to me or come into my heart, but Paul says, "No, no, it's more like you are in Christ, and because you're in Christ, you're safe."

And then secondly, you have a purpose. Look at verse 12–14, he's talking about a purpose in life:

"Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."

So you've got a status right with God, but you've also got a purpose. And every day there are plenty of things to do, there's plenty of opportunities to bring something of His love or something of His justice or something of His mercy into the world, because that's the purpose He's given you.

Viktor Frankl was a psychologist who became a prisoner in the German prisoner of war camp Auschwitz. Without going into the details of the things that happened there—and I think you're familiar with it just by the term—he would note that sometimes people would come in and look strong and healthy, and they wouldn't survive more than a few weeks. Other people would come in and they didn't look all that strong and healthy, but they managed to survive a very long time. And as he looked at it, as he thought about it, and as he interacted with them, he realized that the ones who survived had a purpose. There was something they were looking forward to, there was something they were really wanting to happen. They were part of a bigger purpose and a bigger story.

And what Paul is talking about here is that being in Christ is to be part of a bigger purpose and a bigger story, so you're not a nobody—you're a somebody according to God.

When I left school, I worked in a smallgoods factory; I think I lasted 10 days. I was talking to my daughter about this—she was saying just the other day she's never had a job she didn't like. And I thought, well, that's good, it's good to be 22, isn't it? You've never had a job you didn't like. And I said when I left school I got a job in a smallgoods factory—I think I lasted 10 days, had to get up at 4:00 a.m. in the morning and I didn't finish until 3:00 p.m. in the afternoon, compulsory overtime. And there I had to go and get salami and devon and put it into orders that were going to be sent out to shops. And I actually got to look at how devon was made, and it took me years to eat it again when I saw how it was made! And the bloke I worked for would scream at me and yell obscenities at me, and I was a nobody.

When I left from there, I went and worked—I had an engineering cadetship. And again, I was like the bottom rung of the ladder, I was a nobody. And if you're a first-year engineering cadet, they play all these tricks on you, like they say to you, "I want you to go down to the tool crib and get me a left-handed hammer", or "I want you to go down and ask for a long wait"—that would usually get people gone for a period—or "I want you to go down and get some elbow grease." And they play these sort of tricks on you, and you're a nobody, right?

But you know, I don't have to worry about that, because according to God, I've got status. God sees me as His beloved son. According to God, I'm a somebody because of His beloved Son, and that brings me joy. And because of Jesus, I have purpose, and every day I have the opportunity to become more like Him, more like Jesus. I've got the challenge of trying to become more patient—it's a big challenge sometimes—more considerate, more thoughtful, more full of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, humility, self-control. It's a big roadway ahead, it's a big runway that I'm walking down, but there is joy there.

You don't find joy relying on yourself; you don't find joy in just doing what you want—that just leads to selfishness and self-centeredness. Joy comes in knowing God, in knowing Christ, and knowing the purpose He has for you.

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