Note: these are devotional posts based on John Piper’s new book What Jesus Demands from the World.
Note: For this chapter, I would highly recommend reading it online (pg. 84), since it is so good. It brings together much of John Piper’s teachings regarding joy and delight together in an accessible and highly helpful 8 pages or so.
Demand #10 — Rejoice and Leap for Joy
Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets. (Luke 6:22-23)
Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. (Luke 10:19-20)
The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. (Matt. 13:44)
These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. (John 15:11)
Staggering and Shocking
For many reasons, this demand to “rejoice and leap for joy” is surprising, startling, staggering, and shocking! In fact, John Piper has written several books and devoted much of his resources to delving deeper into the command to rejoice in Jesus. So there is way too much to say on this topic in one small chapter.
For this post, I will be doing a lot of quoting, because I want to capture the spirit of this chapter adequately. First, let me provide a quote from C.S. Lewis which Piper has reproduced in this chapter. Then I will quote Piper on this point and move on.
…our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. (C.S. Lewis from The Weight of Glory)
…the demand that we be happy is not marginal or superfluous. It is a shocking wake-up call to people who are finding their happiness in all the wrong places. Jesus’ solution to our love affair with sin is not merely that we tear out our sin-loving eyes (Matt. 5:29), but that we be mastered by joy in a new reality, namely, God.
Unspeakably Good News!!
The news about Jesus is not ordinary. No, it is good news. In Matt. 13:44, Jesus describes the value of the Gospel (the Good News) as a priceless treasure. It is something so great and so good that people would die for it, so to speak. People would do anything they could to get that priceless treasure.
And so Piper claims, “[God] does not call us to a willpower religion that feels only duty and no delight. He calls us to himself and to his Father. Therefore, he calls us to joy…joy in God and in his Son.”
Self Denial and Joy
The call to experience indescribable joy (see 1 Pet. 1:8) is not opposed to the call to deny yourself and take up the cross. Piper explains:
The demand for joy does not encourage us to retreat one millimeter from the radical demand of Luke 14:33, “Any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.” We renounce all those joy-giving things because we have found the treasure hidden in the field and we have been given eyes to see that this treasure—this glorious God—is infinitely more valuable than everything we possess or could possess in this world. This is why we renounce it all with joy.
Piper goes on to give a quote by C.S. Lewis which points out that Jesus’ demand for self denial is not an end to itself. “We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.” Did you catch the last part of that C.S. Lewis quote? Jesus specifies the rewards we will get if we go ahead and deny ourselves in almost every place he calls us to deny ourselves! Jesus sees no problem with motivating us with glorious rewards—because the reward is infinite joy in Christ Himself!
Sober, not Superficial Joy
Let me quote Piper on this point.
What astonishes us most immediately when Jesus says, “Rejoice…and leap for joy” is that he is saying it precisely in the context of pain….
…Therefore, the joy he demands now (“in that day,” Luke 6:23) is not chipper. It is not joy-lite. It is not superficial or marked with levity. This is the mistake of too many people and too many churches. They think that Jesus’ demand for joy is a demand to tell jokes or weave slapstick into Christian corporate life. I don’t smell the Jerusalem-bound Jesus in that atmosphere. Something has gone wrong.
What’s wrong is that the aroma of suffering is missing. For Jesus the demand for joy is a way to live with suffering and to outlast suffering. Therefore this joy is serious. It’s the kind you fight for by cutting off your hand (Matt. 5:30) and selling your possessions (Matt. 13:44) and carrying a cross with Jesus to Calvary (Matt. 10:38-39). It has scars. It sings happy songs with tears. It remembers the dark hours and knows that more are coming. The road to heaven is a hard road, but it is not joyless.
The Fruit of Joy
Piper sees holiness as intimately connected to joy. He sees “the power of a superior pleasure” as the power that sets us free from the “cares and riches and pleasures of life” (Luke 8:14). Listen to a few sentences by Piper on this point:
Many Christians think stoicism is a good antidote to sensuality. It isn’t. it is hopelessly weak and ineffective. Willpower religion usually fails, and even when it succeeds, it gets glory for the will, not for God. It produces legalists, not lovers.
Another fruit, or rather, result of joy is this. God is glorified. Piper elsewhere and often declares “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.” In this chapter, Piper finds proof for the position that joy in God glorifies God from Jesus’ prayer in Jn. 17. “…[Jesus’] intention to sustain our joy in him is part of what it means for us to glorify the Father and the Son.” So this should make us see joy in God as a duty we are to pursue.
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Is it possible to be hung up on joy too much? Is it wrong to strive for continual joy and fulfillment in all that Jesus is to us? Well Song of Solomon 5:1 says “Eat, friends, drink, and be drunk with love!” From this text, Jonathan Edwards said the following:
Our hungerings and thirstings after God and Jesus Christ and after holiness can’t be too great for the value of these things, for they are things of infinite value…. [Therefore] endeavor to promote spiritual appetites by laying yourself in the way of allurement… There is no such thing as excess in our taking of this spiritual food. There is no such virtue as temperance in spiritual feasting.
There is so much to be gleaned from this chapter, and I did not get into everything. But I think what arrested me the most was this final quote by Edwards. I understand that joy is very important, but so often I lack that joy. Edwards counsels us to put ourselves “in the way of allurement”. I need to be utilizing the means of grace and being in the word and reading and listening concerning heavenly things. I need to place myself there, and God-willing Jesus will share His joy with me in ever greater measures. May He do the same for all of us.
—See all posts on, the Demands of Jesus
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This week I am quite busy with training for a new position at my job. But let me do a brief post and encourage you all to read, listen to, or watch my pastor’s (John Piper) latest sermon. It is on the importance of having God’s Word abide in us. In the sermon, Piper gave a very helpful summation of Satan’s tempting work. I reproduce the section it is from below. May God use this simple word to encourage and help us in our fight against sin.