I have been put under strict instructions not to sing, not to dance or even attempt
to air guitar this morning.
Much as it would bring no satisfaction to my family, I'm sure it would to you, I'm convinced.
It would be great if you could turn to your St Paul's app if you've got it in front of
you and get an outline for today's talk and to keep the Bibles open at John 6 and Ecclesiastes
2.
I think I mentioned before, there was an article in the Sydney Morning Herald a number of years
ago now.
In fact, it was 2015.
It was just before, this is pre-COVID, right?
And the article was titled Cheer Up Sydney.
Sydney.
The article suggested that Sydneysiders possessed a legendary preference for complaint.
Things like the cost of living, I mean, it was a lengthy article, cost of living, traffic,
housing affordability, the most pressing concerns.
That's, again, before COVID.
And for some, it was just the general frustration with the pace and the stress of life.
Now, ironically, this is also mentioned in the article, ironically, Sydney is regarded,
it was ranked, regularly ranked among the top 10 livable cities in the world by reputable
things like the Economist Intelligence Unit.
And so one of the conclusions in the article by psychologist Susie Green, who's the CEO of
the Sydney Positivity Institute, said that Sydneysiders have got plenty of reasons to cheer
up.
And so this is a quote from her.
We live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
We aren't living in a war-torn country.
In other words, cheer up, Sydney.
It's not Ukraine.
That's kind of the conclusion.
Sense of satisfaction is from the circumstances around us right now.
You should be happy.
You should be content.
You should be satisfied because the circumstances in which you live call for you to be happy.
So just cheer up.
So what happens if the circumstances aren't lining up?
Is there no place for contentment at that point?
Is it possible to have deep satisfaction in life that isn't based on circumstances?
Now, I want to say yes.
I want to say Jesus is all about satisfaction.
If you just joined us right now, if you're just connecting online for the first time or
you just joined us in the building for the first time, we are partway through our annual
vision series.
The first week of this series laid the foundation, if you like.
We saw that there is no 100% watertight argument for the existence of God.
You can't prove it as an experiment.
You can't stick it in a laboratory and prove it empirically.
But neither is there 100% watertight argument for the non-existence of God.
You can't prove that by experiment either.
So both the religious person and even the atheist views the world through a system of belief.
Every single person views the world through a system of belief.
So which belief system delivers the best solution to what every human being needs to flourish in life?
And today, I want to look briefly at is it possible to have a satisfaction in life that is so deep,
deep enough to endure even the most difficult circumstances in life?
So let's get going.
First of all, can't get no satisfaction.
I've had that song from 1965, Rolling Stones, can't get no satisfaction, rolling around in my head all week.
And I've tried, and I've tried, and I've tried, and I can't get it out.
In his book, The Happiness Hypothesis, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt looks at the history
of both Eastern and Western thought to see how people approach the issue of satisfaction in life.
So he scanned the centuries, if you like.
And he concluded that the consensus of the ancient philosophers and sages of time,
that even if all the deepest desires of success and love are fulfilled, it won't be enough.
Eastern and Western thought.
You get everything you possibly can, and it still won't be enough.
A person will still be deeply, deeply dissatisfied.
He even quotes from the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes chapter 2, which we just read out.
A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in all of their toil,
because that's it.
There's nothing else.
And yet that satisfaction that Ecclesiastes 2 is talking about will still elude you anyway.
A little earlier in the chapter, the writer describes a life of success,
a life of accomplishments and pleasure that very few in our world would ever experience.
I undertook great projects.
I built houses for myself and planted vineyards.
I amassed silver and gold for myself and the treasure of kings and provinces.
I acquired male and female singers and a harem as well, the delights of a man's heart.
I denied myself nothing that my eyes desired.
Very few can ever say that in life.
I denied myself nothing that my eyes desired.
Then in verse 17, we read, I hated life because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me.
And all of it is meaningless.
A chasing after wing.
Again, verse 20.
My heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun.
So the author of Ecclesiastes, and I think this is a real crucial point.
The author of Ecclesiastes wasn't just battling the fear of meaninglessness.
He was battling the disappointment of success.
There is a very weak correlation between wealth, fame, success, and satisfaction.
But this, of course, is not just an ancient problem.
It's a modern problem too.
Cynthia Heimel, a columnist for the Village Voice in New York, knew a few, three particularly, but probably a bit more than that, great celebrities in the 1980s.
Big celebrities who weren't big celebrities but became big celebrities.
And she knew them before they became big celebrities.
And this is what she wrote about the success and fame and what it did to them.
I pity celebrities.
No, I really do.
Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Barbara Streisand, she knew them all.
Were once perfectly pleasant human beings.
But now their wrath is awful.
I think when God wants to play a really rotten practical joke on you, he grants you your deepest wish and then laughs merrily when you realize that you want to kill yourself.
You see, Sly, Bruce, and Barbara wanted fame.
They worked.
They pushed.
That giant thing that they were striving for, that fame thing that was going to make everything okay, that was going to make their lives bearable, that was going to provide them with personal fulfillment and happiness, had happened to them and still, and they were still them.
The disillusionment turned them howling and insufferable.
Wealth, power, achievement, family, material comfort, security, the external goods of the world can only lead to a momentary satisfaction which fades away.
And later on in the article, in the words of Cynthia Hemel, fades away, leaving you emptier than if you had never tasted it in the first place.
Emptier.
C.S. Lewis sort of summarized the idea of the ancients in his BBC radio program during World War II.
Most people, if they really learn how to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want and want acutely something that cannot be had in this world.
There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never keep their promise.
The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love or first think of some foreign country or first take up some subject that excites us are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning can really satisfy.
I'm not speaking of what would ordinarily be called unsuccessful marriages or trips or so on.
I'm speaking about the very best possible ones.
There is always something that we grasp at in that first moment of longing that just fades away into reality.
The spouse may be a good spouse.
The scenery may be excellent.
It has turned out to be a good job, but it, the it, still evades us.
So what happens when we discover the successes and desires in life don't give us the satisfaction that we hope for?
There are really two basic ways over history that people have sought to deal with their dissatisfaction.
The traditional way is to live with the conviction that there is no it out there to be got, and that is the sense that deep satisfaction is in fact not possible in life.
The modern way is to live with the modern way is to live life assuming that deep satisfaction is possible and it is out there and that it can be got.
And so the Sylvester Stallone's and the Barbra Streisand's, well, they just missed something.
The traditional ways to include that our expectations of the world are out of line and our desires need to be suppressed.
And so there are three ways to live if that's the case for you.
Firstly, it's altruism.
You start out in life seeking advancement, but this thing called a midlife crisis hits, and you discover it is all dissatisfying.
And so you turn away from it into social causes, basically seeking the advancement of others for their satisfaction.
Now, of course, I want to encourage those things, but problems can soon arise when people turn to benevolence, social activism, as a way to find more fulfillment for themselves.
The irony of that.
The poor and the vulnerable get exploited to improve my satisfaction in life.
It's about me, not about them.
Secondly, cynicism.
This is where a person just lowers their expectation of life.
But what makes us human beings is, in fact, that we want joy.
We want meaning.
We want fulfillment.
And if we decide that that's not possible, our hearts become hard and we dehumanize ourselves.
And thirdly is detachment.
This is the suggestion not to love anything or hope for anything too much.
Cynicism moves to detachment.
The Greek philosopher Epictetus wrote,
What harm is there while you are kissing your child to murmur softly, tomorrow you will die?
See what he says there?
In other words, don't love too much and you won't experience dissatisfaction too much.
Keep everything, every love at an arm's length.
This ultimately hardens your heart and it dehumanizes you.
The modern way is the opposite.
We deal with our dissatisfaction by attempting to pursue satisfaction with everything we've got.
And there are four ways you do that.
If you're young, the normal way is to start the outer life thinking.
If I get the right love partner, if I get the right spouse, if I get the right career and I make some money, then I'll be satisfied.
That is, in our modern era, the pursuit of jobs, family, sex and so on are the usual distractions by which we hide from ourselves the emptiness of our modern life.
I spoke a while ago with someone who, in their own confession, had slept with more than a thousand women.
And he said it just got emptier and emptier and emptier and emptier and emptier.
We may be quite discontent in life, but we don't recognise it because we are so, so busy in the process of getting ready to be satisfied.
We think we've just got to get over this hill, just got to get around that bend and then things will be great.
Then you move from the young.
The next step is the resentful.
As time goes by, we begin to realise that we're getting, we are not getting it.
Yeah, sure, the mortgage is paid off, the kids are growing up, I've got a stable job and yet I am still restless.
One of the main reactions is to blame the obstacles that have kept us from achieving the things that we think will satisfy us.
We'll identify social structures or individuals who have blocked our progress or who have wronged us in some kind of way.
We blame them saying, I would be quite satisfied if it wasn't for religion or if it wasn't for this job or it wasn't for that relationship or it wasn't for the fact that I was dropped on my head as a baby or something.
And so when that happens, we need a third strategy.
And that is the driven.
What happens if we find we reach many of our material goals and we still find something is significant happens?
Missing, sorry.
What do we do?
Many people blame the things that they have, the things themselves, not other things, but the very things that they have.
We assume that if you've got a better spouse, we get a better job, if we get a better income, a better home, then we will feel much better.
Constantly renovating our places.
And if you take that path, we may become among society's most productive members,
the most driven members of society.
And for the driven, life is like running on a treadmill.
The change of speed does happen, but the location never does.
Go faster, you're still in the same spot.
And you run harder to maintain your position and eventually become too weary to keep on going.
And all that's left now is despair.
Rather than blaming other things, rather than blaming other people and other structures,
rather than blaming the things that are in front of me,
I start to blame myself.
I might be a deeply unsettling feeling that there is something wrong with me.
I haven't done well enough.
I haven't gone far enough up the career ladder.
I haven't attracted the best romantic partners.
I am the failure.
However, most people don't allow themselves to slow down long enough
so that they can hear that voice reverberating around in their hearts
and hear the cry of despair.
We just jump on the treadmill again and keep going harder and harder.
Oh, the crucial, crucial part of a day of rest and reflection
to assess life, to hear in the quietness of the heart what's going on.
Wow, that silence is amazing.
It's remarkable how deep this issue of dissatisfaction is.
When you scan the centuries,
you scan the centuries from the ancients until now,
how remarkable little progress we've made on this issue.
We have surpassed our ancestors in our accomplishments
in travel, science, medicine, communication.
We are unimaginably wealthier and more comfortable,
and yet not a single person is suggesting
that we are more content than what they were.
Not a single philosopher is saying that.
Well, let me go back to one ancient.
The great Christian philosopher, St. Augustine,
wrote that the reason our dissatisfaction is so deep in life
is because our loves are disordered.
Augustine taught that we are most fundamentally shaped
not by what we believe,
not by what we think,
not even by what we do,
but we are most fundamentally shaped by what we love.
Now, that is a very clear word
to us reformed evangelicals who love to think.
We are what we love.
The dissatisfaction of our lives
is caused by the disorder of loves.
We often love less important things more
and the more important things less.
And every cultural system does it differently,
but we all fail to order our loves correctly.
There is nothing wrong with loving your work,
but if you love it more than your family,
then your loves are out of order
and you may in fact ruin your family.
If you love money more than you love justice,
then you will exploit your employees.
But the ultimate disordered love
and the ultimate source of our discontent
discontent in life
is a failure to love the first thing first.
And that is a failure to love God supremely.
The Bible says that human beings
are made in the image of a tripersonal God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
From all eternity,
these divine three persons of the Trinity
have been loving each other
in infinite degrees of joy and glory and contentment.
They are fully, completely satisfied
in and of themselves.
Human beings were created to know that joy
of being loved infinitely
and the joy of loving and glorifying God preeminently.
And since we were created for that love
and for that joy,
we will always look for the infinite joy
that we were designed by God
to enjoy elsewhere.
You don't stop becoming a worshipping being.
You just change the direction of your worship.
This is all Augustine.
If we reject God, which we all do,
then we will look elsewhere to fill that void.
And the reason even the best possible things
in this world will not satisfy
is because we were created for a degree
of delight and satisfaction
that this world cannot produce.
The most famous modern expression of Augustine's view
was the ending of C.S. Lewis's World War II radio talk.
Creatures are not born with desires
unless satisfaction for those desires exists.
A baby feels hunger.
Well, there is such a thing as food.
A duckling wants to swim.
Well, there's such a thing as water.
A man feels sexual desires.
Well, there's such a thing as sex.
If I find in myself a desire
which no experience in this world can satisfy,
the most probable explanation
is that I am made for another world.
Augustine also helps us to see
how it's possible to become deeply satisfied.
Don't harden your heart against love,
Augustine says,
but don't give your heart ultimately things
that you will lose.
That you will lose
and you can never,
that can never satisfy you.
Very simply,
even the best,
the very best marriages
in this world,
the very best marriages in this world,
always end badly.
They always do.
One is going to be left without the other.
Most of the time.
To the degree that we move towards loving God supremely
as the deepest source of our satisfaction
is the degree to which we can enjoy his gifts
for what they are.
Money and career, for example,
become just what they're supposed to be.
Work becomes work,
a great way to use your gifts
to be useful for others
for the advancement of society.
Money becomes just money,
a great way to support your family,
feed the poor,
advance the good news of the gospel
of Jesus Christ,
the ends of the earth.
Some have changed,
sorry,
some have charged
that religion itself
drains ordinary life
of its joy and satisfaction.
And it does it by devaluing
the things of this world.
So it's a straitjacket on you
that means you can't enjoy life.
For sure,
I think that there are some religions
that value detachment from the world.
Buddhism is one of those.
This is not true for Christianity.
It is not true for Christianity.
In fact,
Christianity does not say
that we merit blessing
through depriving ourselves
and turning our backs on the world
to earn heaven.
Christianity teaches
that we are saved
by God's free grace and pardon.
Christianity says,
against the ancients
and against the modern,
Christianity says,
don't love anything less
instead learn to love God more.
And you will love other things
with far more satisfaction.
That's it.
That's the unique contribution
of Christianity.
You won't over protect those things
and you won't over expect things from them.
You won't be constantly furious
at those things
for not being what you hoped
that they would be.
Redirect your greatest love towards God
by loving him with all your heart,
soul, mind and strength.
Not just for what he can give you,
but purely because of who he is.
He is.
And only then satisfaction
will start to come.
You see,
the Christian view,
the Christian worldview
avoids the pitfalls
of both the ancient strategy
of satisfaction
through detachment
from the world
and the modern strategy
of satisfaction
through acquisition.
because the fundamental
of the Christian gospel
is it's a gift.
It's not a,
you don't acquire it,
it's a gift.
It's where it all starts.
And when you see life as a gift
and the grace of God as a gift,
you see everything that flows
from his hand as a gift.
But they are gifts
from the good gift giver.
So how then do we love God?
Well,
in the same way
that children learn to speak.
Only by responding to speech.
And learning to love
only by reciprocating love.
We cannot love God
just by thinking
of an abstract deity
who is loving and kind in general.
We must grasp
and be gripped
by the true story
of God's actual sacrificial
saving love for us
in Jesus Christ.
In John chapter 6,
which Anne read out for us,
verse 35,
Jesus speaks to a crowd
about the bread of life
such that whoever eats it
will never go hungry.
Eat this bread
and you'll always be satisfied.
Drink from this well
and you'll never be thirsty.
He's talking metaphorically
about something
that gives both strength
and delight
an image of fulfillment
and satisfaction.
He also observes
that human beings
seek this
in all the wrong places.
He warns against
in verse 26,
sorry, 27,
working for food
that spoils.
In other words,
for trying to find satisfaction
from that stuff.
And then he says,
I am the bread of life.
And he holds out
a piece of bread
in Luke chapter 22.
This is my body
given for you.
You see,
the heart of the
Christian faith
is a simple gospel message
of sin and grace.
Sin and grace.
Because we fail
to love God supremely
and our neighbor
as ourselves,
we sin
and for God
to forgive our sin,
the Son of God
became human
and graciously died
in our place
on a cross.
And there are two ways
that this message
can bring about
the love relationship
with God
which solves
our satisfaction dilemma.
Firstly,
the knowledge
of sin
against our Creator
starts to soften
our hearts.
If there is a God
who created us
and keeps us
alive
every minute,
then the love
that we owe
this God
is infinitely great.
To not love
Him supremely
is infinitely wrong.
If you believe
that,
you begin to see
how much
you have wronged
Him
by loving
the gifts
He has made
rather than
Him,
the gift giver.
And it begins
to draw your heart
outward towards
Him in humility
and grief.
But then secondly,
the knowledge
of His grace
just ignites
your heart.
It ignites
your heart.
for God
to forgive us,
He had to pay
the debt
Himself
because we
can't do it.
Jesus Christ
pays it on the cross
for us.
I wonder
if it dawns
on you
at least
three times
a day
that outside
of salt
and a few
minerals,
everything that
goes in your
body has died
so that you
can live.
Ever thought
about that?
If you're
eating bread,
not only did
the grain die,
but the bread
must be broken
up into pieces.
If the bread
stays whole,
you starve.
If the bread
is broken
into pieces,
you take it
in,
then you live.
So when
Jesus Christ
says,
I'm the bread
of life
broken for you,
He is saying,
I'm your God
broken for you.
I die
so that you
might live.
Seeing
and savoring
what He has
done for us
begins to
change your
heart.
He suffered
and He died
for your sake.
At the very
least,
friends,
it's why
we just
prayed,
be today
my daily bread.
Not just
give it to me,
but be
my daily bread.
It's why
we keep
encouraging you
to have a
devotional life
four or more
times a week
to have that
gospel message
of God
and His
goodness
to you
hit you
again and
be reminded
of it because
you are
confronted
every single
day with
images and
words that
are saying,
be satisfied
with this,
with this.
face.
If you
don't have
your face
in the
Bible,
you are
already
losing the
battle.
You cannot
force your
heart to
love,
but it's
the good
news of
Jesus Christ
that will
change it.
The love
of Jesus
Christ
draws out
our hearts
and it
draws out
our hearts
and takes
them off
inordinate
attachments
to other
things,
good things
but not
ultimate
things.
And to
the degree
that we
find our
satisfaction
in Jesus
Christ is
the degree
to which
we will be
radically
generous
with our
time,
our talents,
our testimony
and our
treasures.
And so
once again,
I commend
to you the
project card.
the more
satisfied we
are in
Christ,
the more
free we
are with
all of our
possessions.
To the
degree that
we find
our
satisfaction
in Jesus
Christ is
the degree
to which we
can say
with the
psalmist,
because your
love is
better than
life,
I will be
fully satisfied
as with the
richest of
foods.
friends,
we're going
to pause
and then
we're going
to pray.
Just bow
your heads
for a
moment and
just take a
moment to
allow that to
sit and reflect
in your
hearts.
gentle
extent,
do you
love
teaspoon of
love
конечно,
you
can't
hvor
Maybe
perhaps
maybe
transmit
you
or
your
love
how
yourself
maybe
like