I recently spent three days with a group of pastors, almost all our time devoted to deep sharing of our life stories. We laughed at the silly things we’ve done. We marveled at the lineaments of God’s grace. We wept over sins, wounds, and struggles, both past and present.

I drove home pondering the fact that when ten tenderhearted, Jesus-loving, spiritually alive pastors get into a room and are honest with each other, we share stories of theft, pornography, broken families, paralyzing anxiety, suicidal thoughts, marital struggles, and unfulfilled longings. If there’s such brokenness in the histories and hearts of godly shepherds, what must be the inner reality of the sheep in our churches? Surrounded by such brokenness within and without, how can the people of God possibly hope to sustain their joy in God?

The odds seem long and the situation bleak. But Psalm 70 gives me strong hope.

May All Be Glad

I’ve been drawn to Psalm 70:4 for many years, because it brings together two awesome truths that thrill the heart of every Christian Hedonist:

May all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you! May those who love your salvation say evermore, “God is great!”

Only a capacious heart could breathe such an expansive prayer. Notice that David isn’t content for just a few (or even most) seekers of God to rejoice. No, he longs for all to experience God-centered gladness. And David’s requesting more than just a flickering, intermittent passion for the glory of God among the people of God; rather, he prays for their lips and lives to communicate God’s worth continually, at all times, without interruption.

This is a plus-sized prayer. It’s so big that many millions of people can (and have) fit inside it. David was surely praying it for himself. He was also praying it for those of his generation and all future generations. In fact, if we’re seeking God and loving God’s salvation, David’s prayer is for us. David is asking God to sweeten our joy and strengthen our passion for his glory. He doesn’t specify how these two prayers might fit together, but John Piper has helped many of us treasure the biblical teaching that they are in fact one. As we find our deepest joy in God (“in you”), we display his worth to the world.

Bold Prayer in Dark Days

Though I’ve loved Psalm 70:4 for years, it wasn’t until recently that I noticed the context. And it’s the context that has filled me with hope.

Here’s what I’ve noticed: Psalm 70 is not a sunny psalm. It’s not a walk in the park or a day at the beach. Life is not good in this psalm. Instead, it’s hard — very hard. In fact, the psalm is an almost-unremittingly desperate plea for God’s help. Verse 1 (the first verse) and verse 5 (the last verse) are bookends:

Make haste, O God, to deliver me! O Lord, make haste to help me!

Hasten to me, O God! You are my help and my deliverer; O Lord, do not delay!

There’s a focused urgency here. David sounds like a soldier pinned down by enemy fire, radioing desperately to central command. His enemies want David dead, and they gloat over David’s misfortunes (“Aha, Aha!” verse 3).

We’ve already seen David’s response to this dark situation. He feels two overwhelming desires, one expected and the other exceptional. First, David wants out of the situation. In four out of five verses, he pleads with God for speedy deliverance. This reaction is perfectly natural and completely understandable. Who wouldn’t want this? Of course, we’d all be asking for the same rescue.

Second, however, the intense pressure of David’s circumstances also squeezes from his heart another cry, this one much more unusual. Stunningly, the request in verse 4 is not just for himself, but for others. It’s nothing short of miraculous that David, in his foxhole, under heavy fire, prays not simply for personal escape, but for gladness among all God’s people, and for the continual glorifying of God. What is going on here?

Praying in a Sea of Suffering

Some of us hear the Bible’s repeated calls to pursue our joy and believe that it’s simply beyond us in our present state. For the moment, our attention is occupied by other matters: sin, sickness, loneliness, financial difficulty, opposition, relational pain. We feel we’re in the 101 class of “Surviving Our Problems” and not quite ready for the 201 class of “Pursuing Our Joy.” Verse 4, we think, is for people who have it all together (or at least more together).

“Christian Hedonism is as much for bleak days as it is for bright ones.”

And this is why the context of verse 4 is so challenging and so encouraging, because verse 4 exists in a sea of suffering. David doesn’t say, “Once I get free from my enemies, then I’ll start to care about the gladness of God’s people and the glory of God.” His foxhole prayer, in worrying and uncomfortable circumstances, is for gladness and glory. This is a real-world prayer. Christian Hedonism is as much for bleak days as it is for bright ones.

If God can work this extraordinary impulse in David’s heart, why can’t he do the same in us? Why can’t he implant a renewed passion for our joy and his glory even in the midst of intense suffering? Could it be that God might even use the desperation of our brokenness to drive us to him?

In his poem “The Storm,” George Herbert ponders how, like the violent force of a terrible rainstorm,

A throbbing conscience spurred by remorseHath a strange force: It quits the earth, and mounting more and more,Dares to assault thee, and besiege thy doore. (lines 10–12)

Our inner and outer conflicts may produce something good. “They purge the aire without, within the breast” (line 18). This was certainly the case for David in Psalm 70. His desperation yielded a passionate cry to God that continues to encourage followers of God to this day.

Seek and Rest

You can pray a David-like prayer in your own bleak situation by taking two cues from David himself.

“Joy and gladness are the unassailable possession of those who fix their eyes on Jesus in the storms of life.”

First, seek God. “May all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you!” Joy and gladness are the unassailable possession of those who fix their eyes on Jesus in the storms of life. Look more deeply and more often at Jesus than you look at your enemies or your troubles.

Second, love God’s salvation. “May those who love your salvation say evermore, ‘God is great!’” Consider frequently how God has saved you (and how he’s saving many others). Delight in this salvation. Rest in it. Love it. The more you love your salvation, the more readily your lips will spill over with natural praise of the God who saved you.

Please don’t wait to pursue your joy in God until God has healed your brokenness and resolved your problems. Verse 4 isn’t a postscript to Psalm 70; it doesn’t come after David’s crisis. It emerges from the midst of it. This is an example and invitation for us. Don’t wait to pursue your joy. Start right now.

Audio Transcript

Good Monday morning. If you are driving to work or to school, or walking the dog, welcome back, and thanks for making the podcast part of your routine. We start this week with a question from a listener named Kate who lives in the bustling city of Cape Town: “Pastor John, hello! I appreciate you and your ministry from down here in South Africa, a country with an unemployment rate at 35 percent — a rate often mentioned as the highest in the world. On the ground, navigating beggars is daily life for us.

Here’s a daily scenario. You’re sitting in your car at a stoplight. Someone approaches your window to ask for money or food. You sit facing forward, ignoring them to focus on the traffic light ahead, until you finally drive off. Every time I do this, something doesn’t feel right here, especially with regards to Luke 6:30 — we should give to everyone who asks. But then what about 2 Thessalonians 3:10, a text that calls for diligent work, or else you will not eat? I listened to APJ 80, “How to Handle Panhandlers,” from over nine years ago, but there you didn’t address this second text. And I feel pulled between them. What suggestions would you have to offer me?”

Before I give some specific suggestions for how to put together Jesus’s command to give to everyone who begs from you (Luke 6:30), and Paul’s command that those who are unwilling to work should not eat (2 Thessalonians 3:10), let me lay a little bit of foundation that I think Jesus wants us to hear. And I’m really preaching to myself here, mainly as I’ve, over the years, analyzed my heart in dealing with folks who stand on the corner. I walk by them almost every day. So, she’s not alone in South Africa. Here in the middle of Minneapolis, I deal with this on foot, not just in the car, which it makes it even more poignant, I think.

I think that Jesus’s radical, sometimes unqualified, commands are intended especially — not only, but especially — to sever the nerve of our deep, deep, deep selfishness as human beings. He meant to expose the most fundamental problem with human nature — John Piper’s human nature — namely, our sinful condition that consists essentially in a deep bondage to self-exaltation, self-preservation, worldly self-gratification, all of which more or less conceals a self-asserting resistance to God’s right to tell us what’s good for us and to be for us what’s good for us.

“I think Jesus’s radical commands are intended especially to sever the nerve of our deep selfishness.”

I think Jesus cares more about exposing and healing this disease of our evil self-centeredness than he does about working out all the details of how our healing and liberation from self will express itself in ways that help other people — like the way we deal with panhandlers, or the way we deal with idle busybodies in church who won’t work.

Severing Deep Selfishness

Maybe you can sense what I see if I read the passage that Kate referred to in her question — namely, Luke 6:30. But I’ll do the surrounding verses so we can really feel the force of what Jesus says:

I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. (Luke 6:27–31)

Now that last command is what we call the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And that Golden Rule is really an alternate form of Jesus’s second great commandment in Matthew 22:39, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” I think doing unto others as you want them to do to you means, “Take the measure of your own self-regard, your own self-care, your own self-comfort, and make that the measure of your regard and your care for others.”

Now that’s a devastating command. It is a mortal threat to our own self-exaltation, self-preservation, self-gratification, self-centeredness to take all that deep commitment that we have to our own well-being and make it the measure of our commitment to the well-being of others. That’s simply gloriously astonishing, something nobody can do apart from a miracle of God. I think it’s the same thing Jesus was calling for when he said, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all” (Mark 9:35). Being the servant of all is virtually the same as loving others as you love yourself and doing unto others as you would have them do unto you.

So, I’m saying all of this as a preface to the ethical effort to sort out the details of what love looks like, what liberation from self-centeredness looks like. Because if we don’t come to terms with our own sinful selfishness, we will almost certainly twist the teachings of Jesus and Paul to make them fit into our bondage to self-gratification.

Tough Love in Thessalonica

So, now to Kate’s specific question regarding 2 Thessalonians 3:10. The situation at Thessalonica is that some people were using the nearness of Christ’s coming to justify their unwillingness to go to work and in an ordinary way earn their own living. Instead, they were acting like busybodies and going from house to house and were expecting others to provide the food and the needs that they should be providing for themselves by their own gainful employment. So, Paul says to the church in 2 Thessalonians 3:10–12,

Even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. Now, such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living.

So, these are professing Christians. He’s exhorting them “in the Lord Jesus.” And it’s not that they can’t work, like they have a disability, but that they won’t work. They don’t want to. You can see that in the word “not willing to work.” So, Paul is saying that one strategy, one brotherly loving strategy, to pressure these people back to doing what they ought to do — namely, earn their own living — is making it harder on them to depend on the work of others. You might call this a form of tough love.

Inclined to Give

But it would be very careless, I think, to take 2 Thessalonians 3:10 and apply it to every beggar or panhandler or homeless person on the street. We simply do not know why they are there, not without getting involved with them and talking to them. So, I think it would fly right in the face of the intention of the teachings of Jesus to use 2 Thessalonians 3:10 to make us resistant to beggars, assuming that they are lazy — unwilling to work for their own living — when we don’t know. That might be the case, but it might not be. We just don’t know.

“When Jesus says, ‘Give to everyone who begs from you,’ I think he means that that is our default inclination.”

When Jesus says, “Give to everyone who begs from you,” I think he means that that is our default inclination when we are set free from our bondage to self. That’s our default inclination. That is our declaration of freedom from bondage to self and this world. That’s our declaration of desire to be gracious, even to the undeserving. “Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who abuse you,” and so on.

To be sure, 2 Thessalonians 3:10 cautions us that there are situations in which giving to the one who asks would do more harm than good. And I think Jesus already implied that when he said earlier in that paragraph, “Do good to those who hate you.” That means we need to think seriously about what is good for people. And when he said, “As you wish that others would do to you,” you would want people to do what’s really good for you, what helps.

What Might Help Most?

So I encourage all of us to do a little bit of research, a little bit of homework of what would be really most helpful to people on the street, all things considered. It’s not an easy question. And since we’re so prone towards selfishness, I think we should err on the side of being taken advantage of rather than erring on the side of shrewdly protecting our wallet and our ego.

At the last judgment — I’ve thought about this many times — I think Jesus will be much more prone to commend lavish generosity to the undeserving than he will be to commend how shrewd we were in keeping for ourselves our few dollars rather than giving them away. I just can’t imagine Jesus saying, “Wow, you were especially good at being shrewd at not being taken advantage of.” I don’t hear anything like that in Jesus’s teachings.

So, let’s know our own hearts, let’s confess the sin of selfishness, let’s pray for the compassion of Jesus and the far-seeing wisdom of Jesus, and let’s do our homework, a little bit of research to find out how our lives as a whole can bring blessing into people’s lives, especially eternal blessing.

Words alone could never fully capture the meaning and wonder of Christmas — but we can sure do a whole lot better than the card aisles in stores today. “Many blessings and wishes to you.” “May your life be filled with warmth and good cheer this holiday season.” “Sending lots of peace and joy to you and your family this Christmas.” “It’s people like you who make this season so magical and bright.”

No, it’s not people like you (or me) that make this season merry, magical, or bright. In fact, by increasingly thinking we’re what makes Christmas so merry, we’re slowly siphoning off its true power. The Son of the living God was born human in a small town in the Middle East, sent to bear the awful weight of sin and shame, overpower Satan’s terrifying forces of evil, place death itself in the grave, and clear the narrow path to paradise, and yet how many settle for something superficial and fleeting instead — for greeting cards, newly released electronics, and a few LED lights?

Read enough cards and watch enough movies, and you begin to wonder if the actual “magic” of our modern Christmas is avoiding the real Christmas altogether.

Unfeigned Magic

The world can have its makeshift magic over these next couple days; we’re praying for a spiritual miracle — in us, freshly and more deeply, and then in everyone we love:

Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. (1 Peter 1:8)

Do you still love the King lying in the manger? Does your heart still rise to see him serve his friends, heal the sick, deliver the possessed, and then die for the world? Do you recognize yourself in the verse above, rejoicing “with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory”? If not, come and look again at the deeper, earth-shaking, heaven-filling magic of Christmas, all from just one paragraph in Colossians 1.

1. This Christ shows us God.

He is the image of the invisible God. (Colossians 1:15)

Those eight words really ought to be enough to drive the banality right out of our homes and pews. The man who was born to a real woman, with a real womb, in a real city, during a real time in history has made the infinite and invisible God seeable. Recognizable. Huggable. Human. This Christ was in the beginning, and all things were made through him. And then he took on the flesh that he had made, and ate the food that he had made, and walked over hills that he had made, and loved the people that he had made — all so that we might see God.

And not only did God make himself seeable in the child born in Bethlehem, but he’s opened our eyes to see his glory — in the manger, at the cross, on the throne. Before we believed, “the god of this world” kept us from seeing what we now see. And then, whether suddenly or slowly, we saw him differently. We came to see “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4). In this Jesus, we’ve seen God.

2. This Christ created and upholds all things.

By him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities — all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Colossians 1:16–17)

The man at the center of Christmas changes how we see God — we actually see him — and he changes how we see every other thing we see (and everything we don’t). Christmas isn’t only an opportunity to place Christ above all else, but to see him in and behind all else. “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3). The one who came to live on earth invented earth and life. This makes everything around us, everything in the universe, everything beyond our universe its own Christmas devotion about Christ.

He assembled the trees in our yards, wrapping their rings, stretching their branches, carefully placing leaves and fruit — billions and billions of trees, and yet each of them their own. And over all those trees, he painted a sky, that cosmic canopy of blue. And over that canopy, he taught the sun how to rise each morning and dance, in all its colors, each evening. And beneath that dance, he wove together the people we love, all the people we love, for all the reasons that we love them. Everything that is or will be, he made. He was and is the great Carpenter of creation.

This carpenter was in the beginning, but he wasn’t only in the beginning. He made all things, but he didn’t only make all things; he also holds them together — right now, as you read, and eat, and unwrap presents, and sing. “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3).

3. This Christ came to receive the wrath of God.

And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him. (Colossians 1:21–22)

As genuinely miraculous as his coming was, we celebrate what happened that night in Bethlehem because of why he was born. This Christ came and lived to die. The Son of Man did not come merely to be born, “but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). He received the wrath of God so that we might enjoy his presence and favor.

In the end, it’s the death of this human Son that sets a Christian Christmas apart from all its pagan and commercial imitations.

We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1:23–24)

Some may join us in celebrating the cute baby in a domesticated manger, but only Christians find peace and joy beneath the bloody cross. Their stumbling block is our cornerstone. We were once alienated from God and hostile to him — not neutral or indifferent, but venomous — and yet Jesus laid down his life, paying for all our hideous hissing and defanging our mutiny against him. Christmas is about the canceling and dethroning of sin.

And he died not merely to forgive an enemy, but to have his bride — “he is the head of the body, the church” (Colossians 1:18). He’s not a mercenary Savior, but an adoring and devoted husband. He entered the filthiness of a stable, the indignity of human life, “that he might sanctify [the church], having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing” (Ephesians 5:26–27).

4. This Christ holds the keys of Death.

He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. (Colossians 1:18)

You could of course argue that we celebrate what happened on Christmas morning less because of how he died and more because of how he rose. The man who was born in Bethlehem did in fact die, but then he was “born” a second time when he shook off his grave clothes and walked out of the tomb. He didn’t merely come to die, but to put death itself in a grave.

“Fear not,” this Christ says again this Christmas, “I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades” (Revelation 1:17–18). He’s not the cuddly, defenseless baby the world would prefer. No, his resurrection announced his awesome power and authority over all rivals. None can withstand this Christ, and none will avoid his judgment.

And all who take refuge in him will never die (John 11:25–26). Because of Christmas, death will now kneel to serve you, one day lifting you into the life you’ve always wanted and never deserved. In fact, God has already “raised us up with [Christ] and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6–7).

5. This Christ will inherit and transform everything.

In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. (Colossians 1:19–20)

He may have been raised in the humility of a remote and obscure town, but he came to capture the world, to unite every throne on earth under his rule. And not just the cities and governments, but everything that is — mountains and oceans, grizzly bears and goldfish, evergreen trees, snow fall, and reindeer. And not just everything that’s here on earth, but everything in every realm, all the spiritual realities and forces that invade human life without being seen. “All things,” verse 16 says, “were created through him and for him.”

Christmas is as good a moment as any to stop and remember that God has already made known his “plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in [Christ], things in heaven and things on earth” (Ephesians 1:9–10). When this world comes to an end, we’ll look back at it all and see him. We’ll see how the wildness of creation and the even greater wildness of history all ties together into one stunning tapestry of the glory of Christ. Christmas, then, is the beginning of the end of history — the inbreaking of the one who both makes sense of it all and owns it all.

So, from all the depths and riches of all this Christ is and means for us, merry Christmas! As you prepare your heart and family to remember him, resist the safe and comfortable seduction of worldliness, and press into the Christ-exalting, world-offending, heart-stirring words God himself has given us for this wonderful day.