Enduring When Obeying Hurts

Solid Joys Daily Devotional

Desiring God

Joy, Unknown, Devotional, Desiring God, Religion & Spirituality/christianity, Christianity, Daily Devotional, 163859, Religion & Spirituality, Solid Joys, Jesus, John Piper

4.8 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 28 June 2023

⏱️ 3 minutes

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Summary

What can sustain the will to die for others, when you are innocent? Jesus banked on love and future joy.

Transcript

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0:00.0	June 28, enduring when obeying hurts. Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith,
0:11.2	who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, Hebrews 12, 2, what faith performs
0:20.8	is sometimes unspeakably hard. In his book Miracle on the River Quai, Ernest Gordon tells the true
0:29.2	story of a group of POWs working on the Burma Railway during World War II. At the end of each day,
0:36.0	the tools were collected from the work party. On one occasion a Japanese guard shouted that a
0:42.1	shovel was missing and demanded to know which man had taken it. He began to rant and rave working
0:49.6	himself into a paranoid fury and ordered whoever was guilty to step forward. No one moved.
0:56.9	All die, all die he shrieked, cocking and aiming his rifle at the prisoners. At that moment,
1:04.4	one man stepped forward and the guard clubbed him to death with his rifle while he stood silently
1:10.5	to attention. When they returned to the camp, the tools were counted again and no shovel was missing.
1:20.3	What can sustain the will to die for others when you are innocent?
1:28.4	Jesus was carried and sustained in his love for us by the joy that was set before him. He banked
1:36.6	on a glorious future blessing and joy that carried and sustained him in love through his suffering.
1:47.2	Woe to us if we think we should or can be motivated and strengthened for radical costly obedience
1:55.3	by some higher motive than the joy that is set before us. When Jesus called for costly obedience
2:04.2	that would require sacrifice in this life he said in Luke 14-14, you will be blessed
2:11.4	because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.
2:18.5	In other words, be strengthened now in all your losses for Christ's sake.
2:25.7	Because of the joy set before you. Peter said, when Jesus suffered without retaliating,
2:32.0	he was leaving us an example to follow and that includes Jesus' confidence in the joy that
2:39.3	was set before him. He handed his cause over to God, 1 Peter 221 and did not try to settle accounts
2:49.6	with retaliation. He banked his hope on the resurrection and all the joys of reunion with his father
	...

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