A Christian's Happiness

Life of the church

Good morning everyone, Happy Thanksgiving to you. It’s good to see everyone here on this chilly Sunday morning.

If you’re visiting us today for the first time, you’ll find a visitor card in the back pocket of the chair right in front of you. Please fill that out and drop it in our offering plate to let us know you were here.

I have a few announcements to touch upon as we get started today.

The men’s ministry will meet tonight at 6:00 in the Young at Heart classroom. All men are invited to attend that.

I’ll remind you of our Christmas Cookie Caper that will be held on Wednesday the 22nd for the Stuarts Draft Retirement Community.

And when you get those Christmas cards in the mail this year, save your canceled postage stamps for the Alliance Stamp Ministry. You can deliver those to the church office or Ann Harvey.

We’re gonna go around the room now for some other announcements.

Jesyka, do you have an update for us?

Della, you have an update as well?

Vonda, do you have an update?

And Sue, do you have anything?

Opening prayer

Father, We thank you for everyone gathered here today. Thank you that you know each of us by name and have invited us to walk with You and to grow in you. Thank you that we can depend on you and trust in You completely.

As we surrender ourselves in worship, we ask that You come by Your Holy Spirit and inspire our hearts today. Fill our lives with Your love, Fill our conversations with Your grace and truth, Fill this service with Your presence. We ask this for Your glory and praise. Amen.

Advent Wreath

We are now in the season of Advent, a holy time that is part of the spiritual preparations believers make for the coming of Christ on Christmas. In Western Christianity, Advent begins on the Sunday falling closest to November 30.

The Advent wreath is a garland of evergreen branches representing eternity. On that wreath are candles which represent an aspect of spiritual preparation for the coming of the Lord.

The lighting of the wreath is a custom that began in 16th-century Germany. Each Sunday during Advent, a particular candle is lit.

Today on our first Sunday of Advent, we light the prophecy candle in remembrance of the prophets, primarily Isaiah, who foretold the birth of Christ. This candle represents the hope and expectation of the coming Messiah.

Isaiah writes in chapter 7, verse 14, “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”

Sermon

Are you happy?

We might as well go ahead and ask that, because it’s the question hinted at and danced around by most everyone this time of year.

Thanksgiving is over, Christmastime is here. There’s food and family and lights and songs and presents and nice thick sweaters and a fire in the fireplace. A happy time — that’s what everyone says. That’s what the world expects. Happy Thanksgiving. Happy Holidays. Merry Christmas.

Thankfulness — that’s the whole point of Thanksgiving. And joy — that’s the whole point of Christmas. Both of those imply happiness don’t they, at least to most of us. It’s hard to be thankful if you’re not happy. Harder maybe to feel joy if you’re not happy.

So. Are you happy?

This age we live in is really amazing if you think about it. Think of just the last century. In 1903, the Wright brothers successfully flew the first airplane. In 1969, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Those two things are only 65 years apart. Can you believe that?

Science did that, didn’t it? And science is great. Most of us are being kept alive through science. There’s cancer medicine and insulin, blood pressure medicine, heart medicine. The quality of life we enjoy in the year 2021 is beyond anything in the history of humanity.

All of those gains in science and technology have made our lives a lot safer. A lot easier. But have they made our lives happier? There’s the question, isn’t it? Because I don’t think science and technology have really made us happier at all.

In fact, I’d say that our ancestors were generally a lot happier than we are, and that’s even with fewer freedoms and a shorter life expectancy.

I read a poll out just recently that said as a whole, we Americans are more unhappy than we’ve been in the last 50 years.

That’s a problem, isn’t it? It’s the reason why so many people are quitting their jobs right now. It’s the reason why alcohol and drug use are soaring right now. It’s the reason behind a nationwide epidemic of suicides.

The Bible has a lot to say about happiness, and often you’ll hear that happiness in the Bible is kind of secondary to joy — joy is the aim rather than happiness, and joy is more important.

That’s pretty much true, as we’ll see in a little bit. But happiness — not the mood, not the feeling, but that constant state of mind — is important as well.

A Christian, after all, is largely defined by his or her good cheer. There is nothing worse than a Christian who’s a sourpuss. Someone who’s just serious and stern and rigid all the time, who never really smiles and never really laughs.

The Bible says that what makes us happy or unhappy aren’t physical things — not that job, not that money, not that nice house or car — but spiritual things, and those spiritual things haven’t changed one bit in all of human history.

But what does it really say about happiness, and especially how to get happy and stay that way?

Turn with me to my favorite book of the Bible, the book of Psalms. We’re going to be looking at the very first one today, chapter 1. Follow along with me:

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.

He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.

The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.

And this is God’s word.

The Psalms are considered to be the heart of the Bible, and Psalm 1 is thought by many scholars to be kind of a summary Psalm for the whole book.

Every one of the 150 Psalms can be summed up right here in the first one. And if that’s true, then the principles talked about right here are basic to the entire Bible.

And the first principle is laid out right in the first phrase of the first verse: “Blessed is the man,” and of course “blessed is the woman” too. That word “blessed” means joyful. It means satisfied. It means happy.

So right away when we see that phrase “blessed is,” it tells us that if you follow the guidelines that are getting ready to be laid out in this Psalm, happiness is going to be possible for you.

Now let’s stop right there a minute. It’s easy to skip right by that statement, but thinking about it and deciding whether or not you agree is a really good sign of who you are.

If someone says “Happiness is possible for you,” and in your secret heart you don’t think it is, or if you think it might be possible but it would take a miracle, or if you think someone’s just trying to sell you something, then you’re probably an older person.

If on the other hand someone says “Happiness is possible for you” and you say in return, “Well of course it is,” chances are you’re probably just starting out in your life. You’re young.

Because most of us, if we’re blessed enough to have a stable home life and a relative absence of trauma, start out thinking that happiness is natural.

It’s kind of our default setting. Sure, we knew that unhappiness exists. We knew a few people who were generally unhappy. But that was mostly because they had made mistakes in their lives, whether morally or otherwise. Or maybe they’d had childhoods that weren’t as good as ours.

But generally speaking, we thought most everyone was happy. We thought of course happiness is possible. All you had to do is be good enough or work hard enough, and you’ll be happy.

That’s where we start out.

But as time goes on, we start seeing the world differently because we live more of life. Our lives become fuller. We experience more. The world gets bigger and things get harder. We start to realize that happiness in life isn’t nearly as natural as we once thought it was.

That’s why I can look out at the people sitting here today who are younger than me and say, “Enjoy your optimism. You go ahead and think happiness is easy, because things are going to get harder for you eventually, and then you’ll realize that a simple statement like happiness is possible is really kind of amazing.”

And that’s exactly why the people here older than I am can look at me and say, “Billy, you don’t know nothing yet, because one day you’ll realize that a simple statement like happiness is possible is really kind of shocking.”

Because being willing to let go of the idea of being happy in life is almost a stage of life, isn’t it? It’s not much different than graduating from high school and getting married and having your first child and retiring.

We’ve been conditioned to think that at some point in all of that, we have to give up the notion of being happy. Because there are bills to pay. There are jobs to endure. There are worries to battle. At some point we all start thinking, “Happiness? Yeah, right. I can’t be happy, I have to work.”

And after a while we start to realize that most successful people are really the most cynical about the prospect of happiness.

Happiness to them was almost an enemy. You couldn’t face life head on and still think happiness is possible. To them, the happy people were the ones living in denial about how the world really is.

Remember what Shakespeare has MacBeth say about happiness? It’s one of the most in-your-face summaries of life ever put to paper: “Life,” MacBeth says, “is a walking shadow, a poor player that frets and struts his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

That sounds depressing, but life really does feel that way sometimes, doesn’t it? A lot of times. And it really doesn’t matter how much you have or how famous you are.

I always remember a quote by Judy Garland. You remember Judy Garland, she played Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. One of the finest and most famous and wealthiest Hollywood actresses of her time.

She had everything. But she was interviewed just a few years before her death — she died of a drug overdose, by the way — and the reporter asked her what it felt like to be a living legend. She replied, “If I’m a legend, why am I so lonely?”

That was life to her — a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. If you would have told her that happiness is possible, she would have laughed at you.

So you have people like Judy Garland who would think happiness is unachievable. And you have those who think happiness is natural, those young whippersnappers who just don’t know any better. You have ones who are just too busy to notice how tragic life really is until it bites them.

And then you have those who understand what the Bible says about happiness, and the Bible says that happiness isn’t natural because we live in a broken world, but it’s also possible because we have a supernatural God. It’s possible to live this life fully in all of its despair and grief and still be a consistently happy person.

Why? Because the happiness that God offers isn’t superficial. It doesn’t depend on outside things, doesn’t depend on how good of a day you had or whether the sun is shining or how things are going at work or at home.

Instead, it’s fundamental. It’s something deep down inside you. And the example the Psalmist gives us is right there in verse 3.

The happy person, the Psalmist writes, “is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.”

I want to take a good long look at this tree today, because the secret to true and lasting and godly happiness is right here. And the reason it’s true and lasting and godly is because it confronts the reality of life head-on.

Because look at this tree. The godly person is like this tree, but this tree is just like every other in one important way — it’s still subject to the seasons. See that phrase right there near the beginning of verse 3? “It yields its fruit in season.”

Which means that tree isn’t always fruitful. That tree isn’t always blossoming. A cold winter or a dry summer will still affect it. It’s not always looking productive and healthy and green.

But this tree also has something that many trees don’t. It’s in a perfect location, planted by a riverbank. It’s able to thrive even in the dry times because its roots have access to a constant stream of water.

The point verse 3 is making goes to the first big mistake we often make we think about happiness. It’s the Judy Garland mistake: happiness can only be found in our circumstances. No. The Bible says the secret to happiness is that it’s found inside you, deep down where your roots are.

There’s an old bit of poetry, I’m sure you’ve heard it at some point, and it goes, “Two men looked out through prison bars, one saw mud, the other saw stars.”

It’s the same prison. It’s the same bars. It’s the same view. So why does one man focus on the stars, and the other on the mud? Because they’re planted in different places. The difference is all in the men. Happiness is never about your circumstances, it’s always about where you’re rooted.

The Bible tells us that a Christian isn’t just a religious person, not just a nice person who does good things. A Christian is a person who is rooted in something besides him or herself.

That’s the reason the Bible talks so much about the new birth. Something from the outside has been planted inside of us, rooting us into God. There’s a power and an understanding that wasn’t there before, and — this is important — it’s nothing that we’ve done for ourselves.

This tree by the riverbank that’s getting this steady stream of water all the time? This tree didn’t get there on its own. Trees can’t plant themselves.

We can be happy on our own when life is going great, when we have a lot of rain and sunshine and warm weather. But the sort of happiness that’s consistent, the happiness that’s always there, is only possible because God plants us right there beside the living waters.

And because we’re right there, we can take all of life’s grief, we can endure all of the world’s trials, and our leaf will never wither.

There’s a beautiful balance here in this Psalm. Most religions will tell you the way to happiness is to separate yourself from the world. The Bible says that’s impossible, because you’re made to make a difference in the world. You’re made to be salt and light. God’s will is that you don’t run from life’s troubles, you plunge yourself right into them.

1 Peter 1:6 states this perfectly. Peter writes, “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials ... ” The Greek word there for “grieved” means to be in pain and deep distress.

But Peter doesn’t say that you used to rejoice in God and now you’re not. It’s two present tenses — you’re in deep distress but still have deep joy, and the only reason that’s possible is because you’ve been planted by a stream.

This Psalm is clear: true, sustained, and complete happiness is possible for you. But never allow that to make you forget that you won’t suffer, and never let that confuse you into thinking that if you suffer it’s because God doesn’t love you or He’s not there.

Because really, it’s the opposite. The tree planted by the river still endures those dry seasons. The heat still affects it, so it has to pull from the bottom even more.

That tree’s roots have to go down even deeper, meaning it gets even stronger and more firmly planted. And that’s so important, because that’s where true happiness comes from.

That’s the beauty of this Psalm — happiness is possible if you let God do the planting rather than yourself, but you’re still going to be subject to life’s hardships, but that’s okay because those hardships are so important to your happiness.

In fact, the Bible says you won’t truly know happiness, you won’t truly be able to rejoice in the Lord, unless you’re suffering.

That sounds strange, doesn’t it? But it’s true because the happiness that the Bible talks about is fundamental. It’s not a lightheartedness all the time, it’s not a smile and a skip and always looking at the bright side. It’s deeper.

It’s what God says in Ezekiel 11:19: “And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them” — again, talking about that new birth — “I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh.”

See that? When God comes into your life, he gives you a new heart. And that heart isn’t going to feel less, it’s not going to be that heart of stone you’ve been carrying around since birth. It’s instead going to be a heart of flesh — a heart that feels more, a heart that’s more fragile, a heart that’s often going to be wounded.

We think that happiness involves feeling less — it’s being less concerned about things, letting go. But God says His happiness is about feeling more, especially the hard things, because that’s the only way we can be sure we have that fundamental joy of God.

It’s not gritting your teeth in every pain and forcing a smile and saying, “I’m great, everything’s great.”

That’s not happiness, that’s madness. Instead it’s enduring our hard times and saying, “Father I believe Your word and I know You’re there, but I just don’t understand why You’re letting me go through this, so I’m going to sink my roots down even deeper into You and trust Your love for me.”

That’s the difference between the fragile happiness offered by the world and the fundamental and enduring one offered by God.

Because the world’s happiness depends on an impossibility, which is you controlling your circumstances. The vast majority of time, that’s just not possible.

You see? People who say they can’t be happy because of what’s happening in their lives can never be truly happy no matter how good things are going. Their tree is planted away from the riverbank.

But the people who understand that real happiness doesn’t depend on anything that’s happening around you but has everything to do with what’s going on inside you — where your roots are — those are the people planted by the riverbank, and for them it’s possible to be happy even, and especially, during life’s hardest times.

And that principle is so wise and profound that it’s found all through the Bible. Everywhere in the Bible that you see the word “blessed,” what it’s really talking about is happiness. And in every place, but especially in Psalm 1, we get the secret of finding it.

And that secret is this: happiness can never be found directly. It’s always a byproduct of seeking something more. Happiness itself can never the goal, it can only be a result. But a result of what?

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says if you’re worried, what should you do? He doesn’t say, “First, seek not to worry.” He says you should seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

What he’s saying is that the reason you worry is because you make something besides God your trust. And you can’t do that, because making God your trust isn’t just the key to overcoming your worry, it’s the key to happiness itself.

But we don’t want to go there. In our secret hearts we don’t want our trust in God, we want our trust in ourselves.

Because we know what’s best for us, right? We know how things should work out. We and we alone know what will make us happy. And that’s really our highest priority — happiness.

But we have it all upside down. We want happiness, but we constantly do things that we know will undermine that happiness.

We do things like break our promises, we do things like never living up to God’s standard for our lives. We lie whenever it would make us unhappy to tell the truth.

We do all of these things because our top priority, the number one thing in our lives, is to be happy. The kingdom of God is important, but it always comes second to that.

And the Bible says that until that’s reversed, until we seek the kingdom of God first, we’ll never find the happiness we want. We can seek happiness, or we can seek righteousness. If you seek righteousness more than happiness, you’ll get both. If you seek happiness first, though, you’ll get neither.

That’s what Psalm 1 means. “Blessed is the man,” it begins. “Happy is the person.” Happy is the person who does what? Look at verse 2. Not happy is the person who seeks after happiness, but happy is the person who makes his delight in the law of the Lord.

Is God committed to your happiness? Of course he is. But if you come to him just to make yourself happy, you’re coming to a false God. You’re not coming to the God of the universe, you’re coming to a servant. And that never works, does it?

There are only two ways we can approach God. Either it’s because he created you and you know that if God created you, God owns you. And if God owns you, then you owe him everything.

Or you can come to God and think that because you did all that work, because you put all that faith and trust in him, then God owes you a lot — happiness most of all.

And there’s the thing: the only way to know for sure which way you’ve approached God is to see what happens to your happiness when things go wrong. When you face a dry season. That’s when you know whether you’re concerned more about your own happiness, or about God himself.

Our problem is that we say we want to serve God and put our faith in him, but we make happiness our goal. We make it the one thing that’s non-negotiable.

But God’s happiness depends on placing your trust in him, your faith in him, and to be brave enough to live with that heart of flesh that he puts in you — all of which is entirely possible, because it’s your choice. Always your choice.

We often can’t choose our circumstances, and because of that the happiness of this world will never last. But we can always choose trusting and holding onto God, and so his happiness is always possible.

And that choice, strangely enough, begins with a negative. It begins with seeing the things you’re doing wrong and where your allegiance is. You have to turn away from the things that have you by the heart.

Look at the first verse. You have all these negatives in there, all those “nots” — happy is the person who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, who does not stand in the way of sinners, who does not sit in the seat of scoffers.

I love this illustration, because it works on so many levels. First, it’s the perfect metaphor for how we slide into sin, isn’t it? First we walk by temptation, then we stop and stand and look at it, and then we sit down right with it.

But with regard to happiness, these three verbs show us first the things we should NOT do to find happiness.

We shouldn’t walk in the counsel of the wicked. We’ll never find happiness by following the world’s advice. That’s a warning to watch what we fill our minds with.

And then we shouldn’t stand in the way of sinners. We’ll never find happiness by ignoring what the Bible says. That’s a warning to watch our behavior.

And last we have that verb “sit”. Happy are those who do not sit in the seat of scoffers.

We can talk a lot about that one. That goes back to what we talked about last week in holding our peace.

A scoffer is someone who mocks or makes fun of someone or something. And oh boy, there’s a lot of scoffers out there now pecking away at their computers and phones, aren’t there? You cannot possibly be happy if you sit in the seat of scoffers. You’re life is just ruled by anger and hate.

But here’s another thing: in the culture of that time, you sat where you belonged. Romans sat with Romans, Greeks with Greeks, Jews with Jews, and so on.

So what that last phrase is also telling us is that if you’re not a fundamentally happy person, the real reason is because you’re sitting in some other seat than in God’s lap. That’s what it all comes down to.

So how do you sit in God’s lap? Verse 2 again — delight in the law of the Lord.

Now some people can have a problem with that phrase. They think it means the part of the Bible where all the rules are.

But the law of the Lord is the whole message of the Bible, it’s the gospel, and making that gospel the rule of your life can only result in happiness.

That’s what the river that’s feeding that tree is — it’s the law of the Lord. The happy person delights in that, can’t stop thinking about it, can’t stop studying it and adopting it into his or her life, and that is how those leaves stay green even in the dryness and heat.

Why does the law of the Lord lead to happiness? Because it says God sent his son to die for you so that God could become your father.

We’re all prodigal sons and daughters. When the prodigal son comes back home, what’s he ask for? Not happiness. Can’t be happiness, because the son knows that he owes his father everything because of what his father did.

Instead he says, “I’m not worthy to be your son, so make me your servant. You can’t be my father, so be my king. That will be good enough.”

But what does the father do instead? He says bring a robe and put it on my son, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And kill a calf so we can have a feast.

And the wonderful thing about that parable is this: the moment the son says that the father can become the king in his life, the king becomes his father.

That’s us, and that’s what we delight in, and happiness — true, sustained happiness — can be the only result. But again, it can’t be what we seek. It’s a result of what we seek, and that is God.

C.S. Lewis wrote, “Aim at heaven, you get earth thrown in. Aim at earth, you get neither.” This season when everyone says you have to be happy, find out where your happiness truly is. Find out where your tree is planted. Don’t settle for earth. Aim at heaven.

Let’s pray:

Father we thank you so much for this holy season of Advent, and for the promise of your son born into this world. That alone, father, is all we need. That alone is all that happiness requires. Those are our deep roots. Father we ask that you plant us beside those flowing waters of the gospel so that we may endure our trying times, and that in you we find a happiness that cannot be shaken, a happiness that is permanent, and a happiness that is a byproduct of seeking you first. For it’s in Jesus’s name we ask it, amen.