All right, well, here you have, we are in a little mini series right now for three weeks. And then we'll be starting a Christmas series. But I'm calling it, I'm does the Bible say that. And we're looking at maybe some cultural cliches, or I might call it street theology, some things that are popular things to say today.
And some of it may be a bit harmless, but at best, it puts us in bad company. It's a bit self-help-y. And at worst, though, it puts us in real danger of having bad theology. Now, I don't know if it is going to go to the extreme of heresy, where it's in danger of being non-Christian, but certainly not helpful and not good.
So we're trying to clean up a couple of things. And so last week, we talked about this popular notion that everything happens for a reason. And so we tried to ferret that out and break down why that's bad theology and what is good theology. Well, this morning, we're looking at this phrase, I'm God just wants me to be happy.
Now, here's the thing, the worst kind of lie is when that's got a little bit of truth in it, just enough truth to make it confusing. So in fact, the Bible teach this idea. God just wants me to be happy. Well, I think the problem is that little word just.
God just wants me to be happy. And that little tiny word can make all the difference. Now, does God want me to be happy? Certainly, God wants me to be happy.
But it is not by any means God's highest priority or greatest value for me, happiness. And we're going to try to talk about this and break it down. Now, part of the problem is that we fight in our culture against this idea that in some ways has become a sort of religion, people who are seeking happiness in their life as their greatest goal. And it becomes an excuse for some bad behavior and it becomes an end and of itself.
Now, a few years ago, there's a university in New Jersey called Sitinary College that developed the country's first master's degree in happiness. And since then, they have now added a PhD. You can get a PhD at Sitinary College in New Jersey on happiness. It's a 66 unit course in which you have class and then write a PhD dissertation on the subject of happiness.
Now, is it a worthy study to study this concept of happiness in culture? Well, certainly it's a worthy study. Is it worthy of a PhD degree? I don't know about that.
So it is though a part of the obsession that we have in our world on happiness. Now, it's interesting to think through happiness. In the 18th century, really across the world, this concept of personal fulfillment and happiness began to be explored. And Thomas Jefferson, one of our founding fathers, contributed to this new thinking about happiness in what is one of the great documents of human history, the Declaration of Independence.
And in that Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson penned these famous words that American citizens have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Now, we take that for granted and don't understand the full impact of those words. This was the very first time in all of human history for millennia that ever a government say that it's a basic right of all of its citizens to pursue happiness. In fact, this concept of buying large was I'm pretty alien to most people.
Life was just a struggle and a challenge for most of the history of the world. And pursuing happiness wasn't really something that people thought that much about. Now, I think that the present conversation about happiness, though, is very far removed from what Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he's thinking about happiness. For Thomas Jefferson, I think he would say, when he's talking about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, those things are related to one another.
And happiness is about being in a country where you have freedom and you can participate in the government that is a, you make up and is not something that is over you, you are a voice in the government. Now, in the 18th century, around the world, a part of this revolution was that happiness was a subject tackled by philosophers, and theologians, and intellectuals. Today, happiness is a subject that is pursued by self-help authors, advertising executives, and a certain university. Now, the idea of happiness is such a fascinating one if you look at all the conversation in our world today.
So I looked at Amazon's top 45 books on happiness. I wanted to show you a few of them. One is the how of happiness, a new approach to getting the life you want. Now, what I think is really funny about this is this is the newest copy, the newest version of this, and the little subtitle, the new approach to getting the life you want, it used to say the scientific approach to getting the life that you want, which is this idea that we can reduce happiness to a science, just one, two, three, and happy you are.
Well, here's another book, Be Your Own Bestie, a no-nonsense guide to changing the way that you treat yourself. So be your own bestie. That sounds like a wonderful way to pursue happiness, or this one, the power of positive thinking, which is not new at all. In fact, this book is over 75 years old, but still on the list.
Of course, the famous book by Norman Vincent Peele, and then this one, and this is series book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a, and yes, that does say on the book cover exactly what you think it does right there. And it is a very popular book today. Now, despite all of the attention that the pursuit of happiness gets in our worlds, there's the irony. Happiness is an elusive and ultimately disappointing pursuit.
Most people, by their own admission, would say that they're not really happy today. And of course, it's a great irony that in this pursuit of happiness that is being talked about everywhere, most people don't find it. And it sounds very much like Solomon, who said in Ecclesiastes chapter 1, verse 14, I observed everything going on under the sun, and really, it is all meaningless like chasing the winds. Now, why is this a fact?
Why is it that people pursue happiness with such a vigor and yet end up being disappointed by it? Well, the shallow happiness of Amazon is very different from the Christian theology regarding happiness. Now, shallow happiness quits when things get hard. Shallow happiness breaks commitments when a person looks and says, yeah, I'm not really happy.
Shallow happiness defines success as a feeling rather than faithfulness. And shallow happiness thinks that suffering is always wrong. So this morning, I want us to really dig into what the Bible teaches, because what we'll find is that the Bible talks about joy, and that real joy is found in Christ, not circumstances, that blessing comes through brokenness in our life, and character is really forged through difficulty. So I want to take a few minutes and kind of delve into those subjects so we can get a true understanding of happiness as it relates to our life and what it is that God wants for us.
So let's get started. Three things about happiness I want us to see. Actually, two. Number one, Christian happiness is grounded in character.
Christian happiness is grounded in character. So the secular understanding of happiness is as a rule very superficial. And by contrast, the Christian understanding of happiness is rooted in, built upon, and grounded in character. So I just started reading, it's a little book, but it's tough reading.
It's called Notes From Underground by the Russian author Dasweski. And this great Russian novelist in this little novel, dismantles the idea that life is about the pursuit of happiness, because even in the 1800s in Russia, this idea was beginning to develop, that life is about the pursuit of happiness. And Dasweski just shreds this concept in this idea. So we just finished spending two months studying Jesus's Beatitudes, these eight attitudes that God calls Christians to have.
And we're going to get a refresher overview of those beatitudes because they have everything to do with what we're talking about right here. Now, you'll remember that Jesus didn't say, blessed are the comfortable, or blessed are the contented, or blessed are those uneasy streets, or blessed are those who have everything that they want. No, in fact, what Jesus said were things like, blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are those who are hungry.
Blessed are those who are persecuted. Now, those things don't come to mind when people think of happiness today. Now, why did Jesus talk like that? Well, because that's real life, because God's not raising up spoiled children, God's raising up men and women of character and depth.
So overview of our beatitudes. Let's kind of refresh ourselves on those. So these beatitudes, first 12 verses of Matthew chapter 5, there's eight of these beatitudes. And they all begin this way.
Blessed are those who. Now, if you remember which I doubt you would, because it's a minute ago, back in August, when the first Sunday we talked about the beatitudes, we talked about the Greek word for blessed. And it's pronounced a macarios. And it could be translated happy.
Happy are those who. In fact, in the contemporary English Bible, we'll pull up here. You'll see that that's exactly the way the contemporary English Bible translated. It says, happy are people who are, and the first one is hopeless.
And so each one of them goes like this, happy are. So you could translate happy, but there's a good reason why most Bible translations don't say happy, because it gets too mixed up in this cultural, superficial concept of happiness. A better translation is blessed. God's blessing is on those who.
Now, let's go back to verse one here of Matthew chapter 5. And we really didn't talk about this a lot in our series. So in the beginning of this chapter, Matthew chapter 5 verse 1 and 2 says, one day, as Jesus saw the crowds gathering, he went up onto the mountainside and sat down. His disciples gathered around him, and he began to teach them.
So sometimes it's, or often, it's not simple to translate from one language to another. And sometimes we miss some of the little subtleties when we do that. So I've got here what we call young's literal translation, where he tries to do as much as possible a literal translation. So I want to read these same verses for you in that translation.
Here's what he says. Having seen the multidootie went up to the mount, and he, having sat down, his disciples came to him. And having opened his mouth, he was teaching them. Same.
Now you can hear how kind of stiff that is and a little awkward. But there's a couple of phrases that I think are really important. So while it's clunky, notice what it says. He's went up onto the mount and having opened his mouth.
That's an odd kind of a detail, right? Having opened his mouth. And yet I think there's something important there. Because it implies that Jesus is not just talking, but Jesus is sharing his heart.
He's pouring out his mind. These next three chapters are his magnum opus, his great work. Matthew chapter 5, chapter 6 and chapter 7, we refer to as the sermon on the mount. And they literally have changed the world.
And so the idea here is that Jesus is not just talking here. He is sharing his core message to the world. And then we have this phrase that says, he was teaching them. Now here's what's important about that.
It sounds a little odd for us, but it brings out the verb here, which is a past perfect verb tense. And what does that mean? Well, it means that Jesus taught them and he was continuing to teach them. In other words, Jesus taught these things again and again and again.
He not only taught it on this day, he taught it throughout his ministry on earth. So what was it that he was teaching them? Well, if we were to kind of take the beatitudes and summarize them and break it down, here's what we would want to understand. Notice Jesus is not saying, my followers do this, but he says, my followers are like this.
And that's super important. So he says, all of my followers are like this, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are those in hunger and thirst for righteousness. Now why is that so critically important? Because Jesus didn't come bringing a religion of rules.
Do this and this and this and this and this and then you've got it right. In fact, that's what the Jewish understanding of religion was. You got a bunch of things you got to do and a bunch of things you can't do. And if you do these things and don't do these things, God's going to be happy with you.
And Jesus came teaching over and over and over. You've got it wrong. It's not about what you do and don't do. It's about who you are.
It's about your character. And what you do will grow out of who you are. This is such an important distinction there. Because we can't do things in order to make God pleased with us.
But when our characters change, we will begin to live out the things that Jesus modeled in his life. So this is what's so hugely important. And why is this verb tent so significant? Because it illustrates just how much God's, our happiness is built on our character.
God's much more interested in our character than he is our happiness. Does he wants to be happy? Yes. But the source of true happiness is in character change.
Because that's deep and that last. And it's meaningful. And superficially chasing emotion and feeling and circumstances will always leave us broken and empty. Now, what's fascinating is that we're starting to see here in our own secular culture people beginning to question this pursuit of superficial happiness.
The University of Berkeley, one of America's top institutions, has a magazine called Greater Good Magazine. And it's populated here recently with titles of articles like this. Why pursuing happiness may make you unhappy. And meaning is healthier than happiness.
And the problem with positive thinking. So just like the best parents prioritize character development in their children, God prioritizes character development in us as children. Because he understands this is the foundation of true happiness. So this is our first thing that we see about what the Bible teaches in regards to happiness.
That Christian happiness is grounded in character. Here's the second thing that we should see. And that is Christian happiness is found in Christ. So C.S.
Lewis is one of my favorite writers and thinkers. And if you know I've mentioned him in the last year. And when you're around me at all, you'll hear me talk about C.S. Lewis.
He was one of the 20th century's great apologists. He was an atheist whose life was changed when J.R.R. Tolkien introduced him to faith. And he became a Christian.
And then he became one of the great spokesmen for Christianity. And in one of his great books, he writes something that I wanted to share with you. And so I may slide so you can follow as I read. Essentially, here's what he said.
Pursuing happiness apart from a relationship with Jesus will always fail. So let me read what he says. He says, God made us, invented us as a man in vents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol.
And it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on himself. He himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn. Or the food our spirits were designed to feed on.
There is no other. That is why it's just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness in peace apart from himself because it is not there. Now I just can't say it any better.
And so I wanted to read it. This is the Christian concept of happiness. That the Christian understands that they plug into a different power source in life. The Christian lives on this earth, but has adopted values for the life to come.
Jesus made this super clear that when we become a Christian, we continue to live here. But our value system is the value system of eternity, of eternal life. And so there's a little bit of conflict between us and the world we live in and us and the values that we live out in our life. So I want us to see just how clearly Jesus taught this concept.
Now on Holy Week, we see the story of Jesus as he's moving towards crucifixion. Part of what happens there is he comes before Pontius Pilate, who is the Roman leader in the area of Israel. And Pilate has kind of been put in the middle here. The Jews have brought Jesus to him.
They want Jesus killed. Pilate's like, what does this have to do with me? He's trying to find a reason not to have Jesus sentenced to die. And he asks Jesus a question.
He says, are you the king of the Jews? Because that's what these dudes are telling me. He's trying to figure out, OK, should we be worried about this guy? Is he trying to overthrow the Roman government?
OK, and so here's their conversation in John chapter 18 verse 36. And Jesus said, my kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.
Now Jesus' vision that he expressed in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter 5, 6, and 7, that changed the world, was in stark contrast to the way the Jews of his day understood the world. This is the Jews idea of how life is. This is Jesus' idea of how life is. Jesus' idea of life was totally different from the way the Romans of the first century thought.
Here's the Romans' idea of how you live life. And here is Jesus' idea of how you live life. Now here is the 21st century American idea of what's important in how you live life. And here is Jesus' idea of what's important in how you live life.
Now you see the concept where even though we live in the 21st century in America, we are by virtue of being followers of Jesus, adopting a totally different way of thinking about what's important and how we live our life. So what distinguishes a Christian from anybody else? Now what exactly does that look like? Well, let's look at the way Paul says it in Colossians chapter 1 verse 13 and 14.
So Paul says, for God the Father has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his dear son who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins. So super clear. When we became Christians, our sins were forgiven, our values are moved from this world to this one. Here's the way it describes it in Philippians chapter 3, verse 19 and 21.
It says, non-Christians think only about this life here on earth, but we are citizens of heaven where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior. He will take our weak mortal bodies and change them into glorious bodies like his own using the same power with which he will bring everything under his control. So this is that idea.
We live here, but our citizenship is in heaven. And this is a different way of thinking. So how do we think about success? Well, my Christian happiness first and foremost is found in my relationship with Jesus Christ and the new world that I have become a part of, the new kingdom that I now live in.
While I live here, I have a value system that is the heavenly value system in which I will live forever. So the Christian must see himself as essentially different from the world. We have to because we are by nature and by character. Now, notice I didn't say that we see ourselves as essentially weird.
It's not weird. It's different. It's different in the sense that I have a different perspective on life and living. I have a different perspective on suffering.
I have a different perspective on purpose. I have a different perspective on happiness that's grounded in what the Bible says, not what Cosmopolitan magazine says or some silly book that I might see on Amazon.com. So here's the question. If life is preparation for eternity, my happiness is built on Christian character first.
And if life is preparation for eternity, then my happiness is built on my relationship with Christ first. And so here's the question. Does God just want to make me happy? No.
The problem is that we're just. Does God want me to be happy? Absolutely. But to say just is to make happiness my God.
To say just is to make happiness the foundation of my pursuits. We have a whole bunch of people who are doing that in our world. And they are destined for disappointment because happiness is by nature transitory and temporary. And if our understanding of happiness is feeling good right now, then I'm going to have a lot of unhappy days.
When my happiness is about joy in Christ, then I can be happy in all things and through all things. Because my happiness is not dependent on what might be happening in my life right this moment. My happiness is dependent on my relationship with Jesus and my knowledge of where I'll be forever. So here's what God says to us.
Become a person of character, not just a person of comfort. Here's what God says to us. I want you to know real blessing, the kind that comes from following Christ, not from chasing circumstances. Here's what God says to us.
Have joy that survives hard times. Not happiness that evaporates when circumstances get difficult. Here's what God says to us. Be blessed, not just happy.
So here's our choice this week. We can choose happiness, temporary, circumstantial, and shallow that will leave us feeling like Solomon described that life is meaningless like a chasing of the wind. Or we can pursue blessing and enjoy the deep, lasting happiness that's rooted in Christ. And know what it means to say I am blessed.
Let's pray. Father, thank you that we can pursue a deep and meaningful lasting happiness because we know you. And I pray that we won't be led astray by the superficial musings of those who describe happiness as things that are shallow, dependent on circumstances, and not lasting. So help us this week to really live out of these values of understanding that true happiness is built on character, that you're building in us, and true happiness is found in our relationship with you through your son, Jesus Christ.
God, I pray that you help us to live that out this week in Jesus name, amen.