Over the next six weeks, we're going to be going through Randy Alcorn's book on happiness, and I think you're going to thoroughly enjoy it. And then what we will have each week is one of our pastors or somebody just doing a little recap and a little building on that just for a few minutes. I wanted to start this part of it tonight with a joke because I thought laughter just so much, in scripture and in life, goes along with happiness and joy. So I got thinking about a joke.
Well, last week was vacation Bible school, and we had a pass off of the grandkids here going. And one day in the car, we were driving along, and our nine-year-old granddaughter said, grandma, I have a joke. And so she told me this joke. And it was really cute.
So today I'm trying to think of it. Now I am the worst joke teller in the world. And so it was something about this woman. She bought a hair product because it made your hair bouncy, and then she saw her rabbit out in the backyard jumping around.
And so if anybody ever tells you that joke, I just ruined it for you. So because I don't tell jokes well. So I could not think how the whole thing went, but it was really cute. Trust me.
So if your grandkids want to tell you that joke, let them tell you. Because they'll tell it to your right. In the book of Joel, chapter 2, verse 21, it says, be happy and full of joy because the Lord has done a wonderful thing. The Bible is full of examples of joy and happiness.
And so many words like Randy Alcorn was speaking up tonight are synonyms for happiness and joy. We see pleasure, celebration, cheer, laughter, delight, jubilation, feasting, exaltation, blessing. So many words are derived from the same five or six words in both root languages of Greek and Hebrew. So do you think tonight that laughter and celebration and happiness are God created gifts?
You would be right. Amen. Because we can't see them like they're ambushes of Satan to our sin nature. That God disapproves of.
God is a celebratory God. God is one who loves happiness and loves joy. Each of our answers to that question tonight determine whether our faith in God is one that is dragging us by duty. Are we serving God because of that duty?
Or are we being propelled by delight, by the delight of the Lord? And sometimes people see Christians as being dull and boring and they know that following Christ is the right thing to do, but they are certain at times that it means sacrificing happiness, which we know it doesn't. So where would a Christian have come up with that unbiblical notion? Well, throughout the years, as he said, around the turn of the century, some things happened, a shift happened, and it has left people with this false impression that happiness is not spiritual or that it's ungodly, and that could not be further from the truth.
In the late 1800s, you all know the famous British preacher Charles Spurgeon. He said, those who are beloved of the Lord must be the most happy and joyful people to be found anywhere on the face of the earth. When we are happy, think about this. When we are happy, it makes the gospel contagious and appealing to the world around us.
But when we are unhappy Christians, it makes the gospel alarmingly unattractive. Amen? And when we reflect his character, we reflect his character better and we attract people to us when we are a happy people. Unfortunately today in the culture we live in, we're kind of known more for unhappiness.
And you see a lot of that, you know, jokes being made about that even. Many of us may have been taught by well-meaning teachers and that Christian should not seek happiness. We've been taught this kind of imaginary mystic form of joy that's devoid of all emotion, kind of a joy without happiness, as if unhappy joy is even possible. Well throughout history, celebration and gladness of heart have characterized the church, including the suffering church, and we don't have to look any further than Paul to see that.
Scruturally, the culture of God's people is one of happiness and joy and gratitude. And the people who do not know God have every reason to be miserable. But we as Christians have absolutely no reason to be miserable. Because we can hear and I've heard all of these expressions come across from good well-meaning Christians at some time or another, something like, God wants you to be blessed but not happy, which is confusing because they're the same thing.
Or God doesn't want you to be happy, God wants you to be holy. Or God doesn't want you to be happy, He wants you to be strong. Have any of you ever heard those statements? And they're so off base.
Do those messages, do they produce this, a real, do they promote the good news of Jesus? Or do they really obscure it and hide it? Sometimes this distinction between joy and happiness has been placed there because of fear, because we don't want to be sinful people. And for some reason, we have tied sin in with happiness.
We observe people in the world pursuing, who are in sin, and they are using sin to pursue happiness, and they're thereby destroying their lives. And we confuse that desire to be happy with sinful attempts to fulfill that desire. And instead of opposing sin, which sin is the thing that we need to be opposing, we tend to oppose the happiness. So we're going to step back a little bit tonight and just realize that we've been looking at this a little bit wrong at times.
Now let me make it perfectly clear here. We find happiness in our relationship with Jesus. Amen? Amen.
God prohibits sinful pursuits of happiness specifically because they destroy genuine happiness. God never says no to happiness, but He says no to what makes lasting happiness impossible. We need to be just be aware of putting God over here on one side under holiness, under the title of holiness, and putting Satan over here under the title of happiness. You know, the devil has mastered this strategy in the church.
His lie from the very beginning was that God doesn't care about our good. Amen? He's a liar. But the truth is, God wants us to seek real happiness in Jesus Christ.
All Satan wants us to seek this cheap imitation holiness that stems from self-serving pride. In the New Testament, the Pharisees had a passionate desire to be holy, but they wanted to be holy on their own terms. They wanted to set the rules and set the standards for everyone else. But Christ, He had the response to that in John 844.
And He said, You are of your Father, the devil, and your will is to do your Father's desire. Whoa. Isn't that a little frightening? You don't want to be a Pharisee, do we?
Satan hates God. Amen? Satan hates God. Satan hates us.
Satan hates happiness as much as he hates holiness. Did you ever think about that? Satan is not happy, and he has no happiness to give. You know, he takes this rat poison, and he wraps it up in beautiful, colorful packages and tries to sell it to us as happiness.
But the devil has no power to implant within us a desire for happiness. Satan is not about happiness. Satan is about sin and misery, which came from seeking happiness or no happiness could be found at all. God is the one and the only who planted our desire for happiness.
So people so often seek happiness in sin, but the core problem isn't seeking happiness, but instead choosing sin over God. That's where the problem lies. Because God created us for greatness, did you know that God created you for greatness? Every single one of us, he gave us gifts and skills and talents to build his kingdom, to serve others and to glorify him.
And so when we are a people of greatness, the world's superficiality, we don't find that satisfying. It's empty, isn't it? The world has nothing to offer us. We sense that there's an abnormality about happiness, that is not a normal state of being.
And we ache with our beings for someone or somehow or something to bring us lasting happiness. And that someone is Jesus. And that somehow is through his redemptive work on the cross. So we want to get a balanced perspective here.
There are two extremes. And as I describe these Christians to you, if you've been in the church very long, you're going to know people who are like this. And I don't think there's any in this room, but you might know some other places. So I don't want to get in trouble.
So two extremes of Christians here when it comes to happiness. There are some Christians when they are watching the news at night, when the bad news comes on, the hurricanes, the tornadoes, the shooting sprees, or the whole thing about the sex trafficking that's all about us, the abortion. They want to turn the TV off and ignore the suffering of this world while grabbing on to just superficial living. That means nothing.
They look the other way when their marriages are in trouble or when their kids choose the wrong friends or take the wrong path. Yet they keep claiming Jesus' promises of easy lives without suffering. The problem with that is Jesus never promised that. In this world you will have trouble.
Jesus said, but he would give us his peace. On the other hand, there's these other Christians and they are just perpetually somber, sad, never laughing, never poking fun at themselves. It's easy to poke fun at somebody else, isn't it? But poking fun at ourselves sometimes.
So rarely celebrating, they're quick to frown when they see someone having fun. They're the wet blanket at every gathering, you know, that kind of Christian. They have this downcast attitude that they believe happiness is ungodliness. The Bible though presents a different picture for us.
In Second Corinthians 6, 10, Paul said, he was sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. And in this world we live in sorrow is a part of our life and joy is a part of our life and they have to coexist. Notice here though in that scripture that the word always in Paul's statement is associated with rejoicing, always rejoicing. But it is not associated with being sorrowful.
You know, it's not insensitive to be happy. It's not unkind to be happy. It's not wrong to be happy. By being happy in Christ, we lay claim to the fact that God is bigger than the fall of mankind.
And we affirm that our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, will someday reverse this curse and will reign as King, won't he? Amen. Our happiness shouts out that our God is present with us and he is at work in the world all the time. The narrower our view of God is and God's presence in the world.
The narrower it is in our daily lives. The more unhappy we will be. If you're walking around tonight as an unhappy person, you're God's too small. If you're walking, let me say it again.
If you're walking around tonight, unhappy all the time, you're God's too small. God is bigger than that. The secular world has divorced Christianity from happiness and sadly we have earned that at times. People today perceive that Christianity is just about tradition and morality and rules.
And yes, we believe in morality and yes, we do have rules and yes, we do have tradition. But some people go around with these scowling faces in the name of moral obligation and they go through their religious rituals, but some refuse to lower themselves to being happy. And we can't do that. They seem to wear their unhappiness like a badge of honor like it makes them godly.
So you see this group of Christians and this group of Christians, folks, we don't want to be either one. We want to rejoice in the Lord. We as the followers of Jesus Christ should be completely fearless and absurdly happy. Amen?
If anybody has a right to be happy on this earth, it's Christians. It's you in this very room. John 1624 tells us, until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask and you will receive that your joy may be full.
How can our joy be full if we're not a happy people? Let's stand tonight and I'm going to ask you all, if you just to stand with me tonight, please, if you are here tonight and you're fighting with unhappiness, if you find yourself unhappy more of the time than you're happy, there needs to be a change. Amen? Let's bow our heads and pray.
Lord, we come to you tonight and we thank you that joy is just not some nebulous emotion out there that means nothing. But Lord, God, it's tied to our very emotions and who we are. Lord, we pray that you would make us a happy people so that our gospel, the gospel that you, we are sent here to spread around. The gospel that we are sent here to live out would be evident to the world around us.
They would see a difference. They would see a people walking in joy and walking in happiness. Lord, I pray tonight for anybody in this room that is struggling with unhappiness, that you would just minister to them tonight, that you would let them see from your word, that happiness is not a sin. Happiness is not tied to sin.
Happiness is tied to the redemptive work that you did for us on the cross. Fill us with your joy. We know the joy of the Lord is our strength. Fill us with your happiness.
Lord, let us just delight in you. Let us find the gladness of the Lord and walk in that. We give you the praise tonight. We give you the glory and all your people, your joyful people tonight say, amen, amen and amen.
On the back of your notes tonight, there's about a chazillion scriptures. Yes, it's the real number for you guys who are going to ask me that. Is that a real number? Yes.
On the back of your notes, you have an assignment this week should you choose to accept it. What I would recommend you do is open up several versions of the Bible. If you have them on your phone, if you have a smart phone, you probably have another chazillion translations on your phone, right? And compare the usage of those words, happiness, joyful, delighting in the Lord, gladness in the Lord and all of those that are listed there and see what it's being used and how they can be used interchangeably.
Don't get hung up on the fact that joy and happiness have to be separated. Amen. Go and be happy. Amen.