Over 119, verse 2. In keeping with what we've been
singing this morning about the heart, let's read some 119 verse
2. Blessed are those who keep His
testimonies, who seek Him with their whole heart.
Let's pray together. Ohh, great God, a God of every
grace. We come to you.
Grateful for the covering and saving work of Jesus Christ.
Thank you that because of Jesus our hearts are clean.
Thank you that we can say that we are blessed because in Christ
we can have forgiveness and our sins can be covered.
Thank you for the hope of your promise and the hope of your
gospel. And Lord, truly, you are our
greatest treasure. Look, God, we dedicate our
offering to you this morning. We acknowledge that we're our
treasures there. Our hearts will be also.
And we pray, Lord, that as a people that our hearts would be
drawn to you, that we would be clinging to you as our greatest
treasure. Look, God, we acknowledge our
hearts are fickle. They're prone to wander.
And we've sung about that this morning.
And we pray that you had purify our hearts, that you would take
our hearts with ultra fire and that you would change your
hearts, that you would turn our hearts towards you.
So Lord, as we hear from your word, I pray that you would help
us to seek to live in accordance with your word as those who are
forgiven, as those who are already blessed because we're
forgiven. Help us to seek to order our
lives around you and to cling to you more and love you more.
So may our hearts be drawn towards you.
This morning we ask in Jesus name, Amen.
Good morning. The title of this morning's
message is What makes you Happy? What Makes you Hay?
That's an interesting thought. We start thinking about that.
You start looking into it. If you grew up around church,
maybe you heard something that that went like this, something
like this. God doesn't want you to be
happy. He wants you to be holy, right?
Hands up if you've heard something like that with that
effect. Yeah, a lot of people, right.
We, we kind of present there sometimes, like it's like it's a
dichotomy, right? Like it's two separate competing
ideas. And I think sometimes we almost
get this idea that maybe like God's favourite song is like, if
you're happy and you know, it, repeat.
Yeah. And and maybe your story is that
you thought, well, I'm, I'm either gonna be a Christian or
I'm gonna be a happy person. And the Christian life didn't
seem like it matched up with your idea of happiness.
So you kind of drifted away from the Christian life.
What we're going to learn today is that this is a false
dichotomy, that not only can you be happy and be a Jesus
follower, but Jesus says that he knows more about happiness than
anybody else. Those of us who believe in God
kind of understand that, I think because we we think that must be
the case because God has created us with this incredible capacity
for joy and this incredible capacity for happiness.
And why would he create us with such extraordinary capacity and
not want us to fulfil it through him, right through him.
But it's going to be important. We'll see that as we go, right?
So we're going to carry on in Luke chapter 6 this morning if
you want to turn there, and will be starting in, in verse #12 So
we're going to look at this interesting passage where Jesus
says, here's what makes you happy, here's what makes you
happy. We're gonna look at this.
And then at the end of it, we're gonna look at all the different
things that he says about this and what all these things have
in common, which will lead us to this quite amazing insight into
happiness that will either embrace or will spend the rest
of our lives sort of pushing up against it.
So let's get into it, right? Luke chapter 6 verse #12 sees
this now it came to pass in those days that he went out to
the mountain to pray and he continued all night in prayer to
God. So he goes out to the mountain
to pray. You'll see this often as we go
through Luke, you'll, you'll see this talked about a lot.
Now when Jesus was teaching about prayer, we'll get into
this when we get into Luke Chapter 11 where Jesus talks
about it, we'll look at this in detail.
But before Jesus started talking about prayer, he said, look,
when when you pray, go into your room and close the door.
Gandhi room, close the door, right?
Time and a place. Make a time and a place for
prayer where you're not going to be distracted.
We think we can play anywhere. Yeah, you can but get a time and
a place. Get a time and a place, make a
time and a place. Jesus is very specific about
that. Right Now Jesus you often see
he'll go out into the mountains to pray, right?
He just gets away from everybody where he's not going to get
distracted. And he, he prays and he has it.
And we'll see this phrase come up again and again in Luke where
he says, and now he went to a certain place to pray, right?
A particular place to pray because he, he had this time and
place set aside. So that that's important.
We'll get into that more when we get to Luke Chapter 11.
Another thing we'll see in Luke Chapter 11, because when you
look at it here, he continued all night in prayer.
What in the world did he talk about?
How do you pray all night? And Luke Chapter 11 Well, as
Jesus talks about prayer, we'll see more of that as well.
But but have a look at this. And when it was day, he called
his disciples to himself, right? Those are the people that follow
him, follow his teaching. And from those he chose 12 whom
he named apostles. So he he called his disciples to
him on the mountain, right? He's gone up in the mountains.
So he calls them up to him and he appoints apostles.
And then sort of define this a little bit because this will
come up throughout Luke. And then if you read carry on
Luke's next. But in Acts, it's all about
this, the word apostle, the original liquid is apostolos.
It's an example that we're apostolos is an example of
what's called a transliteration, right?
Which is different to a translation.
One good example of this would be like the fresh French word
restaurant. And so we took that word and we
could have translated it. We could have made it eatery or
something like that. But instead of translating it,
we just stole their word, right? And and that's what you do with
the transliteration. You steal the word and you just
make it sound a bit more like your language and maybe change
the spelling a little bit or whatever.
And so we took restaurant and we made it restaurant.
So that's a transliteration. So apostolos is a apostle with
apostle is a transliteration of apostolos.
We just stole their word and made it sound more Englishy.
So what does it mean? Right.
So the word apostle, apostolos, the original word means a
delegate, a messenger, one sent forth with orders.
And it has the connotation of well, not even connotation
actually a different meaning of it.
Definition of it is somebody who is sent out with authority to
speak on behalf of the person who sent them out or or the
organisation that sent them out. And we've talked about this
before, but probably the closest English word we have to this
would be Ambassador. So an ambassador gets sent out
by the government and is authorised to speak on the
government's behalf. So if a foreign government has
questions about New Zealand and about our government's position
on something, what do they do? They call in the New Zealand
ambassador and they say, what is your government's position on
this? And the ambassador is authorised
to speak on behalf of the New Zealand government.
That's why they have to be very much close contact, really good
communications with government, to always be keeping up with
things. And the ambassador will say,
well, this is our government's position.
So someone who's authorised to speak on behalf of someone else,
what would the apostles? Jesus Christ 4 What what, what,
what are apostles for? Ephesians 4 tells us that part
of the reason is is to guide us so we don't get tossed around by
ideas that aren't right. New ideas can come up and we can
get caught up in things and tossed around and and so the
apostles part of the reason for apostles was to help that not to
happen for us not to get caught up in the wrong things, right in
the wrong ideas. The office of apostle of Jesus
Christ was strongly, strongly linked to instruction and
teaching. So have a look at this from ex
chapter 2. This is what the the the first
church there at Jerusalem. This is some of the things they
did says and they devoted themselves to the apostles
teaching and and to fellowship to the breaking of bread and
prayers. What are the qualifications of
an apostle? And we get an insight into this
because remember Judas was an apostle and he took his own
life. And so in Acts chapter 2 and X
chapter 1, the other apostles get together and they go we need
to appoint a new apostle to replace Judas.
And so Peter lays out the qualifications for that apostle.
And this is what he says. It's very specific here in this
is from ex one verse 21. He says this.
So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the
time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from
the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from
us, one of these men must become with us a witness to the
resurrection. That brings up a couple of
questions, right? So the first one is this.
Does anyone today meet those qualifications?
No, no one does. They had to have been with Jesus
the whole time that you know from from John's baptism, right,
right till the time that he he raised that right.
So. So nobody meets those
qualifications. This was a very specific office
that finished when the last apostle died.
That makes sense. Yep.
There's a couple of tricky bits though that go with this.
While the apostle Paul doesn't directly fit the qualifications,
in next chapter 1 and several places he explains how he can be
an apostle and why he was the exception.
That's too much for the scope of today's message.
But if you want to look at that, you can go to Glaciers chapter
1. So he sort of spells that out.
And also First Corinthians 15, he talks about that as well.
Why he's why he was an exception.
Now several other people in the Scripture are referred to using
the word apostle who clearly don't fit the qualifications of
an apostle of Jesus Christ as as Peter laid them out in Axe.
Let's just look at one of those really quickly because because I
think this kind of unlocks it. And this is a guy named
Nephritis. And Paul is writing to the
church family in the town called Phillippi, right?
So the church is Phillippi and he's running the this letter.
And this is what he says about Aphrodites.
He says, I have thought it necessary to send to you
Epaphroditus, my brother and fellow worker and fellow
soldier, soldier. And you're apostle and minister
to my need right now. Some translations will have that
my messenger. Ohh, sorry your messenger but
but the original word is is Apostolos apostle.
Couple of questions about this right?
If you look at this verse, who was Aphrodite is sent out by?
Yeah, like who's apostle was he? Yet the key there is the
reference at the bottom right. He's running to pulls right into
the church at Philippi and he says appendicitis is your
apostle you your messenger right.
So Aphrodite, this will send out by the church at Philippi hit
and Apostolos gives it the idea that he he sent out on behalf of
the church family of Philippi with authority to speak on their
behalf. Yeah, makes sense.
So who did perfect auto save authorities speak on behalf of
also the Church of Philippi right?
He was their apostle. He was there, ambassador, if you
like, right. Here's a good question, right?
What word would we use to today to describe somebody like
Aphrodites, right? Somebody that sent out by at
least say for us, sent out by our church family, right, with
authority to go and share the gospel and, you know, teach the
word and you know, with the authority of looking to be Bible
church. What would we call that sort of
person? Somebody saying it?
Missionary. Yeah, yeah.
Now, the word missionary doesn't actually appear in the Bible, so
but that's that's what we would use, right?
So appendicitis is a missionary, right, of of the Church of
Philippi. He's an apostle.
He sent out. He can speak on on their behalf.
Does that make sense? Yeah.
And so that also makes sense to when you look at other people
like that are called apostles, like Barnabas, who was sent out
by the the church family at Antioch, right.
He was an apostle of Antioch, if that makes sense.
But in Luke 6 here we're talking about the the original office of
an apostle of Jesus Christ, someone who these guys were
going to be sent out and could speak on behalf of Jesus Christ.
What is Jesus opinion on this? Let me tell you, they were able
to do that and then it names them all.
Let's have a look at this right. Simon, who are also named Peter
and Andrew, his brother Simon's brother James and John, Philip
and Bartholomew, Matthew and Thomas, James the son of
Alpheus. We've got a couple of James in
there and and Simon called the Zealot.
So we got a couple of Simons as well, but one gets called Peter.
So it's confusing Judas, the son of times and Judas Iscariot, who
became a traitor. SO2 Judas as well, right.
A lot of common names in there mention being the Judas that
wasn't Judas Iscariot. Sometimes it says that it says
and then Judas and then all the brackets say not scary it.
Yeah. So.
Yeah, no, yeah. No, no, no, I'm not that guy.
Yeah, yeah. That's anyway it is worth
pausing for a minute, right? So Jesus calls his apostles
together. It's worth pausing for a minute
to remember what happened to each of the apostles and as well
a couple of the early church leaders.
Now, the Bible only gives us direct information about the
death of Judas and James. So some of the information on
the others is a little bit vague.
But here's what we mostly know. And I think it's really
important to to understand this, right?
Matthew, Matthew, Levi, he died in Ethiopia suffering martyrdom
by a sword wound. But actually his death marked
the beginning, not the end of the spreading of the Gospel,
particularly in that region. John survived being put in
boiling oil in Rome. He was exiled to the Greek
island of Pat Moss where he he pinned the the prophetic Book of
Revelation. He's the only apostle to live to
old age. Yeah, we it's pretty amazing we
start thinking about that Peter was crucified upside down, a
choice he made because they said you're gonna be crucified.
And he said I'm not worthy to die the same way that my saviour
died. So they crucified him upside
down. That speaks a lot doesn't about
his humility and his devotion to Christ.
James, the leader of the church at Jerusalem, he faced death by
being thrown off the top of the temple.
The temple was 13 storeys tall, so that's about the same as the
tallest buildings in Hamilton. And apparently he didn't die
when he hit the ground. And so then the whole bunch of
people came and beat him to death.
The steadfastness of that I just kinda echoes through time,
doesn't it? It's sort of man.
Okay, so the other James, James, the son of Zebedee, his
leadership and dedication to ministry will cut short by
beheading in Jerusalem. There's an interesting sort of
legend that goes with this one, details a little bit sketchy,
but the legend is that the guy that executed him was so
overwhelmed by James's faith and that he would go right to the
end, you know, for the stuff that he believed that it it it
must be true. And that the executioner
eventually repented, connected with Christ and was himself
executed later on for his belief.
Now, whether that's true, you know, these are from secular
sources. This is now the Bible.
But yeah, interesting story. You know, it's true, right?
Bartholomew, his missionary work took him a long way, but it was
in Armenia where he met his in Martin.
By being flayed alive. Don't Google that.
Yeah man, his commitment to spreading the word was just
unyielding. Right?
Andrew was crucified on an X shaped cross in Greece, enduring
the prolonged agony of crucifixion to preach to his
tormentors until his last breath.
His words, even in the face of death, were words of love and
faith. Thomas missionary endeavours in
India ended when he was stabbed with a spear, but his efforts to
establish a church there laid foundations that would long
outlive his mortal life. Jude was killed with arrows for
refusing to renounce his faith. They said say it isn't true.
All the stuff he did say you made it up and he wouldn't.
They kept firing arrows at him until he died.
Unwavering belief in Christ teachings.
Mathias, who was the guy that was chosen to replace Judas, was
stoned to death and then beheaded.
Paul faced torture and was ultimately beheaded by Nero in
Rome, and his writings are a lot of them from prison, continue to
guide and inspire us today. Now, these these two aren't
specifically apostles, but probably worth mentioning here.
Mark's journey concluded in Alexandria, Egypt, where he was
dragged through the streets by horses until he died.
But his legacy continued to galvanise believers in that part
of the world for a long time. And Luke was hanged in Greece,
mate, a fate met due to his fervent preaching.
And his words live on, and we're reading them right now.
Night. What does that tell you?
That tells you that the stuff we believe is not fairy tales.
No one's going to be flayed alive for something, for a story
they made-up. They're going okay, yeah, it was
good while it lasted. But you know, it was just a
like, we just kind of, you know, we just kind of came up with
this idea. Nobody's going to do that.
This was very real stuff. And Jesus knew, right?
Jesus knew what he was facing and he knew what they would
face. Can you understand now why he
was praying all night before you pointed them?
Yeah, you can. You can kind of see that, right?
Okay, so let's move on. And there's #17 And he came down
with them and he stood on a level place, right?
On a plane with a crowd of his disciples and a great multitude
of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and from the Sea coast
of tyrant Saddam who came to hear him and be healed of their
diseases. Now, Andrew, listen, did a
fantastic job couple of weeks ago talking about how we have 4
gospels, right? And so we have these different,
He stood back from the pole with him and he's looking at it from
different angles, right? To illustrate the point, we have
4 different perspectives on events that went on in the life
of Jesus. Now what we're going to see here
is, is some of the things that Jesus is about to say are very,
very similar to an event in Matthew chapter 5.
And so a lot of people think it's the same event, but there
are some differences between those events.
Matthews Matthews vision, it's the sermon on the Mount, right
was on the mountain. And this one Jesus comes down
from the mountain seems to be slightly different crowds.
So some people think it's a different event that Jesus is
teaching the same stuff that he taught before, but he's teaching
it to a different audience. Not sure, but but the point here
is that I tend to, I tend to think it is a different event,
but I'm not hard and fast on that.
But the point here is that the truth that he's teaching at the
same truths, right? Some of the things that Jesus
said were quite radical. They're radical now, you know.
But he says things like if you want to be first, be last.
Yeah, it's like, that's weird advice.
Yeah, it's not. That's sort of counterintuitive.
He says love your enemies, right?
You don't get a following saying that stuff, right?
You say let's crush our enemies, let's try Viber enemies, right.
Let's make our enemies pay. That's, you know, love your
enemies. That's weird advice, right?
It's it's it's kind of different.
A lot of things were quite radical and quite
countercultural. So why would you take him
seriously? Like if you heard somebody
saying that these kind of radical things, it's like, why?
Why would we believe that? You know, how do we know he's
not just making stuff up? There's a columnist on Stuff who
gives relationship advice and it is terrible advice.
It's just the worst advice. And if you, as you read through
the, the, the columns, you read through the stories this
person's been in, in like, it seems like dozens of
relationships, none of them successful, still not
successful, right? Why would you take this person's
advice? I can't read these things.
Why would anybody take this person's advice?
They're failing at the thing that they're giving you advice
on. So why would you take Jesus
advice when he says all this different kind of radical stuff?
One of the one of the reasons is that he could heal people of
their diseases. And as we go through Luke's
orderly account of things, we'll repeatedly see this and also
other times when Jesus just breaks the laws of physics and
the Bible calls these kind of things signs because they they
demonstrated they were assigned to everybody.
They were assigned to everybody that this wasn't an ordinary
man. This was somebody to take notice
of. This was somebody to listen to.
Have a look at this in the 17 there carrying on all these
people who came to hear Him and be healed of their diseases, as
well as all of those who were tormented with unclean spirits,
and they were healed. And the whole multitude sought
to touch Him, for power went out from Him and He healed them all.
We'll deal with the, the concept of of demons and the unseen
realm all in more detail when we get to chapter 8, right?
So we'll go into that. But for now, the thing to
understand here is that Jesus killed people with physical
problems and as well as those who were tortured mentally and
emotionally. O, if you were there and, and
you saw this, you would be thinking there's something big
about this guy, right? This is not an ordinary man.
This is, you know, maybe the stuff he's talking about is
worth listening to. They, they kind of backed up
this authority, right? So let's let's carry it on this
number 20 and says, and then he lifted up his eyes towards his
disciples and said, right, So he's he's speaking directly to
his disciples, his followers. Not obviously a lot of these
other people are listening in on this conversation, but but he's
he's primarily speaking to them and he's going to talk about how
to be happy. It's interesting, right?
Because in English the word heavy comes from, from the root
word hap. It's an old Norse word.
And hap refers to an event, right?
Usually a fortunate event, a good event and it's where we get
words like happen. And I mean, I could, right?
An event took place hapless, somebody's hapless.
It means they no good events have happened to them that
without good events have hazard, meaning an event happened that
without any planning, you know, it just sort of came about just
by chance, right? So originally the word happy
mean lucky, as in you're really lucky that that good event
happened. But overtime, the word changed
from kind of meaning lucky or influenced by chance events to
describe an internal feeling. And it changed from describing
your circumstances to describing your mental state yet how you
feel about something. In other words, I feel happy
because my circumstances are going well, right?
So if you imagine it like this, So guys, he's walking down the
beach and it's a beautiful sunny day and he's got his arm around
a beautiful girl and he's got an ice cream and it's an awesome
ice cream and he's happy because his circumstances are good and
fortunate. But then a sudden big storm
clouds are all in, and it just buckets down.
The heavens open, and it just pours down, right?
And the girl looks at him and goes, you didn't check the
weather forecast, did you? This is just so typical of you.
And she storms off, right? And the rain's pouring down, and
his cone gets soggy and his ice cream falls off into the sand,
you know? And so now he's not happy,
right? Because the circumstances aren't
good. Yeah, that's kind of how we we
we think of it in English, right?
But Jesus is about to radically redefine happiness because he
disconnects it from circumstance.
And so Jesus uses this Greek word called macarius, which
means to be happy. But very early on, English
translators realised that that would have slightly different to
our thinking of happy because we we connected with circumstances.
But macarons is more about contentment, right?
Despite circumstances. And actually, the first time we
see it in in secular literature, it's, it's connected to the
island of Cyprus and which was called the happy island, the
happy Isle because Cyprus had all the stuff they needed.
And so it didn't matter if you look at where Cyprus, Cyprus is
that island in the to the to the right hand side of the mid
there. And you can see all of these
countries all around it. It didn't matter what chaos was
going on in all those countries, all around it sufferers was
happy, right, because they had their needs met.
So that was that was Makarios was yeah, that Cyprus, the happy
Isle. So instead of you using happy
that the English translators decided to use the word blessed
or blessed. And that that word occurs 50
times in the New Testament. So we'll see this a little bit,
right? Verse #20 carrying on.
Then he lifted up his eyes towards his disciples and he
said, bless it, right, happy, content.
Are you poor? For yours is the Kingdom of God.
OK, so right off the bat, Jesus addresses one of our most
persistent myths about happiness, which is that rich
people are happy people. Let's just pervasive and that
idea is getting worse, I think as time goes on.
Now in the event that happens in Matthew where Jesus is talking,
Jesus says listen to those who are poor in spirit, in attitude.
What does that mean? To be poor in spirit is to have
this attitude of acknowledging that no matter how much I have
or how little I have, just acknowledging I'm completely
dependent on God. Forget about how much I've got.
I'm just completely dependent on God every single minute of every
single day. People who are poor in spirit
are people who embrace their daily dependence on God
regardless of what they have, whether it's a little or a lot.
Now they wake up everyday and they say this, God, I'm no less
dependent on you today than I was when I had absolutely
nothing. Yeah, now maybe you've learned
this the hard way, or maybe you're on the verge of learning
this the hard way. But here's what Jesus knew right
The moment you put your trust in riches instead of him who richly
provides, you are unhappy. You're unhappy.
Let me say that again. The moment you put your trust in
riches instead of him or he who richly provides, you're unhappy.
Now by riches we mean the stuff you have, right, your
opportunities, your education, what you have you know what you
own, what you've borrowed for, where you live, what you drive,
all the things that we tend to kind of build ourself esteem
around. And the moment wetransfer our
trust from the one who richly provides to riches themselves,
we become become unhappy. And here is why.
Because suddenly it's up to you to control outcomes, and you
can't control outcomes. You can influence outcomes, but
at the end of the day, none of us control them, right?
And the moment I place my trust, trust in riches instead of Him
who richly provides, suddenly I take upon myself this burden
that's just too heavy cause it's all on me and I've got to
control the outcomes and I can't.
That's why you've met unhappy poor people and you've met
unhappy rich people, because anyone who's feeling the burden
of it's up to me is by definition unhappy.
Jesus is. Let me tell you who the happy
people are. The other people who are poor in
spirit. The other people who recognise
I'm as dependent on God for my provision as I have ever been.
Yeah. Very poor people don't attempt
to find satisfaction and things because things are not an option
for them. You know what I mean?
If you, if you're very poor, if you living out in the back
blocks of, you know, Chad and the Central African Republic on
the desert, you're, you're not going.
My happiness depends on my new Mercedes-Benz.
Those cause that's not an option.
Jesus invites us delivered that same kind of understanding that
my confidence is not in my stuff, it's in the one who
provides the stuff you want to be happy.
The happy people are the ones that recognise everyday that
they're completely dependent on their Father in heaven, right?
He goes on. Blessed are you who hunger now,
for you shall be filled and filled or satisfied in the event
of Matthew, Jesus adds blessing to those who hunger and thirst
for righteousness, right? In other words, happy.
The happy people are those who hunger to do the right thing.
And we'll come back to this one in a minute.
There's 21 carries on. Blessed, happy content are you
who weep now, for you shall laugh.
You gotta laugh would weep here means to whale or to cry out.
It's very, very similar to the multi word tongue.
Just like the word tongue. This Greek word is is usually
connected with grief and funerals.
It's a very kind of similar word there right.
And in fact, in the event in in in Matthew, Matthew 5, Jesus
says blessed are those who mourn.
You know who mourns? Mourners are people who are
emotionally connected, the people who recognise and don't
hide from the facts that there are bad things in the world,
there are unjust things in the world, there's randomness in the
world. And they're willing to walk into
those moments of death and sorrow and grief and stay there
and face it full on and embrace the fact that death is actually
a part of life. You know, Jo's friends, they
take a lot of Flack. But when Job had all this
horrific, traumatic stuff happened to him, his friends
came, just sat with him for seven days, didn't say anything,
just for a week, just came and sat with him, you know, watching
that intense grief. Somebody has just lost ten
children, you know, and lost his health and all his businesses
and all of that. And, and they, they were willing
to just be in there and, and face it and mourn with him,
right. In our culture, this is more and
more unusual because I think, you know, death is so sanitised
for us, isn't it, you know, and we see this a lot, right?
We have a lot of funerals here. And, and they'll, they'll always
be a bunch of people who kind of go, you know what really want to
face that, right? And so leave work sort of 10
minutes and, and arrive just as the thing starting and sit in
the back row, right? And then rush out the door
straight afterwards, you know, and, and maybe stop and get a
drink, you know, and then on the way back to work, you know,
because I don't want to think about death, don't want to be
faced with death. When we first went to Scotland,
this was like 20 years ago. They have conversation with
someone. If you started talking about
something to do with death, instantly somebody would say,
well, that's a really morbid subject and change the subject.
Yeah. And I thought that was really
weird, right when I first got it.
Now it's exactly the same here. They were just a hit of the hit
of the game. You know, it's kind of like
that, right? We don't want to think about
death, but Jesus says if that's your attitude to life, you'll
never be happy because fear of dying will rob you of the joy of
living. So Jesus is happier those when
they are faced with the fact that this life comes to an end,
they're happy to embrace that, endure it, and be part of it.
You'll find contentment and happiness there far more than if
you spend your life thinking, you know, living like it's never
gonna happen to you and not preparing for it.
We'll talk about that and see in the last bit that he says is
blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and
they revile you, when they cast your name out as evil for the
Son of man's sake, right for Jesus sake, rejoice in that day
and leap for joy, for indeed your reward is great in heaven.
And like men of their fathers did to the prophets, boys are
you wearing people hate you. Those things don't seem to go
together right? Happy content to you.
When people hate you, they don't seem to match.
It's like a disconnect, right? Another radical thing that Jesus
says, right. But here's the thing.
And if you if you're old, you know this.
I am literally twice as old as Google.
But if you if you haven't discovered this yet, what will
will all eventually discover it. So let me just sort of lay it
out in case you haven't got there.
You are going to suffer in life and you're gonna suffer.
Either suffer for doing right or doing wrong.
You're either going to suffer for doing the right thing or for
doing the wrong thing. But you can only be happy on one
side of that coin. You can be happy when you are
persecuted for doing the right thing, because at the end of the
day, you can be at peace with yourself and you can be at peace
with God. But if you suffer for doing the
wrong thing, then you don't have peace with you.
You don't have peace with God. And Jesus draws us into the sort
of wider context right says in this life, you're going to be
mistreated. Do you want to be mistreated for
doing the right thing or for doing the wrong thing?
Listen to those happier, those who choose to pursue
righteousness, right. They hunger and thirst after
doing the right thing, right? Even when it costs them.
Because you can be happy doing the right thing.
You can be content doing the right thing and facing the
consequences. And on top of that, you're
reward is greater than heaven, right?
God sees it, He sees what's happening.
He sees what you're trying to do and how people hammered you for
trying to do the right thing. Yeah, does not blind to it.
You know, Ezekiel talks about it.
You know, he goes like a rock with seven eyes.
He's a weird sort of thing. But in the ancient world, when
he had seven of something, you had a whole set, right?
Seven days. You had a week, right?
You know, 7/7 was kind of this complete set.
God has a complete set of eyes. He doesn't miss it.
God sees it and he'll reward it and you're in good company
because that's what the prophets of God always experienced when
they told people what God told me, that people were unhappy,
right? Verse 24.
Then he sort of talks about the flipside of these things real
quick. He says.
But woe to you who are rich, for you've received your
consolation, right? You got all these stuff.
What has made you happy? What are you who are full for?
You shall hunger, right? You don't see your need?
You don't see any need because you have full you satisfied, you
think you have what you need, but you're gonna come up short.
Now Jesus talks about, you know, it's, it's, it's harder for a
rich man to get into heaven to, you know, push a camel through
the eye of a needle, you know, and he, he's exaggerating for
effect. You know, he just said, you
know, you stranded on that and swallow a camel, right.
Why is it so difficult? The, the, the swimmers go, well,
who couldn't be saved then? And they go, well, he says,
well, God, anything is possible, right?
It's all possible. But what's he saying?
He's saying, why is it so hard for a rich man to get to heaven,
to, to to repent and, and come to Jesus and ask for
forgiveness? And maybe they can.
Why is that so hard? He doesn't see his need.
All right, You know, I got my skill set, got my job, pays
alright, got a house, got the car, either right?
I'm I'm good. Yeah.
We actually our need. We are very wealthy country
depending on the lists you read, you know, we're we're way up
there in the top 8% whilst in the world.
We don't think of ourselves as rich, but we really are in the
big, big scope of the world, right.
And so we don't often see our need.
Why do you laugh now? For you shall mourn and weep.
You know you, you avoid thinking about death and mourning, so you
never do anything about it. And it's going to come on you
quickly, and you'll go into eternity unprepared.
And why do you win? All means speak well of you, for
so did the their fathers to the false prophets.
If every single person is saying nice things about you, it's
because you're telling them what they want to hear and not what
they Yeah, you're telling them what they want to hear and what
not, what they need to hear. This is what the false prophets
did. You know, Jeremiah said, you
know, God told Jeremiah, okay, time's up, judgement is coming.
The Babylonians are going to tell the people, get ready for
that. Jeremiah says that the false
prophet said God's a loving God. He wouldn't do that.
Jeremiah is lying and the people listen to the false prophets,
right? They said, we're listening to
these good guys, not the doomsayer.
They smashed out Jeremiah's teeth for him in a sewer pit up
to his armpits. Ohh.
You know, just listen to these good guys, you're in good
company, right? If, if people are reviving you
for the, for the things that you say and how you live your life,
right. Okay, so wrapping it up, what is
the common denominator to all these things, right?
When, when Jesus finishes this part of the message, because he
moves on to some other stuff. What's the take away from all
this detail and all those applications and all those
words? I think the take away and the
big sort of a hard moment for me and hopefully for you, the thing
that could be sort of life changing for you if you are
struggling with this season of your life right now.
Through all of these words, Jesus brings us to this kind of
unavoidable conclusion, which is this that happiness itself is an
outcome. It's an outcome.
It's a result. It's about something now that
leads us to something later. Yeah, happiness is a more is
more about ultimate than immediate.
That happiness is not immediately accessible.
Another words you saw in Reap your way to happiness.
Not because you control events or circumstances, but by
trusting in the right things, right?
You become content, You become happy.
Just like we, we saw and reap our way to unhappiness, right?
The place where we wish we'd never arrived.
We sowed ourselves there, right? We trusted in our circumstances
for happiness and when circumstances changed, we it
made us unhappy. The good news is you show your
way out of it as well, right? How?
How do we show our way out of it?
No one decided to be poor in spirit, right?
Every single day, acknowledge and embrace your dependence on
God for everything, for your food, for your health, for your
salvation. You know we're going to see that
again in Chapter 11. Like I say, when Jesus teaches
us to pray, decide to stop trusting in what you have and
instead trust on the one in the one who provides it.
Yeah, you can't control outcomes.
The burden of trying to do that will make you unhappy.
Get right with God. You, you, you fall short and
nothing you are and nothing you have well is enough will be
enough, right? Go and ask God for forgiveness
first. John 19.
If we confess our sins, then He is faithful and just to forgive
us our sins and cleanse us from all our righteousness.
Then you don't need to fear death.
Death is not anything to be feared, right?
Because death is not an endpoint for you.
If you've, if you've been forgiven, if you've gone and
asked for forgiveness and received it, you can face it and
you can relationally engage with people.
Yeah, fear of death will rob you of joy in life, and in this life
you're going to be mistreated. Do you want to be mistreated for
doing the right thing, or do you want to be mistreated for doing
the wrong thing? Because only one side of that
coin can bring happiness, peace with yourself and peace with
God. And so the question we want to
leave us with today is what makes you happy?
Right. What are you trusting in for
your happiness? Let's pray.
Father, we thank you for the fact that you are just so
infinite in your wisdom and your knowledge, and we thank you for
Jesus. We thank you for the miraculous
things He was able to do that make it so obvious that he is
God, the Son of God. We thank you for that, and we
thank you for these teachings. We thank you that your gracious
God and forgive us for getting off on the wrong track and
believing things that aren't true.
We thank you for the apostles teaching.
We thank you for as they spoke on behalf of Jesus.
All we thank you for these teachings here that correct some
of the things we get wrong about happiness and we thank you for
happiness. Thank you for the capacity for
happiness and joy and thank you for helping us to understand
what it is. Lord thank you for everything
that you are. We pray these things in Jesus
thing.