Matthew 5:12 Luke 6:22
One of my all-time favorite songs is “Don’t Worry Be Happy.”
Actually, the song itself can be a
little irritating but the message is one I find myself repeating to counselees
and myself on a regular basis and how can you not like a song with whistling in
it. Too often in our theological circles
the idea of happiness gets a bad rap.
The major cause of this is people who use happiness as an excuse for
sin. However, the Bible repeatedly
presents happiness, joy and rejoicing as the result of a life spent following
Jesus. We have great reasons for
rejoicing: our sins are forgiven, we have hope, God is our Father, our lives
have eternal meaning, God loves us, Jesus died for us, the Holy Spirit indwells
us, death has been defeated, we have the promise of God’s provision and
protection… the list goes on and on. I
love Luke’s wording in this passage where he says: “leap for joy.” We don’t usually picture Christians as people
who run around leaping for joy; and that is a shame. Picture one of the Green Bay Packer receivers
doing the “Lambeau Leap” after a touchdown or a soccer players celebrating a
rare goal in the World Cup. These kinds
of celebrations should be the constant companions of Christians. In the beatitudes, Jesus has been talking
about how and why His disciples can be blessed.
That word “blessed” congers up images of people kneeling down with a
painful and sad look on their face while a religious leader pats them on the
head as a symbol of “blessing.” I prefer
Luke’s image of a good, high, fist pumping, whopping, leap of joy perhaps
ending in a cartwheel. Today I would
like to quickly review how Jesus says we can live with this kind of Joy and
then look at why the Bible says those who follow Jesus should have this kind of
joy.
HOW WE CAN BE HAPPY: Over the last three days we have looked
at the nine different beatitudes that Jesus taught at the beginning of His
Sermon on the mount. This could be
entitled as God’s recipe for happiness.
In an attempt to make these truths a little more memorable I have
summarized them into three categories: HAPPY ARE THE HUMBLE, HAPPY ARE THE
HOLY, HAPPY ARE THE HURTING. As I was
thinking about this passage throughout this week it occurred to me that these
three areas walk hand in hand and kind of produce a circle or a cycle of
spiritual growth that should be at work in our lives to multiply our rejoicing. It goes something like this: humility
produces holiness; holiness produces hurting; hurting produces humility. When we are truly walking in humility, it
will always result in spiritual growth that will transform our character and
make us more like Christ. However, when
we live like Jesus lived; the natural result of living a holy life in the midst
of a fallen and sinful world is persecution.
Persecution hurts. However, God
uses these trials in our lives to make us depend on Him and to humble us. This brings us back to the beginning of the cycle
so we now have more humility, which leads to more holiness and more hurting… The longer this process goes on; the happier
we will be. Humility, holiness and
especially hurting are not naturally connected to happiness in our minds
because we have a hard time seeing life from God’s perspective. If we want to be happy, we must change our
thinking about these things.
WHY WE CAN BE HAPPY: The reason Jesus gives us for this
overflow of happiness is the greatness of our reward in heaven. The key to gaining God’s perspective on a
life of happiness is to consider eternal rewards. We have a natural tendency to project the
difficult circumstances of our lives onto the future which leads to
depression. When we are hurting we begin
to think that this pain will just keep getting worse to the point that it will
become unbearable. This is not how God
wants us to live. He wants us to look at
the eternal rewards He has promised us in eternity and live in light of those
promises now. God is a great
rewarder. He has an eternity in store
for His children that will astound us.
This reality should stimulate our imagination and tantalize our
thinking. Our view of heaven is often so
inaccurate and unbiblical. We tend to
become so wrapped up in our current condition that we rarely stop to think
about and consider the glories of heaven and the rewards God has prepared for
us there. If we want to be happy now, we
must start thinking more frequently and more accurately about eternal
rewards. Daydreaming about heaven should
be a normal pastime for believers. God
wants us to think about Him. He wants us
to think about and be motivated by the rewards He has promised. He wants us to leap for joy now because of
the rewards He has promised then. The
hurting part of the cycle is not naturally joyful but when we consider the fact
that God uses the pain in our lives to promote humility and produce holiness
and that God will eternally reward these things; it should make us break out
into the “happy dance.”
APPLICATION: Recognize the cycle of sanctification at work
in our lives through our hurts that produce humility and holiness. Rejoice over the realization that God is at
work in our lives to make us more like Him.
Be motivated by the promise of eternal rewards. Think and dream about what those rewards
might be. Imagine the glories of heaven
and allow them to produce joy in the midst of our hurts on earth.
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