Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
Welcome to Gospel and Life. Our culture places so much faith in empirical reason, technology, and personal experience that it's easy to wonder, does something as old as Christianity have any relevance to the problems of modern life? This month, Tim Keller invites us to consider how Christianity is more relevant than ever in offering answers to the deepest longings of our hearts. I'm going to read to you from the first psalm. It's printed in your bulletin.
Psalm 1. Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers, 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, which yields its fruit in season, and whose leaf does not wither,
Whatever he does, he prospers. Not so the wicked. They are like chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. Pray with me for just a second. Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight.
O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Now, and until recently, most cultures put a lot of stock in its ancient traditions. It also put a lot of value on its former and previous generations and even its older folk.
Because for many, many years, all cultures believed that wisdom was something that was accumulated over the ages. And therefore, it cherished its ancient traditions. But we live in a modern age. And the modern age is characterized by an unparalleled scorn of the ancient. An unparalleled scorn of the past. And...
Now, how do we define modern? It kind of goes like this. The cultural historians will tell you somewhere in the 18th century, there was the French Enlightenment over here and there was German idealism over here and British empiricism over here. And they all kind of coalesced into the modern mindset, which says human reason and empirical investigation. Now that will get us the truth.
Human reason and empirical investigation. Now we have the tools with which we will really be able to solve the problems and mysteries of life. That's what we were told. That's what we've been told for a couple hundred years. Now let's ask ourselves, how have we done? How have we done? Have we, in our modern advanced age, with all of our technology and with all of our empirical investigation, have we really made progress when it comes to the problems and mysteries of life?
I think all of us would say right off the bat that technology has made life in this world physically safer, and that's great. Physically safer, that's very important. And I think we can also say that there has been a reversal of many of the grosser social inequities, like slavery, it's largely been abolished. And yet, though our ancestors...
had few or no economic choices like we do, few or no political freedom like we do, though they had no vacations, no health benefits, they had such a short life expectancy. In spite of all that, let's ask ourselves, are we happier than they are? Are we happier than they were? Have we in our modern age, with all of these tools, actually made any progress at all? In fact,
If you read the journals and the diaries of our ancestors, ask yourself this. Do you see in those journals and diaries as much self-pity? Do you see as much boredom? Do you see as much meaninglessness? Do you see as much despair? I think nobody could make a case that we are any happier than they were, but you could make a very, very, very good case that they were happier than we.
I'm not trying to make a case either way. What I'm trying to say is the Bible has said from the beginning that human happiness is not subject, is not addressed at all by empirical investigation or technology. It's not addressed at all by psychology or sociology. Not really. It's not addressed at all by urban planning or political science or biochemistry. Not really. They're fine. They do all sorts of great things. They make the world more comfortable physically.
They get rid of many of the grosser social inequities. But the Bible has always said that what makes you happy or unhappy, the issues that make you happy or unhappy, are profoundly cosmic and profoundly spiritual and have been unchanged for millennia. What I'd like to do this fall is to go to one of the most ancient and one of the most famous ancient texts in the world, and that is the book of Psalms. Very well known, very famous.
And I would like you, with me, to take a look at these ancient texts and bring them to bear on what we call the problems that we have now, that we were supposed to have addressed, supposed to have made progress against, because now we know in a way that our ancestors didn't, but we haven't made any of that progress. And today, the first question is...
What does the Bible tell us about the issue of happiness? Are you, have you in this modern world learned how to become happy and stay happy? I hope there's nobody here that thinks that's a trivial question, that that's beneath you somehow. Because if you read the psychology books and the urban planning books and the sociology books and the bio, even the biochemistry books and the political science books and the sociology books, you know what they're really about? Oh, they've got big words.
Oh, they've got great paradigms. But they're all about the problem. We're not happy. How can we be happy? And listen, as we take a look and see what the Bible says here, I want to say to my Christian friends,
Don't you think, as you read this psalm, you may have read this psalm many times, it's a very famous psalm. Don't you think, as we go through these biblical principles, you may have heard them before, you may have heard them many times, but ask yourself a question, all through this teaching, if I really know this, why am I so unhappy? Or ask it, I'm asking, especially I'm asking the Christian people who say, I'm a Christian, I believe the Bible, I know these ancient texts. I ask you to ask yourself, why?
Am I a fundamentally and consistently happy person? And if not, how come? Would you please answer that question all during? Don't sit there and say, well, I've heard him say that before. Or I've heard somebody else say that before. I've read that before. Yes, I know that. Don't say that. Say this every time. Say, if I know that, has that made me a fundamentally and consistently happy person? And if not, why not? Psalm 1 is...
in a sense, the gatekeeper for the entire Bible, and especially the entire book of Psalms. It's often been considered by many students and scholars to be a kind of summary psalm for the whole book. And so its principles are extremely basic to everything in the Psalter and everything in the Bible. And I've listed off the four principles that I'd like to draw out of this text that address the issue of why people are happy or not happy.
And they're listed on a sheet of paper at the end of your order of worship. Number one, this text tells us, this passage tells us that happiness is possible. Blessed, the word blessed, of course, means joyful. It means fulfilled. It's satisfied. Blessed is the man who does these things.
And so the first thing we see from this text is that blessedness is possible, that happiness is possible. That's a staggering statement. That's a thunderous statement. Now, what do you think of that statement? It's a way of testing where you are. Is there anybody here who thinks, well, that's not so staggering. Happiness is possible? I came out on a Sunday morning to be told this? If you don't think that's staggering, if you don't listen to that and say, I hope so.
If you say, well, of course happiness is possible, it tells you something about you. Let me tell you what it tells you. Almost all of us, unless you've had an unusually harsh childhood, almost all of us start out thinking that happiness is natural in life. Yes, of course there's unhappy people, but they've screwed up. Most of us start out thinking that happiness is natural in
And, you know, as you grow up, you hear all these dire warnings from your parents about how hard things are out there, and you better save that money instead of spending it like that, and life is tough. And you think, if I'm good enough, if I'm smart enough, if I'm hardworking enough or whatever, you know, happiness is natural. There's people out there who aren't happy, but they just screwed up. That's where we start. And as time goes on, we migrate.
And after a while, we begin to, as we see and experience more and more of life, we begin to realize that happiness isn't anywhere near as easy as we thought. And after a while, we begin to realize that the most successful, most of the most successful people, most of the most experienced people, most of the most gifted people are the most cynical. Even the most successful people, go to them and find out. If you know any of them, you know.
that they are the most cynical about the prospect of happiness. The great literature of the world is tragic literature. Look, here's Shakespeare. Here's Much Ado About Nothing, a wonderful play. Here's Hamlet. Is life more like Much Ado About Nothing or more like Hamlet? What do you think? That tells me how much of life you've actually had. Is life really like Much Ado About Nothing? In the end, everybody comes back. In the end, everybody's happy. In the end, everybody gets the person they want to marry. In the end, the person who everybody thinks is dead is alive.
Or is life more like Hamlet? Everybody dying disappointed in the last scene. Listen, you need the literature of Much Ado About Nothing to get through life. It's wonderful, a wonderful play. But when you stand in the presence of Hamlet or Macbeth, you know that you're standing in the presence of a much more profound mirror of what things are like. Is life more like Much Ado About Nothing or more like Hamlet or Macbeth, huh? What is life, Macbeth?
Life 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. Oh, you say, well, that's awfully, awfully bleak. All right, fine. Yes, it's pretty bleak, but here's much ado about nothing. And here's Macbeth and Hamlet. Is life more like that or more like that? What is it? Don't you see...
The people who see most deeply into life, the people who have even been the most experienced, even the people who are the smartest, the people who've gotten to the top, the people who've got the money, got the fame, all the things you think will make you happy, go to them and ask them. We start out thinking happy is natural. We end up thinking happiness is unachievable. And so we've actually got four kinds of people. We've got the people who think happiness is natural, unless you're stupid.
You're very young either, or you're very inexperienced, or you've had a temporarily, unbelievably charmed life. And over on this corner, we have the people who think that happiness is unachievable. They tend to be the best thinkers. And in the middle, most of us are actually migrating from one to the other, and we're kind of too busy to really notice how tragic and dangerous life is until it kind of comes up and grabs us. And then there's a fourth group, the people who understand what the Bible says.
One of them is described in this psalm. Because the Bible says, and Christians who understand what the Bible says believe, that happiness is neither natural nor unachievable. It's possible. It's possible to be, in this world, a fundamentally and consistently happy person. Like the old hymn goes, Peace, perfect peace in this dark world of sin. The blood of Jesus whispers peace within.
Happiness is possible. That's the first point, the first principle. It's possible. A radical statement. Secondly, now, before we get to the second or the third, right away, naturally, the human inquiring mind asks, inquiring minds ask, if happiness is possible, why so few people have it? Huh?
And the answer of the text and the answer of the Bible is because people seek it wrongly. And there's two common mistakes. The next two points are two common mistakes that virtually everybody falls into unless God comes and opens their eyes to it, that we fall into and therefore we're never happy.
The first mistake and the second principle in the outline is that real happiness, the happiness that's held out and offered by the Bible, the happiness that's offered by God, is a fundamental happiness, not a superficial happiness. You see, it tells us
That the happy man, the godly man, is like a tree. Verse 3. Now, look at that. What a wonderful metaphor. This tree is subject to seasons. It's not always fruitful. It's not always blossoming. It's subject to seasons. Winter or a very dry summer.
It's subject to seasons. It feels them. It's not always bearing fruit. It's not always productive. It's not always looking green and wonderful. And yet, this particular tree is unlike many other trees because it's been planted on the riverbank. And its roots have access to a constant and unremitting stream of water that's there even when...
The heat comes. That's there even when the drought comes. That's the image. What's the point? The point's this. The first major mistake that we make is we try to find our happiness in circumstances. The first major mistake we make is we think that happiness is found in the externals.
We expect it to come raining down onto us. And yet the Bible says the secret of happiness is if you find your happiness, if you seek your happiness in externals and circumstances, you'll screw up because real happiness is found under you, inside you, where your roots are. Let me put it a couple of different ways. Happiness is never, does never consist in what happens to you, but by what you are.
Your happiness does not consist in what happens to you, but in what you are. Do you remember the old couplet? Two men looked out through prison bars. One saw mud, the other stars. You ever heard that? Two men looked out through prison bars. One saw mud, the other stars. What's the difference? Circumstances identical. Same bars, same prison. What's the difference? In the men. Is that common sense? Well, yes, I guess it's common sense. And yet we are like...
A tree that's not planted by the stream. A tree that's completely dependent on what comes down from outside, not what I draw from the inside. Put it another way, the Bible consistently tells us that a human, that a Christian, a godly person, a Christian is not just a religious person, not just a nice person, not simply somebody who is doing good things. A Christian is someone who has been planted and rooted into something beside him or herself.
That's the reason why the Bible talks about the new birth. Why in 2 Peter, which we looked at in the month of August, says we are made partakers of a divine nature. Partakers of a divine nature. Something's been planted from the outside into us. Something has become part of us. Something we are rooted into God. Some amazing thing has happened. We're going to look at that next week because we're going to come back to Psalm 1 and ask ourselves, what does it mean to be planted? A Christian is not...
The chaff, which has no root. A Christian is a tree. Something has planted you in. Trees can't plant themselves. Something has come and planted you in. And now there is a power. Now there is an outlook. Now there is an understanding that wasn't there before. And that is where you draw. And that's where the happiness comes from. Put it another way. You see what I mean by saying it's fundamental? It's fundamental. The tree...
affliction. It hurts. It's affected by it. It doesn't always bear fruit. And yet, its leaf never withers. There's a balance here. There's something here that people don't understand unless you really dig in. 1 Peter 1, verse 6. A classic text on this. Where it says, Peter's saying, you rejoice in him, though you are now in great heaviness. Wow. The word heaviness means in pain.
The word heaviness means in deep distress and turmoil. And yet it doesn't say you used to rejoice in him, but right now you're in heaviness. It doesn't say you're rejoicing in him and you're avoiding heaviness. Two present tenses. You are in deep joy, even though you're in absolutely deep distress. How could that be? Well, you know, the metaphor is right here. Here's a tree in the drought and yet no fruit. Hurting.
grieved in a sense, and yet its leaf doesn't wither. It's an evergreen tree because its roots are down into something else. Why does God allow suffering in the world? How can one religion be right and the others wrong? Has science basically disproved Christianity?
Tim Keller addresses these questions and more in his book, The Reason for God. Drawing on literature, philosophy, real-life conversations, and potent reasoning, this book will challenge you to gain a deeper understanding of the Christian faith, whether you're a believer seeking reassurance or you're reading it with a friend who is searching for answers.
When you give to Gospel in Life during the month of May, we'll send you two copies of The Reason for God, one for you and one to give to a friend who is exploring Christianity. It's our hope that through reading the book with a friend, you can have conversations about the claims of the Christian faith. The books are our thanks for your support of this ministry. To receive your two copies of The Reason for God, simply make a gift at gospelinlife.com slash give. That's gospelinlife.com slash give.
We also encourage you to check out our short podcast series, Questioning Christianity, for people exploring the claims of the Christian faith. To listen to this short series or share it with a friend, visit gospelonlife.com slash questioning. That's gospelonlife.com slash questioning. Your gift helps the message of Christ's love go out all over the world. So thank you for partnering with us because the gospel truly changes everything.
There are people in the church who don't get this. There are people in the church who say, here you're a Christian and some terrible tragedies happened to you. Well, smile and praise God. Don't let it get to you. I will go so far as to say, not only is that radically unbiblical, but it's unbelievably unhealthy. Because what you're really doing is you are, if you actually find Christians who go through tragedy with very few tears, without much grief, without falling on the ground,
That's not God's peace. That's not the joy we're talking about here. That's a kind of brainwashing. The tree, because it's going through a season of dryness, has to pull out of the bottom even more. The tree, because it's going through dryness, has to put its roots even deeper down and draw even harder on it. And anyone in this room who's ever actually gotten this fundamental happiness knows that that's exactly what happens. I tell you...
You don't know what it's like to rejoice in the Lord unless you're suffering. There's something about the drought and about the fruitlessness of your life that makes you, if you're a Christian, put your roots down into him in a way you didn't before. Happiness that the Bible talks about is fundamental happiness, not superficial happiness, not a lightheartedness all the time, a jocularity all the time.
Not a fun and frolicking type person all the time. No, no. We're talking about a joy that is permanent and is overwhelming and is overlapping and actually is stimulated by tragic circumstances. Do you hear? That's how you know whether you've got the circumstantial kind of happiness, which of course only rains down from above and sometimes it's just not there. Or whether you've got the fundamental happiness which is actually stimulated by it.
Those of you who have been in this boat, you know. You know it. Things go wrong. And you realize, hey, I believe these things, but do I really understand these things? And you go to him and you put your roots down and suddenly you begin to sense not the lack of pain, not the lack of grief, but an overwhelming glory and joy that comes up. His hand upholds me. His right hand upholds me. There's a place in one piece of literature where
A character is described like this. In his face, he saw at first only care and sorrow. Though as he looked, he perceived that under all was a great joy. A fountain of mirth, enough to set a kingdom laughing, were it to gush forth. There it is. There it is. Underneath the care and the sorrow, deep underneath, there's a fountain of mirth, enough to set a kingdom laughing, were it to gush forth. It's under there. It's always under there. Happiness is not based on circumstances.
It's not brought about by controlling your environment, but by controlling your allegiances, which brings me to my third point. This text teaches us that there's a happiness that's possible. There's a happiness that's fundamental, not superficial. It's based on what you are, not in your circumstances. If you seek it in your circumstances, you'll always be unhappy, back and forth, manic. Third, this happiness, and this is the height of wisdom, and in some ways it's going to be my shortest point,
Because it's so wise and profound, it's all through the Bible. It's there everywhere. Almost everywhere you see the word blessed in the Bible, which is all over, it's there. It's so obvious we miss it. Happiness can never be found directly. Happiness can never be gotten directly. Happiness is always and only a byproduct of seeking something else more than happiness.
See, every place, wherever, whenever you see the word blessed, it never, ever, ever, ever says, blessed is the one who seeks blessedness. Blessed is the one who hungers and thirsts after blessedness. Never, never, never, ever. It always says, blessed is he who hungers and thirsts after something more than blessedness. If you've heard this before, ask yourself right now, if I know this, why am I not more happy? Seek happiness...
Or seek righteousness. Which should you? If you seek righteousness more than happiness, you'll get both. If you seek happiness more than righteousness, you'll get neither. That's the teaching of the text. The teaching of the text is the person who is happy is always the one who has stopped trying so hard to be happy. And who sat down and said, what am I really living for? What are my fundamental allegiances? Really, what Jesus says. He says it in Matthew 6. He says, you who are worried.
Don't have anxiety over these things, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. What's that mean? Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. He's saying the reason you're unhappy is because, as we talked about it in Jeremiah 17, you've made something else your trust. As long as you decide to seek happiness as your highest priority, why is it that sometimes you cheat? Why is it sometimes you lie? Think about this.
Why is it that sometimes you do, huh? Why is it that sometimes you break your promises? Why is it that sometimes you have standards and you break them? Why? Because in most of our cases, unless God comes and shows us another way, the normal and natural habit of our heart is to say, I believe in principles. Honesty is a good idea. I believe in purity. I believe in honesty and integrity. All these principles are very good. But sometimes you have to make an exception. What do you mean?
It means that there's one principle that's over all the other principles, and that is, I've got to be happy. Oh, I believe in telling the truth, but not if I'm going to have to lose my job over it. I wouldn't be happy. Oh, I believe in doing this, but not if I'm going to lose that girl over it. I want to be happy. I believe. What do you mean you believe? There's only one thing that you believe, and that is that the top priority I'm seeking is my happiness. Everything else comes second and third. The kingdom of God's great, but first seek happiness. Honesty is great, but first seek happiness.
And the Bible says that that's the fundamental bent and bias of our souls. You'll never find happiness that way. Jesus says if you seek happiness, it will always escape you. It will always elude you. Always. If you make a happy marriage your number one priority, you will never have it. If you make your number one priority a successful career, you'll never have it because you will be killed by the anxiety.
People say, I want to make this moment last forever. Go ahead, try. And you will see that you have polluted it in far worse ways than if you didn't realize this is an ultimate. Try to be happy. Make it your main objective in life. And let me put it another way. Is God committed to your happiness? Absolutely. And yet, if you come to him to make you happy, you're coming to a false god.
If you say, well, I'm interested in this Christianity and maybe I will come and bite on it if I can see that it will help me reach my goals and make me happy. You're not coming to a God, you're coming to a butler. Listen, either God exists or he doesn't exist. If he doesn't exist, you can't come to him for happiness, right? But if he does exist, you have to realize you must come to him because he created you and therefore he owns you.
And to not come to him and obey him would be an injustice. And so the only way to come to God rightly, the real God, is to come without conditions and to say, forget happiness, I owe you everything. There's only two ways to come to God. You can come to God on the basis of saying, I owe you everything, you owe me nothing. Or you can come on the basis of saying, I'm going to come to you, but then you owe me a lot. And the only way for you to know on what basis you have come is to see what happens next.
In the bad seasons, when things go wrong, do you get upset and do you say, what good did it do me to come to church? What good did it do me to read the Bible? You know what that shows? You came to him on the basis, I will do this and this as you owe me. In other words, my number one priority is happiness.
And I'm using God as a way to get there. And as opposed to saying, my number one priority is to serve God, and if happiness happens, great. To the degree it happens, great. And here's the irony. The less you're concerned about your happiness, and the more you're concerned about him, the happier you get. This is not a trick. You can't say, oh great, I got it. I come to God and I say this and this and this. You cannot bandy with the omnipotent and omniscient Lord of the universe.
Aim at heaven, get earth thrown in. Aim at earth, you get neither. Happiness is a byproduct. Lastly, and finally...
Happiness is possible. Well, why don't more people have it? Because A, we look for it in circumstances, and B, because we go after it directly, and we make it the non-negotiable. We say, I'd like to serve God, or I'd like to be a good citizen, or I'd like to obey the Ten Commandments, but the non-negotiable is my happiness. As long as the non-negotiable is the happiness, you'll never get it. It has to be a byproduct of making something else non-negotiable. It has to work that way. Lastly, then,
Finally, we'll see here that happiness is not something that happens to you. It's something you choose. You notice it starts off with a negative. Blessed is the man who does not, does not, does not. That proves that if you want to be happy, you have to first see things that you're doing wrong and make a change of allegiance. If you look carefully at the verbs, walk, blessed is the man who does not,
It talks about listening to the counsel of the ungodly, which talks about the intellect. And then it talks about walking in the way of sinners, which is the behavior. And then it talks about sitting in the seat of the scornful. And in the Semitic language, where you sit is where you belong. If you sit with the men, if you sit with the Greeks, if you sit with the Romans, if you sit with the slaves, that's who you belong to. That's what the word sit means usually in these contexts. And so what it's really trying to say is,
First, do you want to be happy? Let's look at it negatively and positively. Negatively, you've got to find out who you belong to. Everybody has to be converted, which means at some point you have to see that something else besides God is what owns you. Something else owns you. Other things own you. Christian friends, when Paul says we're perplexed, but we're not driven to despair, we're struck down, but we're not crushed.
You know what he's saying? He's saying, I am like the godly man. I'm subject to seasons, but I've got roots, which mean, of course, if my career is about to go through a new barrier and yet suddenly it gets snatched, my success gets snatched away. If I'm at the altar and suddenly the person I'm supposed to marry doesn't even show up.
Am I supposed to be happy about that? No. Why? I should be downcast because these are desires that God gave me, to be happily married, to be vocationally fulfilled. But Paul says there's a difference between trusting in your spouse and making your spouse your trust, right? There's a difference between wanting something and having it own you, sitting in it.
Putting all of your weight on it. That's when you sit in a chair. And if there's anybody here who says, you know, I've been a Christian for a long time and I know that I'm not a fundamentally and consistently happy person, then you have to ask yourself this question. What Piper are you really dancing to? Who calls the tunes in your life? What owns you? What do you belong to? What are the fundamental allegiances of your life? The things that you listen to, the things that you walk in, the things that you sit in.
You've got to start. You can't be happy unless you start with a negative. You can't be happy unless you see not, not, not. I've got to turn away from things that have me by the heart, that have me by the mind. I've got to turn away from things that I belong to. And even if you're a Christian, by saying, well, I believe all these things, you can still be operating on the old ways. And if you are not fundamentally happy, the profound analysis of this point is
you are still sitting in some other seat than in God's lap. If you're not just perplexed, but you are in despair. If you're not just hurting, but you are totally destroyed. That's what Paul says doesn't happen. He's not talking about brainwashing. I'm always happy. And he's not talking about being in despair. He says, I'm struck down, but I'm never in despair. Look at Jesus Christ.
Had great peace, great joy, the perfect relationship with the Father, yet he was always crying. There you have it. A man of sorrow is acquainted with grief, never in despair. And if you are in despair, if life isn't worth living, it means you're sitting in some other seat. That's the negative. But then there's the positive. And here's the last thing we say. His delight is in the law of the Lord. You know, the trouble with this word, law of the Lord, many people think, oh, well, that means...
He's looking at the part of the Bible where the rules are. No. The word law of the Lord is not talking about the part of the Bible where you find the rules. It's talking about the whole message of the Bible as your rule of life.
This is not a man who says, oh yes, the laws of God. Honesty is the best policy and I want to get on in life so I'm going to be honest. That's not what he's saying. His delight is in the law of the Lord. He can't stop thinking about it day and night, all the time. What is he looking at? He's looking at the essential message of the Bible. The essential message of the Bible, which we've been talking about all during this service, is that that great powerful God sent his son to die for you so that great God can become your father forever.
You know, the parable of the prodigal son puts it all perfectly. When the son has left the father and he feels like his life is falling apart, he comes back and he doesn't ask for happiness. Remember? The prodigal son in Luke chapter 15, he comes back and he says, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight. Just make me a servant. I don't want comfort. I don't want happiness. I owe you. And then what happens? The father, once you come to God saying, forget the happiness.
Forget the joy. Forget doing all these wonderful things for me. I owe you because of what you did for me. The minute he comes to the father and says, you don't have to be my father anymore. Just be my king. The king turns into a father and he says, get out the robe. Put a ring on him. Put my robe on him. Kill the fatted calf. We're going to have a party. He's my child. And that message that in Jesus Christ, this great king becomes your father is what you have to delight in.
And if you look carefully, when it says he delights in the law of the Lord, and then it talks about the godly man being a tree that puts down his roots into the river. What's the river? What's the water down there? It's the law of the Lord. He's delighting in it day and night. That's how he keeps his leaf green even in the heat. Do you know how to do that? Christian friends, do you know how to do that? There's a flute on the ground. It might as well be a pipe. It might as well be a bear trap unless you learn how to play it.
Do you know how to play the gospel? Do you know how to rehearse its beauties? Do you know how to talk to yourself about Luke 15, about the prodigal son? Do you know how to think about and rehearse the beauties of it until it makes your heart sing? Do you delight in it day and night? If you do, you'll be like Jesus, often crying. I tell you something, the gospel, Christianity makes you a sadder person and a happier person at the same time.
You get more sensitive. You know, one of the ways that non-Christians have to deal with life because they don't have this great consolation is they deny how hard life is. They deny it. Like me in my car, Kathy's always saying to me, something's wrong with the car. I never heard that knock before. And I say, everything's fine. Everything's fine. We can't afford anything else. And that's how many people... Listen, unless you have this consolation in your life, that's how you deal with life. It'll be all right. That could never happen. I'm sure it could never happen.
You kidding? Don't you see? When you become a Christian, you get this consolation and it allows you to be honest. It no longer represses how hard life is. You feel the pain of the world more than you did before. But you've got a joy and a consolation. My sins are pardoned. They'll never be brought against me. And I'm going to go live with God forever in a new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.
You're happier and sadder at the same time. The happiness overwhelms the sadness. That's what it means to be a Christian, and it comes by learning to play the gospel, listening to it, singing it to yourself. That's the only way you put your roots down and deal with the heat. Are you doing that? Can you do that? See the streams of living water. Remember that hymn, See the Streams of Living Water?
You can be happy. It's possible. Don't look to circumstances. Don't seek it directly. Instead, look at what you really, really are living for and accept the
And admit your need for the great gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And learn to delight in that and to play it and to listen to it day and night. Listen, there's probably some people here who are irked at me because you're in pain and you don't want to get your hopes up. You don't like me telling you it's possible to be a fundamentally and consistently happy person. You don't want to get your hopes up. I will not apologize. I cannot recant. You need this. Come and get it. Let's pray.
Father, we pray now that you grant that as we take this moment to consider what you are going to be doing in our lives, if we come to you and seek you and not happiness, you will show us how we can turn away from the way of the world, from the way, the counsel of the ungodly, from the seat of the mockers and the scornful, and delight in the law of the Lord.
so that on it we can meditate day and night and be like a tree planted by waters. Keep our leaves green in your Son. In his name we pray. Amen. Thank you for joining us today. If you were encouraged by today's teaching, please rate and review it so more people can discover the Gospel in Life podcast.
This month's sermons were recorded in 1993. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.