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I was an assistant cross country coach where I'm from. The long time head coach was also a long time teacher at the school. And he had a quote by John Lennon from the Beatles on his classroom wall. Lennon was asked by his teacher in his school days for one of his assignments.
What do you want to be when you grow up? Lennon said, I want to be happy. The teacher then said, you don't understand the assignment. Then Lennon followed, you don't understand life. I found that fascinating.
Happiness really is the driving force with every decision that we make in our life. We choose where to live, who to marry, what job to have, what hobbies to have, what friends to have, because we want to be happy.
Is there something wrong with this? The answer is no. Being happy is a good thing. The desire for happiness is built into all of us. Once you find the one who satisfies this desire, you've found the meaning of life.
The ultimate question is, where does true happiness come from? What we have seen in this sermon series, the ultimate pursuit of knowing God, we have seen that God is the source of all things, except for sin and evil.
But everything else, he is the source of all things. And what we will see today is that God is the source of all joy. So this is our last sermon, if you can believe it, in our sermon series, The Attributes of God.
It's amazing how fast time flies. This is our 11th sermon. And what we're going to see today is that true happiness is only found in God, as we look at the attribute of the joy of God. So true happiness is only found in God.
That's our big idea this morning. And there are two reasons that I say this. The first reason is the author of reality is joyful to the utmost. The author of reality is joyful to the utmost. And you will see this in your outline, in your bulletin, if you're taking notes.
And I always encourage you to take notes because it's something where, if you write it down, you're going to remember it so much better. And then you can review it later on. But that's up to you. So two reasons that I say true happiness is only found in God.
The first is the author of reality is joyful to the utmost. There are several words that are synonymous when we use the word joy. And when I say synonymous, what I mean is you use the same word for the same, or different words for the same meaning.
One sentiment for joy is happiness. The other word that the Bible uses is blessed. Over the sermon series, we have seen that God is eternal, all-knowing, all-present, all-powerful, unchangeable, wise, majestic, and beautiful, holy, good, just, merciful, gracious, and loving.
Those are all the attributes that we looked at over the summer. We saw that the Bible described God in each of these ways. And we looked at the Bible and found that out in every place. Did you know that the Bible describes God as happy?
This is often an overlooked attribute of God. He's described as happy. The Apostle Paul says this in 1 Timothy 6 .15. So another way to translate this is the joyful and only sovereign God. There is another verse in the same letter where Paul uses happy to describe God again.
1 Timothy 1 .11. He says here, So he says here, So God, as it mentions the gospel here, Out of his joy, he does that for us. Now Paul here uses the word blessed to be defined as happy. There is another word for blessed in the New Testament.
We hear this word all the time. It's thrown out. To be blessed, to have a blessing. We see this all the time. The other way that blessed is used in the New Testament is usually how we see the word used.
What it means is to praise or for God to make prosper or for God to favor. So we bless God by praising him or God blesses us by doing something good to us. But Paul, in these two verses in 1 Timothy that I just showed you, calls God the happy God.
And so that's how the word blessed is used. The only God of the universe is happy. One question you may be asking is, where does God get his happiness? Because when we talk about our happiness, we usually think, well, why are we happy?
Where is this coming from? With God, it's a little bit different. Because does it come from outside of him? Does this happiness come from outside of his being? By now you know from the sermon series that nothing comes from outside of God because he is reality.
We have learned in the sermon series that God is the greatest being there is. There could not be a higher being than God. He is the highest. God is perfect in all of his attributes. So he is happy in himself.
God delights in his own excellence. He takes pleasure in who he is in himself. The joy that God has is a fullness of joy. We have a hard time understanding what happiness is because it is a word that is thrown around so flippantly.
We use it so casually. But when the Bible describes God as a joyful God, it's describing a fullness of joy. This is a deep, real joy. When people think to be happy, what they usually mean is they have a good life when things are going their way.
And this is a very shallow happiness because what if things start going downhill in your life? Does that mean you're not happy anymore? Because if things start going bad, then that means it's going to be a joyless and miserable experience.
What we talked about this past spring, if you can remember our sermon series in Philippians, we learned that true joy is not based on circumstances. True joy is based on your relationship with God. So the ebbs and flows of life, your steady relationship with God always stays the same.
And there's true, deep joy that comes from that. So the joy that God has is full, not shallow. He is fully satisfied in himself and this never wavers. This is what the Bible says about God's joy. Psalm 1611, I read this in the beginning of our worship service this morning.
It says that,. And then John 1511, Jesus is talking to his disciples and he says to them,. These verses indicate that God has a joy that is full and never ending. We will look at how God's joy relates to our joy in point two.
But here, right here, we see that God does not lack in happiness in any way. He is full of joy. These verses indicate that he is the source of all pleasures. Anything that is truly enjoyable comes from his right hand.
We talk about how we love things in God's creation. We love good food, we love drink, we love lakes and rivers and mountains, we love beautiful music. These things are enjoyable. And they come from God.
Because he is the source of all things that are pleasurable. Have you ever wondered, I was thinking about this this week, why we have taste buds? I mean, anybody who believes in a random universe, I mean, it's foolish to believe so.
Because the one thing we need is food to continue living and we actually enjoy doing it. We enjoy eating because it tastes good and then it fills us up. That comes from God because he wants us to delight in these things.
We have true joy in many things in life. But what we must always remember is who this came from. These joys came from the author of happiness. This is so important that we understand this. The pleasure that we find in them all points to him.
So as we enjoy them, we must always keep God in mind and praise him. If we do not and we forget about God, then we are enjoying these things apart from God. And that's a fatal mistake to make because that is what we call idolatry.
Idolatry is when we enjoy creature rather than the creator. Or when we enjoy gift rather than the giver. We should enjoy both. If you enjoy God's gift and give him the praise and remember who it came from, then that is what we are supposed to do.
And that's healthy and that's appropriate and that's worship to God. Enjoy the blessings that God has given us. We need to enjoy the blessings that God has given us and enjoy him as we enjoy his gifts.
Always remembering where all good things come from. James 1 .17 says that all good and perfect things come from the Father above. God takes joy in everything in creation that reflects his own excellence.
If you read Genesis chapter 1, after the first week of creation, God said that everything that he saw was very good. And why did he say that everything was very good? Because everything that he created reflected him.
Everything that he created reflected his perfections. He took joy in it because it reflected him. And if you're thinking, well, that sounds like God's an egotistical maniac. Well, God is the only one who can do that because he is the greatest.
It would actually be idolatry for him to step outside of himself and try to find happiness somewhere else. He has to find happiness in himself because he's the only one worthy. And God also rejoices over his people as we saw last week.
God rejoices in his redeemed people because they reflect him. Zephaniah 3 .17 says, Once you become a Christian, you become like God as you grow in holiness. God delights in that because you are becoming more like him.
And as he looks at you, he says, okay, I delight in this person because of who they are becoming and because of who they will become when sin is entirely gone, when Christ comes back, or when you meet God when you die.
So we have seen that the author of reality is fully happy. And if you follow my logic here, as this relates to our happiness, it only makes sense that his creatures would find their happiness in him because there can be no true happiness outside of him.
So if people are trying to find happiness elsewhere, you're not going to find it because God is the source of happiness. Does that make sense? It only makes sense that as we pursue God, as we enjoy him, as we enjoy his gifts, that's the only happiness there is.
That's the only true happiness. So this is the first reason why true happiness is only found in God. The author of reality is joyful to the utmost. The second reason why true happiness is only found in God is only God's children, those who belong to him, obtain this fullness of joy.
Only God's children obtain this fullness of joy. One thing I said at the beginning of this sermon series is that the reason we exist is to know God. We exist to know God and we exist to love God. And if you understand that in life, you're doing well because a lot of people don't understand that.
And it's so important that we understand that. An important piece that is necessary in knowing God is enjoying him. Enjoying him. If you just know facts about him but don't really enjoy him, then that does you no good.
As I mentioned in the introduction, to be happy in God is the meaning of life. People often ask, what is the meaning of life? One time I was running a race and the announcer was joking around. He says, you go to this booth to find all your needs before the race and they might even tell you the meaning of life.
He was joking about that and I was thinking, well, if they come to me, I could tell them the meaning of life. Or if they come to any believer here, we could tell them the meaning of life. People often ask, what is it?
And it's to be happy in God. In the middle of the 17th century, the Church of England created a catechism about what they believed. And they explained sound doctrine according to what Scripture says. That's what a catechism is.
They're saying, this is what we believe and this is the evidence from Scripture. At the beginning of the catechism, they made this statement. The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.
So the goal of mankind is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. Theologian John Piper believes that what they meant by this statement was the chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying him forever.
So we enjoy God, or sorry, we glorify God by enjoying him forever. And this makes perfect sense. How could we glorify God if we do not enjoy him? Is he honored if we do everything for him out of obligation?
You know, I don't really want to do this, but I'll do it. And somehow he's glorified through that. He's not glorified through that. He's glorified if we enjoy him. In Psalm 43 .4, the psalmist describes God as his exceeding joy.
So there's no greater joy that he has than God. God is the treasure for all who belong to him. We saw that last week with love. One of the pieces of love is treasuring God. And the other piece is obeying God.
But obeying God comes from treasuring God first. It's so important to understand that. So it is true that the goal of life is to be happy in God forever. John Lennon said the goal of life is to be happy.
And he's partially right when he says that. But we cannot stop there. The goal of life, the meaning of life, is to be happy in God. Those two words, to be happy in God. Okay, if we leave off those two last words, we've got a problem.
But it's to be happy in God. And the Bible affirms this 100%. And let me show you. I read John 15 .11 earlier. And by the way, I don't want you just to believe everything I'm saying here. Only believe what I'm saying because it comes from Scripture.
That's an important point to emphasize. John 15 .11, Jesus said, Okay, so what he's saying there is here, as I have this fullness of joy, and I want you to have this fullness of joy. So when Jesus says, I say these things to you, what is he talking about?
What things did Jesus say that this full joy would be imparted to his followers? Well, in the previous section before John 15 .11, in John 14 and the beginning of John 15, Jesus said that the Father and I will make a home with you.
Then Jesus said that in your time on earth, you are to abide in him. Or to remain in him. If you abide in Jesus, you will experience this fullness of joy. So as you walk through life with Jesus, as you pursue him, you will experience this fullness of joy.
And this is a joy that you can taste now in your life. By pursuing God, you will experience more joy in this life than anyone possibly could. Remember, he's the source of happiness. And if you pursue him, you're going to have more joy than someone who has billions of dollars who doesn't have God.
We see these people who have everything that you could possibly imagine. I mean, they could fly to the corners of any corner of the earth in a moment's notice if they wanted to because they have so much wealth.
And we think, oh, they must be so happy. That's not true. Oftentimes, these people are some of the most unhappy people because they have so much and they think, I should be happy. But then they know, I'm not happy.
But knowing God and having this relationship with Jesus Christ is where happiness comes from. So how do you have this joy in your life now? Well, you pursue God, number one, by pursuing him in the word of God, the Bible.
This book is a treasure chest. Every day when you read it, the Holy Spirit is going to show you new things that you never saw before. At Sunday school this morning, I learned new things every week as we open up the word of God.
It's a treasure chest. And as we dig deep into it and as we know more about God and we go deeper into this communion with him, this fellowship with him, you are going to experience this fullness of joy.
And then also praying over what he says. One of the ways that we ought to pray is we ought to pray God's word back to him. Those are the prayers he loves the most. When we pray his words back to him. I heard one author say, we need to show God his handwriting.
When we pray the promises of God back to him, he's going to answer those because they're in his word. And then we become more like him as we do this. As we immerse ourselves in the word of God, as we pray, we become more like him.
And you're going to experience this fullness of joy. So this is how you abide in Jesus. And Jesus said, if you do this, you will have this fullness of joy right now in your life. And this is a joy that you can taste now.
Psalm 34 .8 says, taste and see that the Lord is good. 1 Peter 1 .8 says, What you will find is that when you are finding your joy in God, you will not want to sin. Psalm 119 .9 -11, the psalmist says, So as you are finding your joy in God, as you are pursuing God more in the word of God, what you will see is that your desire for sin will go way down.
You're going to have a distaste for sin. In fact, pursuing God is the best way to have victory over sin long-term. And I might even venture to say that it's the only way to have victory over your sin long-term.
Your joy in God. Because you have a superior pleasure in God over the false pleasures of sin. A well-known story in the Old Testament is King David's sin with Bathsheba. David explains in Psalm 51 .12 why he committed adultery.
So this is his confession. You know what he said in Psalm 51 .12? He says, So why did he sin? He lost his joy in God. He was not abiding in God. And so what he did is he tried to find joy somewhere else.
And he tried to find joy in another man's wife. Did committing adultery lead David to joy? No. It led him to tremendous pain. I heard an author say that sin is like a mirage. You might remember those cartoons you used to watch where the cartoon character was walking in the desert and he was thirsty.
You know, it's really hot. He's scorching. And he sees this gas station in the distance or this well of water. And he runs towards this well of water hoping that this is finally going to quench his thirst.
And then he gets there. And he's like, It's not here. Where did it go? A mirage is when you're promised a lie. Something that you thought was there isn't really there. And that's what sin is. Sin promises joy.
Sin promises satisfaction. And it never delivers. And all of us can speak about this from experience because we've all sinned. And we sin because we think it's going to make us happy. And it doesn't make us happy.
Any one of us could have this testimony of our experience with sin. But the joy you find in God is true joy. It is real. There's no pain at the end of it but only pleasure. Joy in God is the driving force of your obedience in God.
Nehemiah 8 .10 says that the joy of the Lord is our strength. 1 John 5 .3, we looked at this last week where it says that His commands are not burdensome. And they're not burdensome because you treasure God.
And out of your treasuring for God comes this obedience for God. You want to do things. You don't do things out of obligation. You do things because you want to do them. I mentioned earlier that we can taste God's fullness of joy now.
And you might say, well, how come I don't have this full experience of God's joy now? And the truth is, we don't have it in full measure yet. And this is so because of two reasons. The first is, we still sin.
And the second is, we are not in God's presence yet. And the first is that sin leads to pain and sorrow. And even the most mature Christians still sin. And so we don't have this fullness of joy now. And then secondly, we're not in the presence of God yet.
We're not with Him in heaven yet. And Christ hasn't come back yet. So we're not in His presence. But that is to come in the future. And I already read Psalm 1611. In your presence there is fullness of joy.
At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. So where is the fullness of joy? The answer is God's presence. And we are not in His presence yet. But that will come either at your death or Christ's return.
C .S. Lewis, who wrote the Chronicles of Narnia, he said this famous quote, and it's one of my favorite quotes outside of Scripture. He said, is that I was created for another world. Okay, let me say that again.
If I find in myself desires which no experience in this world can satisfy, the only probable explanation is that I was created for another world. We have this experience, do we not? Things seem so good and yet it seems like, okay, there's something more that's missing here.
We're not quite there. So we can taste it, but we're not fully there yet. Philippians 121. Remember what Paul said when we looked at this in the spring? To live is Christ and to die is gain. And then Paul writes, to be with Christ is far better.
Why is it far better? Because you're in the presence of God. And we're not there yet. But you can have a special relationship with God now where you taste this joy. In John 15, 11, as I already quoted, Jesus said, you can have my fullness of joy now.
So my question to you is, can you taste it now in your life? We need to ask ourselves, it's good to ask yourself these questions. It's good, it's healthy to do so. Are you walking close enough with God to experience this?
Have you ever thought about your faith in this way? The devil tries to fool people into thinking that God is boring, that church is boring, and that there are better things to do with your life. That's a lie.
Satan is the father of lies. John 8, 44, says that he's been lying from the beginning. And people believe it, that this is boring. And my prayer is, my hope is that you do not come to church because you feel obligated.
I hope that you come here because you want to come here. Because it's a place to meet God in a special way as the community of believers. And we shouldn't read the Bible because we have to. We should read the Bible because we want to.
We shouldn't pray to God because we have to, but because we want to. And as Satan does this, he knows full well that anyone who knows God will be eternally happy. And he knows that he forfeited any opportunity for this when he rebelled against God.
As he is on his way to hell, he is trying to bring as many people with him as possible to an eternity of misery and joylessness. That's what he wants. Hell is a place of misery. Hell is a place where there is no joy because it's completely cut off from the presence of God.
So don't let him fool you. And you can be in the church for many years without seeing that the true path to joy is only found in God. My own experience, I went through church over 20 years without seeing that true joy is only found in God.
This is revolutionary when you see it. About seven years ago, honestly, about seven years ago is when I saw this firsthand. And I see that, okay, the glory of God and my joy are not competitors. As I enjoy God, I glorify God.
And actually, the ministry of John Piper has been a great influence on my life. His famous quote is, God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. Okay, so God gets more glory the more we have joy in him.
And I saw this seven years ago. And my pastor Dave did a good job of showing me this too. Greg and Karen are here today from Mount Free. And this was revolutionary in my life. This is why I went into ministry.
If I treated my faith in God as duty, I would not be your pastor right now. I'm doing this because this is the most joyful path possible. And this is the best way that I can serve God. And not everyone's called to be a pastor.
Actually, most people are not called to be a pastor or a missionary. But we are called to seek God 100 with our lives. Every one of us is. And that is the path of life, as Psalm 1611 says. So my hope and my prayer, my hope and my prayer is that you would see this.
And I pray for you every week. And I pray that you would see this. As a church, when you believe in Jesus, not only does he keep you from hell, but he gives himself to you forever. You were created for him and he gives himself to you forever.
John 17 .3, as Jesus is praying to the Father, he says, he says that this is eternal life. That we know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. That's eternal life. Heaven's going to be a great place.
We were reading about that this morning. It's going to be a wonderful place with streets of gold and a glassy sea and you're reunited with loved ones. But all those are secondary to being in the presence of God.
That's where the happiness is going to come from. It's going to come from him. The best part of heaven is knowing God in a deep and personal way. In the parable of the talents in Matthew 25 .23, this is what Jesus said to the servant who was faithful with his life.
He said, well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little. I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master. Of all the things Jesus could have said, he said, enter my joy and you will have it in fullness in that moment.
Of all the things that Jesus could have said, this is what he said, enter my eternal joy. Realizing this is your destiny in Christ, for those today who belong to Jesus, this will change the way you look at your faith.
This is revolutionary and so I hope that you see, this is my prayer, that if you haven't seen this yet, from this day forward, this will change the way that you see your relationship with God. Walking with Christ is not just a part of your life, it is everything.
It's not just the cherry on top of a life that you already enjoy. It's everything. And so what we saw this morning is that true happiness is only found in God. The author of reality is joyful to the utmost and only God's children obtain this fullness of joy.
And as I mentioned, even though I grew up in a Christian home, I made this discovery about God's joy and my joy being dependent on his joy, not too long ago. And I showed you this from scripture today.
And my prayer is that the Lord will help you enjoy him now as you spend time with him in his word, in prayer, and with the rich fellowship of believers. And as you do this, my prayer is that you would taste it now, preparing yourself to be in God's presence where you will experience God's joy in full measure, forever.
So as we wrapped up our sermon series here, the goal of the sermon series was to know God better. And I hope that you know God better after these 11 weeks that we've looked at God. And the goal of knowing God is that we would reflect God.
And so, as I close in prayer, that's what I'm going to pray for, is that we would know God and then reflect God. Father in heaven, as we see that we are only satisfied in you, it kind of brings this sermon series to a close.
But Lord, I pray that we would never forget about who you are. That we would always be reminded of what the Bible says about you. That we would shape our understanding of you based on scripture and not what our culture says or what we want to believe about you.
Because we make you so much smaller than you are. And so, may we glorify you in the way that we view you, in the way that we worship you, in the way that we live our lives. And Father, as we close up this sermon series, I pray, Lord, that we would know you better.
That we would know you better. And that we would reflect you. That we would reflect your holy character. That we would reflect all the attributes that we can reflect. That we would reflect those. And I ask this in the name of Jesus.
Amen.