Happiness Revisited

pursuing happiness can often seem like an exercise in futility.

So is it even worth our effort? Well today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg considers the subject of happiness from two different perspectives. He's titled today's message, Happiness Revisited, and he's concluding our series called The Missing Peace. I have mine with me and want to quote from it from the second paragraph. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It's often misquoted, though, to suggest that America is prepared to guarantee happiness as an unalienable right. But it doesn't.

It can't. It guarantees the pursuit of happiness as an unalienable right. And so it is that in the realm of academics, people with large brains and significant amounts of time analyze from a psychological and psychiatric perspective, and from a sociological perspective, the nature of happiness itself.

And most of that work describes the pursuit of happiness in terms of its futility. Now, the reason we're here at Happiness Revisited, if you like, is because this psalm, this poem, which has been the focus of our studies, is upon a psalm, a poem which has begun with the word happiness itself. Happy is he whose transgressions are forgiven.

Happy is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against him. And it is a poem written by a man who would have fitted in quite happily to the Chagrin Valley or to the surrounding communities here in a city like Cleveland, insofar as he was successful. He was a leader. He was, in many senses, the kind of individual who had it made.

He had it all, people would have said. But as is often the case with those who apparently have it all, all does not satisfy. And this particular poet felt the same way about happiness, apparently, because he saw somebody else's wife, and he decided that if he could have her, then that would be equated to happiness. And whatever gratification he enjoyed in the immediacy of his theft, the events quickly unravelled distastefully to murder and to mayhem and to a strength-sapping sadness. Now, the story of the psalm is essentially this. The writer has broken God's law. As a result of breaking God's law, he faces the inescapable consequences.

When he tries to cover it up, his predicament becomes worse and worse and worse. It's deeper, and his despair is even more bone-chilling. It is, by contrast, when he confesses his sin, when he discovers forgiveness and cleansing, that he is then enabled to sing about happiness. He is, if you like, in this particular psalm, looking at life from both sides now.

And he has looked at it from the side of relentless despair, and then he is able to look at it from the perspective of a quite liberating happiness. Now, I hope this is helpful, but I'd like to have us think in terms of just two pictures. Picture number one, then, is entitled The Sorrows of the Wicked. If you go in galleries—and I do every so often, because Susan is more interested than I am, and I want to be a good companion in life, but I'm growing to like things as well, I suppose—and I'm always interested to see what they put on that little card as descriptive of what it is that I'm looking at up here, because it isn't always really obvious when you look at it.

But here it is pretty straightforward. The picture has a title, and the title is The Woes, verse 10, in the NIV, The Woes of the Wicked, or The Pangs of the Wicked. So in other words, the picture is a scene. It's a scene of people. It's a crowd scene.

And it's not just any crowd. It is a crowd of the wicked. Now, wicked is not a very contemporary word.

Therefore, we need to unpack it. We already read in Psalm 9 a description in part of the wicked, the wicked return to the grave, all the nations that forget God. So wickedness and the forgetfulness of God go hand in hand. And the wickedness that is referenced here is described in terms of the transgression of overstepping the mark, verse 1, of being a sinner, verse 2, failing to attain to the standard that God has set, missing the mark of God's appointing, of being iniquitous, being marked by iniquity, which is nothing other than an internal balance, an internal bias, which is a bias in upon ourselves. And when we look at this picture—and it's a fairly large picture, it's a big canvas, and it is completely populated—and again we say, Who are all these people in this picture? And the answer is, it is a picture of the wicked. Now, we shouldn't expect that these individuals would all be the kind of characters that you would find in the post office on the wall. Surely, some of the people there would be like that, but the majority wouldn't.

The majority would be like us—fairly well put together, quite nice, hair-combed, or whatever way you do it, and looking just as if we'd come off the pages of any photograph album at all. The picture of the wicked has no exceptions. It encompasses all. For all by nature go our own way, all by our natures refuse the truth, and all by our natures have our hearts closed to God. That doesn't sound very nice, but it's what the Bible says. Actually, what the Bible says—and this is a picture of sin—is that we are dead in our sins. And so unless somehow our deadness can be alleviated by a power outside of ourselves, we will remain dead.

But dead people cannot make themselves alive. And wicked people cannot be relieved of their wickedness. If you look carefully at the picture as well, you'll see that there is sorrow in the eyes of many of the faces. Because as David says, many are the woes of the wicked. And when he describes his condition on another occasion in Psalm 102, it's amazing the emotional and physical impact that sin, that wickedness, has had upon him.

So he describes a situation where his body is wracked by fever and frailty, that he has eating disorders and weight loss and sleeplessness and rejection and melancholy and despair. And the more you look at the picture, no matter how apparently lovely it appears, it's a stark picture. It's a sad picture.

It's the kind of picture that makes you almost recoil from it. Picture number one, the title is there, just off to the side, The Sorrows of the Wicked. Now, they did well to put that in the north side of the gallery, where it's a little chilly.

Now our guide takes us through into the south side of the gallery, where the sun comes in through the skylight windows, and it's really quite attractive and pleasant. And it's no surprise that picture number two is found there. This picture has a title as well, and the title at the side of this picture is The Songs of the Righteous. It once again is a group scene—people, a crowd, albeit a smaller crowd. And this crowd comprises those who, according to verse 11, are upright in heart.

In the same way that we don't make much reference to wickedness, I'm not sure anybody has said to anyone this morning, Now, come along, Fred. I wish you were a little more upright in heart. But are you upright in heart? Am I upright in heart? And if I were to be upright in heart, what would that mean?

What would that look like? Would that mean that I was a perfect person? That I was a man of impeccable character?

No. The upright in heart are those who trust in him. Verse 10.

The LORD's unfailing love surrounds the man or the woman who trusts in him. Then rejoice in the LORD, and be glad, you righteous… Who are the righteous? The ones who trust in him. Sing, all you who are upright in heart. Who are the upright in heart?

The ones who trust in him? The righteous. This righteousness coming as a result of the confessing of his sin—verse 3, When I kept silent, I was a waster. Verse 5, When I acknowledged my sin and didn't cover up my iniquity, Confess my transgressions, then you forgave my sin. And the songs of the upright, the songs of the redeemed, are songs of God's wonderful faithfulness, of his covenant love.

The LORD's unfailing love surrounds such individuals. Now, I saw on TV the other day, in the advertisements, a scene with little children, and they were sitting on what looked like a sort of plastic blanket. And it had a variety of scenes on the blanket, and then, if they pressed the scene, it made a noise.

The response of the children, albeit an acted response, was quite dramatic. Whoa! That's amazing! You pressed, and it made that noise, and then you pressed over there, and it made another noise. Now, you've got to stretch your imagination here, but I want to suggest that if you walk up to the canvas in picture number one and press it, it makes a noise. And the noise that you hear when you press canvas number one is the noise of self-assertive boasting, or it is the noise of self-inflicted groaning. When you press the canvas of picture number two, then you find that if you go up and press the tummy of somebody who appears in that canvas, then it comes out as songs of deliverance.

We stand back from the picture and say, That's amazing! Why are they saying that? Well, why are they saying that?

Why would they be saying that? Consider it, then, in relationship to David. When he writes of the woes of the wicked there in verse 10, picture number one, many are the woes of the wicked. This is not some arm's-length description on the part of a fellow standing on a balcony looking down and seeing the mess of certain people's lives.

This is a description of someone who has been there, done that, got the t-shirt. He stands, as it were, in between the pictures, saying, testifying to the fact that no matter how appealing the inducements to sinful deeds, the pathway is strewn with regret—a pathway that leads to a dungeon of unrelenting torment. He was a tormented soul. And you may be here this morning, and you are a tormented soul. But we're not there yet.

We must stay with David. How is it, then, that he walked the path, or if you like, what is the path, from the north side, in all of its gloom and groaning, to the south side, in all of its light and love and laughter and liberty? Well, he tells us exactly what the path is.

He says, I acknowledged my sin, I confessed my transgression, I came clean. Finally, what about picture one and picture two in relationship to ourselves? We exist in picture number one. We've exchanged the glory of God, Paul says in Romans 1. We've fallen short of the glory of God here in Romans chapter 3.

Well then, how would a man or a woman ever get their face erased from picture one and replaced in picture two? Well, the exact same way that David did. Remember what he did? I acknowledged my transgressions. I confessed my sin.

I didn't try and cover up my self-assertiveness. You see, in many ways the whole of life is just one gigantic cover-up. And we by nature cover things up from God. And we think that if we can continue to do that and inure ourselves against the ravishing, searching, X-ray eye of the Bible, then we'll actually be happy—only to discover that the more we hide and cover it up, the more unhappy we become.

And the more the prospect of being discovered or uncovered is a dreadful thought. But it was as David stepped down in repentance and in confession and in trusting in God's promise that he discovered that God is a God who keeps his promise. He's the God of Isaiah 43. I, even I, am he who blots out your transgression for my own sake. Now, let me end in Romans 3.

That's why I read from it. Because the story of the gospel, the story of the good news, the story of the transformation that is described in Psalm 32, answers a fundamental question that any thoughtful person needs to ask, which is, if it is as has been described so far, on what basis can a righteous God justify the ungodly? How can God let wicked people into heaven without spoiling heaven? The answer is that it is entirely and all of grace. It is entirely and all in Christ. Verse 22, this righteousness from God, this provision which God makes from God, comes in Jesus Christ. Verse 22. It is entirely all of faith. It comes in Jesus Christ through faith. And it is entirely all of God. Now, that's substance for a series of sermons on their own, but I think you can get all of that, can't you? You can understand that. You can fasten on that for a moment. On what basis can a righteous God justify the ungodly?

Answer? It is all of grace. It is all in Christ. It is all of faith. And it is all of God. So where's your face?

I tell you where it is. If it's not in picture two, it's still in picture one. And if, by God's grace—and it makes you marvel, because you say to yourself, knowing what I know about myself and what I'm like, it is an amazing thing that I could even have my picture in picture two. And if your picture is in picture two, one of the ways you'll know is because the people you love most and care about most, you will long to have them in the picture with you.

And if you and I don't long to see the faces of those who are in picture one join us in picture two, then there's something really wrong. Molly Weir was a journalist and an actress in Scotland in the twentieth century. In the second of the two books, a book entitled Best Foot Forward, she describes her religious environment. And she describes how she went to the Church of Scotland, which is the Presbyterian church, and then she supplemented that by going to various Bible classes when friends invited her.

And she discovered a man who was in a big interdenominational mission hall in the center of Glasgow called Jock Troupe, and he used to come and preach around the neighborhood and outside, and they would sing and have musicians, and then he would preach, and she describes how he could make heaven seem so appealing that you just wanted to run right in, and he could make hell seem so alarming that you wanted to get as far from it as you possibly could. And she describes going home to her house, where she lived not only with her parents but also with her grandmother. Her grandmother never left the house except one day in the year—Hugman A.

That is the last day of the year. All the rest of the time she stayed indoors. So when Molly came home from these evangelistic ventures, full of this story of grace, she urged her grandmother, You must come! You must come and hear this wonderful story! Granny, please come!

But she wouldn't leave the house. She goes to the Salvation Army, and here is one of the most poignant quotes in the book. After the outdoor service, we marched up Springburn Road behind the band and went into their hall to listen to another short service and discover how many sinners felt they now wanted to be saved. There was a long bench at the front called the Penitent's Bench where those wishing to be saved knelt. I found this all very moving and was saved twice—once for myself and once for Granny—since she wouldn't budge outside the house to make sure of her salvation in person. It's very Pauline, isn't it? Paul said it broke his heart to think of his fellow Jews being damned. And he said, I would be prepared to be accursed if they by my cursing would be saved.

And Molly attempts to do what is impossible to do. For we will never be brought into picture two on the tale of our dad, our mom, our sister, or our brother. We are placed there by God's grace personally, purposefully, and permanently. I wonder, do you get this? To go from a state of regret to a place of newfound freedom is an impossible task apart from God's grace. That's today's message titled Happiness Revisited on Truth for Life with Alistair Begg.

Please keep listening. Alistair will be back in just a minute to close us with prayer. We just learned how King David experienced true happiness after he was forgiven by God. And in the weeks that lead up to Easter, that's the perfect time for each of us to think about the forgiveness that Jesus' sacrifice on the cross provides for us. That's the reason we've selected a book called An Ocean of Grace for you to read during the Lenten season. An Ocean of Grace is a six-week devotional prepared by Tim Chester. For each day, Tim has selected writings or prayers from key figures in Christian history on the topic of Jesus' death and resurrection.

You'll benefit from the insights of faithful believers, people like John Bunyan and Martin Luther, but also from the time that Tim has invested in updating the older-sounding language so that the writing today can be easily understood. Request your copy of An Ocean of Grace today when you support the ministry of Truth for Life. You'll find the book on the mobile app or you can visit truthforlife.org slash donate. You can also call us at 888-588-7884. Or if you'd prefer to mail your donation, write to Truth for Life at post office box 398000 Cleveland, Ohio.

Our zip code is 44139. It's always great for us to learn from Christians from past generations. It's also great to learn from Christians today to form new friendships with fellow believers.

And there's an opportunity for you to do that in the near future. This summer, Alistair will be teaching the Bible on board a cruise ship going to Alaska. You'll spend time in God's Word every day. There's daily worship being led by Grammy winner Laura Story. This is going to be an amazing experience.

The journey will take place on board a beautiful Holland America cruise liner. Now here's Alistair to close with prayer. Father, look upon us in your mercy, we pray. We thank you that you are a God of immense faithfulness and compelling love. Grant that your kindness may show us the futility of our wickedness, the perversity of it, and may woo us and win us as we acknowledge our transgressions and confess our sins and do not seek to cover up our iniquitous hearts. Accomplish your purposes, we pray. May we sing the songs of the upright for your son's sake. Amen. I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for listening. Join us tomorrow for a new series from 1 Corinthians 13 titled Love in the Local Church. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.