The good news is, the more like Christ you become, the happier you'll be. The bad news is, the opposite is also true. Today, on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah takes a closer look at each of those truths. God's proven recipe for happiness in your earthly life, as well as the guaranteed formula for despair and misery.
To introduce the conclusion of his message, How Can I Be Happy? Here's David. And thank you so much for joining us. We are moving through some of the prominent Psalms in the Bible and answering these questions. Questions that are at the other end of God, I need some answers.
So far we have discussed who we are and why we're here. We have been looking at self-worth And this is the second part of a message entitled, How Can I Be Happy? This one is based upon Psalm 1, one of the more famous Psalms in the Bible, one of the most rich and beautiful and meaningful psalms in all of God's Word. We'll get back to that in just a moment. I hope you will stay with us throughout these moments as we unfold the truth of Psalm 1.
Did you know that Turning Point produces a magazine? It produces this magazine every month, and it's sent to those who request it. It's beautifully done. all kinds of beautiful colors and designs. The magazine is to help you.
and to add value to your life as a Christian. If you're not receiving it, I hope you will let us send it to you by simply asking for it when you send your email to us, when you write to us, when you call us, when you send a letter to us, simply say, please send me the next issue of Turning Points magazine, and we'll gladly do it. We think you will become very, very faithful in reading this magazine because it will add value and encourage you as you walk with the Lord. We are so excited to be dealing with these important questions. We've been talking about how we can be happy.
Here is part two of that lesson, based upon the first Psalm in the Bible, Psalm 1.
Now if you read the verse carefully you will notice that The three sets of three are like this. First of all, First set, walk. Stand Sit. Do you see that? The second trilogy, Council.
Path? Seat. And the third, ungodly, sinners, scornful. All of these progressively move away from God. And I want to remind you of something that I think we all know, but maybe no one's ever verbalized before.
We always talk about momentum and how important momentum is, it's important in life. But did you know that evil has momentum too? You can get so caught up in evil that it carries you along like you were borne along with the wind. And that's what the psalmist is talking about here. He is telling us that you can get involved in evil in such a way that the momentum of influence begins to capture you.
That's the first category. And here he talks about these three words: counsel, path, and seat. The counsel of the ungodly. To be ungodly means to live your life minus God.
Now The Bible says the counsel of the ungodly is the beginning place in the downward spiral.
So it's a lifestyle, you see, but it starts listening to the counsel, kind of falling into the pattern, and then settling in to the lifestyle. That's the. Downward pull of influence. Notice the second category: the momentum of involvement. Notice the three words: first, you walk.
Then you stand. And then you sit.
Now remember, what is the psalmist saying? Blessed is the man who doesn't get caught up in the gravitational pull of evil in his life. Here's the third issue of momentum. First of all, It's influence. Then it's involvement.
And thirdly, there's a momentum of intensity. Notice. He moves from ungodly. The sinner to scornful.
Now, here's the positive side. The righteous way not only avoids the downward pull of sin, but the righteous way accepts the decisive place of Scripture. in life. But his delight, says the psalmist, Is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night, and he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in its season. Its leaf also shall not wither, and whatever he does shall prosper.
The first thing the psalmist says is that the believer who is headed toward happiness on his way toward God, not away from God, this believer delights. in the Word of God.
Now I wasn't sure what that meant, but I want to contrast it for you. Do you know how a lot of Christians read the Bible? They read the Bible to find out. How far they can go before they cross the line. Do you understand what I mean?
I've talked to people like this. They don't read the Bible to find out what God wants them to do. They read the Bible to find out what God will let them do or what they can do without getting into a whole lot of trouble.
Now, the person who delights in the law of God is totally opposite of that. Here's what he does: he comes to the Bible, and in his heart, there's this incredible desire that he wants to please God. And so he reads the Bible, and he reads it like he was a detective trying to find little clues about how he can please God with his life. Not trying to find ways that he can get by with the things he wants to do. But he opens the book and his prayer in his heart is, Oh God, what I really want to do with my life.
Is I want to please you. I want to bless you. Lord, and I want to read your book today, and maybe you could just show me one little thing, one little nugget that I could mine that would help me please you. Do you ever read the Bible like that? Did you ever come to God's Word?
Like, I want to tell you something. That's how you delight in God's Word. Because I want you to know something, friend. If you come to God with that spirit, you'll find little nuggets everywhere. Because God just loves to show His children how they can please Him.
Because God's a parent. Are you with me? The most unheard words from children. Is there anything I could do to help you today, Mom? Yeah.
What would you do, Mom, if you heard those words? You would go over and examine to see: is this an imposter? Did this person get in my house by mistake? And kids, you know, if you're going to go home and do that, Maybe you could give your parents a little time to kind of get ready and warm up to this because this could be a little lethal if you drive this straight out. If you really knew they meant it, wouldn't it be incredible?
Wouldn't it truly be incredible? I mean if every morning at breakfast Yeah.
Okay. Oh no, let me do it today. He did it yesterday, Mom.
Well, I know, we can all dream, right? But I want to tell you something. That's what it means when the scripture says to delight in God's word. It's to come to the Word of God with your heart motivation being. Lord.
How can I please you today? Mm. And the scripture says that when you delight in the word of God, When your heart delights in the Word of God.
Now, watch carefully. That will translate into this wonderful thing, and that is that your habits. Will be dictated by the Word of God. Did you know that? When you delight in the Word of God, it will automatically.
Determine that your habits are dictated by the Word of God. Why? Because if you're coming every day and say, Lord, how can I please you? He'll show you and it'll translate into life. And the psalmist gives us a couple of clues here as to what that will mean.
First of all, you will discover that your strength comes from God's Word. The scripture says he's like a tree planted by the streams of water. Just like a tree is nourished by the constant supplies of water, Without which, under the blistering sun, the tree would surely die, so the life that is rooted in the word of God will also be established and it will be strong. When you get your roots down deep into God's word, it's like the tree sending its roots down deep into the water next to the stream. And it grows strong.
Not only will you discover that your strength comes from God's word, but you will discover that your stability comes from God's word. Watch this: a fruit tree that is planted by the banks of the river suggests stability. That's what the whole image is about here in the Psalm. The tree is firmly rooted in the soil so that it can resist the storm. There are trees that are standing today, I am told, that were here when this country was discovered.
And they have stood strong through the Civil War, through all kinds of stress and struggle in this land. And if you go to the right place, you can see trees that are just as magnificent and just as beautiful as they were in their prime. Why? They've got a tremendous root structure. And they are strong.
If you've seen the Redwoods Did you ever stand beneath one of those things that you could drive a car through? And just try to imagine.
Something growing out of the ground that big. And did you ever see a tree that was so big that you knew in your heart there's no thunderstorm or lightning storm that is going to ever happen on this earth that's going to touch that tree? I mean, that tree is invincible. And that's the kind of stability God wants his people to have. And he says to us in his precious word that when you put your roots down deep into God's word, you will become a person of great stability.
Notice, keep reading. Not only will you find your strength from God's word and your stability from God's word, but here's one I love. You will find that your spontaneity comes from God's word. There's a little phrase here that says, its leaf also shall not wither.
Now, think with me about that for just a moment. The leaf, now watch carefully, the leaf is the outward testimony of the tree. Isn't that true? The leaf is the outward testimony of the tree. The leaf tells you this is this sort of tree.
And for the Christian. His testimony, his relationship with God, the scripture says, when the roots are down deep into the word of God, the testimony of the Christian will not wither. It will be a vibrant Beautiful testimony. Of who God is.
Someone has written that all God's trees in the Christian sense are evergreens. They're evergreen, they're always green. They are beautiful testimonies to the stability and strength of the being. And they don't wither. When the sun comes out and when the storms come, that tree.
Stay strong. There's much talk these days about the testimony of the believer. How our values have changed. how our conduct has changed. You hear it everywhere you go.
But the leaf does not wither. Listen to me, the leaf does not wither if it's rightly connected. Do you understand what I'm saying? You tell me, oh, here's this guy. I thought he was a great Christian, man, he withered.
He withered. Under the pressure of temptation, under the pressure of sexuality, under the pressure of finances or whatever, he withered. I can tell you something about him. If he withered, He wasn't rightly connected. Because the leaf is the outward testimony of the life that's in the person.
And if you are rightly connected, what does that mean? Your roots go down deep into the Word of God, you're drawing energy from your time with God, you will not. That's the testimony of God's Word.
So let me tell you something. If you withered, It wasn't the withering that was the important thing. It was the unconnecting back here someplace. That caused it to happen.
Some of you are withering right now. Nobody knows it but you. But you know it. And you know you're withering because back yonder someplace You disconnected. And now, all of a sudden, the elements are beating against you, and there's no source of life to keep you strong and green.
Spontaneity. of your life comes. from the Word of God. I read something that a secular humanist wrote. Don't read too much of them, but.
This guy is pretty famous. His name is Maslow. You've read of him, I'm sure, if you've had psychology. He wrote these words. Listen to this.
He said, What man needs but does not have, he seeks for unceasingly. And becomes dangerously ready to jump at any hope, good or bad. The cure for this disease is obvious. We need A validated, usable system of human values that we can believe in. and devote ourselves to because we know they are true.
I thought to myself, Where have you been? The Bible's been around here a long time. That's the system of believable human values that are true. And the secular humanists don't even know it exists. But people who sink their roots down deep into this book Will find strength and stability and spontaneity.
And yes, there's one last thing, they will also find success. Look. It brings forth its fruit in its season, and whatever he does shall. Prosper. You want to be prosperous and successful, the Word of God says this is how you do it.
Get your spiritual roots down deep into the Word of God. You say, Does that mean that if I become a practicing, studying Christian, that I'll become wealthy? No, I'm not into that, neither is the Bible. We define success so strangely, don't we?
Someone has said, That prosperity and success for the believer is like a zero. It is a zero. Until You put a one in front of it. Then it becomes a tin. If you put another zero, it becomes a hundred, it becomes a thousand, but the zero is a zero until there is a one.
And true believers understand that prosperity is not prosperity unless the one. Is at the front of it. And when you put D1 at the front of it, God Himself, and then you begin to add the ciphers. then it means something. But until the one is there, there isn't any meaning to success at all.
Isn't that true? So the Bible says that whatever success we have, whatever God gives us, He's going to make it prosper because He's going to be the one who's at the front of it when we put the zero next to it.
Now we got something, right?
Now we got something. And whatever a man does, he says. will prosper.
Well, I didn't leave much time to talk about the ungodly. Because it doesn't take much time to talk about them. In fact, the psalmist probably could have stopped at the end of this section with the first verse. And the first words of verse four. Because verse 4 he says, the ungodly Are not so.
Read that out loud with me. The ungodly are not so. Not so what? Not so like all this stuff we've just been talking about, right? The ungodly are not the people who put their roots down deep into the Word of God.
They are not strong. They are not stable. They don't have spontaneity to their lives. They're caught up in the vortex of evil that drags them down through their influence and involvement and intensity. The ungodly are not so.
Take everything we talked about that's good about the righteous man and negate it, and you've got the ungodly man. That's what he's saying. But then he adds Three things that we should not forget, and I can just touch on them quickly. First of all, He says the ungodly cannot stand in the time of difficulty. And he uses an incredible illustration.
He says, They're like the chaff which the wind. drives away.
Now, I don't want to pretend that I'm a farmer and that I've had a lot of experience in the farm because I haven't, but I used to live with my uncle during the summers when I was growing up, and I did a little farm work. Enough to know that I wouldn't cut out to be a farmer. One of the things I used to do, and I did kind of like this, is we used to bale hay every summer, and I was with the crew that would go out in the field and we used square bales. We weren't into those round things which you can't stack, but we used the square bales and we grabbed the bale hook and we'd pitch that thing up with our knee and kick it up on the wagon. And as I got a little bit older, I got to be the wagon man.
I'd got up on the wagon, I stacked the bales. But I thought after a while that that wasn't near as much fun as being down there, you know why? When you throw that hay up on the wagon, All the chaff. all the little pieces of hay end up on the wagon floor. And you're up there, you don't have any shirt on, and it's hot and you're sweating.
I know that's indelicate, but it's true. What somebody told me the other day that men sweat, women glow. I don't know what that's all about. I mean, that's what I heard. But I was glowing, if you want to understand, I was up on the wagon, you know, I was sweating or glowing, however, you want to talk about it.
And then the wind starts to blow. Or you go over a hill and you get into the wind draft, and all of a sudden, all that chaff starts to swirl in the air, and you get it all over your skin. And it itches like crazy. Are you itching yet? Anybody itching?
All right? Do you know what chaff is good for? It's good for one thing to make you itch. That's all it's good for. It's worthless.
You can't collect it, you can't capture it, you can't use it. And the Bible says That the ungodly who has disconnected himself from God, he is like the chaff which the wind blows away.
Now, watch this. Get these two pictures in your mind, class. The tree planted by the river. The chaff Which the wind? Blows away.
Isn't God an incredible Artist. Is there any picture you've ever seen that more graphically describes the difference in lifestyle? Between a person who's firmly rooted in the Word of God. and a person who's captured with the fantasies of the day. and just floats around on any wind that happens to blow.
He can't stand in the time of trouble because there's no stability. But notice the scripture also says he can't stand in the day of judgment. And I read that with such great interest because this is what it means. It means that when the believer comes before the Lord in judgment, He stands there, not proud, not arrogant. but looking into the face of his Lord.
Because he knows it's okay. God has cared for it. The sin problem is done. He is accepted in the beloved. And he stands there.
with a sense of confidence. He has confidence in the day of judgment. But when it says here in the Psalm that you cannot stand in the day of judgment, this is what the Hebrew means: it means that when you stand before God in that day, And you've had ungodly patterns in your life, and this is what you've been. You've been an ungodly person. You stand there with your head bowed like this.
Because you can't stand in the presence of God. And look at him. You can't lift up your head. That's really what it means. You cannot lift up your head.
in the presence of God. Aren't you glad that our God is the lifter of the head? He is the lifter of the head. Before Christ came into my life, I stood with my head bowed in front of God, but God lifted my head up. And he gave me confidence, but the ungodly cannot stand in the day of judgment.
Nor can he stand in the congregation of the righteous, says the psalmist. That's really repeating in a new way what he's already said, but it's saying much more than that. Will you listen to it carefully? It says he can't be standing in the congregation of the righteous. The psalmist means That while wicked men today live in a world in which there are still many righteous people, And God calls these righteous ones the salt of the earth.
Listen to me. God is not going to allow both classes of people to be together forever. Did you know that? Here in this Psalm, he talks about the righteous and the ungodly, and they're together in the same world, but that's not the way it's going to be. And I don't know if you've ever thought about that, if you are a person who's never known God or don't trust Christ as your Savior.
But what that means is there's someday going to be this great separation, and the ungodly are going to be separated forever from any righteous influence in their life. And friends, what that means is that throughout eternity, you will live with those who are also wicked and more wicked than you are, never seeing a righteous person, never hearing a righteous word, never witnessing a righteous act forever and ever and ever. I don't have to describe hell. If there were no more to it than that, That would be enough. The destiny of the ungodly.
Not a pretty picture. In fact, the psalmist puts the period to his writing in the last verse when he says, The Lord knows the way of the righteous, but The Way of the Ungodly Shell. Perish. Hmm. Charles Haddon Spurgeon.
the great English preacher. Wrote once. These words he said The righteous man carves his name upon the rock. The wicked man writes his remembrance in the wind. The righteous man plows furrows of earth and sows and has a harvest here which shall never be fully reaped until he enters eternity.
Now watch this carefully. But as for the wicked man, he plows the sea. And though there may seem to be a shining trail behind his keel, The waves pass over it. And the place that knew him. shall know him no more forever.
How many of you have ever been water skiing and you've Either been in the boat or on the skis, and you've looked behind you, and there's this beautiful trail behind your skis. And if you like to jump the wake, you're maybe in another ski boat, and you're jumping over the wake behind the other skier. But you look behind you and you've left a trail. You've plowed a furrow. But come back.
20 minutes later. and try to find it. It's gone. And Spurgeon said, That's what it's like to live a life minus God. It's to plow a furrow in the sea.
It looks good for a moment. But it doesn't last. and you can never find it again. Two ways. and two destinies.
And happiness is at the end of one road. Blessed Incredible are the blessednesses. of the righteous man. Happy is the man. that trusts in his God.
Amen, amen. What a good place to End our discussion from Psalm 1. Tomorrow, we're going to go to another famous Psalm, Psalm 19. and answer this question. How can one book change my life?
How can one book change my life? Psalm 19. Do you ever wish that you could? have a book like that. A book that you could read and by reading it it would change your life.
Well, if you have a copy of the scriptures, you already have your book. You just have to develop the hunger for it and the desire for it and begin to read it and ask God. to use its truth to change your life. We'll talk about that tomorrow as we come to the Friday edition of Turning Point. Once again, a reminder to get your copy of Five Psalms for a Flourishing Life, a beautiful hardback book just produced for our Turning Point listening audience.
You can't get this in the bookstores. It's only available from Turning Point. Just ask for your copy when you send your gift and it will be on its way. Hope you'll get your copy. The message you just heard came to you from Shadow Mountain Community Church and Dr.
David Jeremiah, the senior pastor. Reach out and tell us how this ministry blesses you by writing to TurningPoint, PO Box 3838, San Diego, California, 92163. Visit our website at davidjeremiah.org slash radio or calling 800-947-1993. Ask for your copy of David's new book. Five Psalms for a Flourishing Life.
it'll help you abide with God. and it's yours for a gift of any amount. You can also view over 1200 of Dr. Jeremiah's sermons on any screen, anytime you like, on our Turning Point Plus streaming service for a monthly gift of any amount. Visit turningpointplus.org for details.
This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we continue God, I need some answers on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah.
