How Can I Be Happy - Part 2

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. Dr. David Jeremiah, thank you so much for joining us today to answer these questions that people are asking. And we always invite your help and encouragement.

You know this program is only available because you support it financially and through your prayers. And one of the things we've been doing from almost the very beginning, many years ago, is offering a spiritual resource each month to encourage your giving and to thank you when you give. This month it is our privilege to introduce the calendar to our viewers. The calendar for 2021, now don't think we're looking at this from the wrong month, it's usually offered toward the end of the year.

And little by little, through feedback from our watchers and listeners, we've moved it back to September so that once you order it in September, whether early or late, we have enough time to get it in the mail, you get it during the month of October, and the calendar actually begins in November. It's a 14-month calendar. So you have the end of the year to put all of that together. All of your important year-end dates in, and then get started with your planning for the new year. There's a lot of interesting things in this calendar, including a way for you to just keep track of every holiday, to keep track of everything that's going on in your own life. There's places for you to write in, because the squares are there for each day. And may I tell you that the beauty of the calendar this year, it's called Colors of Creation, and we're very thankful for the opportunity we have to make it. Here's how you get yours.

Send a gift of any size to Turning Point during the month of September, and ask for this calendar, and it'll be shipped to your home right away. I know you'll love it. It's my privilege to make it available. Well, let's get started with the last part of the lesson we began on Friday as we look at Psalm 1 and answer this question, How can I be happy? 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 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 an 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. Did you ever read the Bible like that? Did you ever come to God's word like that? 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 will 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? 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 tried, you know, just 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... 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? 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're 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 stays 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. 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's 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 and 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 ten. 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 the one 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. And 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 didn'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 4 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'd grab 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 got up on the wagon and 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. Somebody told me the other day that men sweat, women glow. I don't know what that's all about but I just, I mean that's what I heard but I was glowing.

If you 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. It itches like crazy. Are you itching yet?

Are you 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 shall perish. 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. What a wonderful encouragement that is to all of us. Happy is the man who trusts in his God. Boy, I'm telling you what, we're getting that tested during these days, but I want to give this testimony with my hand raised up. God is faithful. He has been, he will be, and he is. And whatever we're facing now, you know God is enough for that. He's bigger than all of this and he will be there for us and is there for us if we'll put our trust in him.

If you want to know joy and happiness and if you want to get rid of the anxiety that's plaguing your heart right now, you need to find God in your life and I hope you have done that and if not, that you will. I would like to encourage you to join Donna and me and our Turning Point team for a one-night live online event with special guest musical performances and interviews. The date for that is September the 30th.

That's a Wednesday night. It begins at 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific and we'll be broadcasting live to our Facebook page as well as our website with special guest Sheila Walsh. We're going to have musical guest Anthony Evans and I interviewed Levi Lesko who's one of my new friends and during this time we're also going to have prayer for our nation.

This is going to be a very special time. It's kind of in place of our live events which obviously we can't do this year because of the coronavirus, but we're not going to be discouraged by that. We're going to have an event anyway and we'll be telling you more about it throughout the month of September.

Draw a circle around September 30th. Make sure you join us for this special event. Have a great day.

See you tomorrow. Visit our website at DavidJeremiah.org forward slash radio. Ask for your copy of our 14 month 2021 calendar, Colors of Creation, highlighting God's breathtaking handiwork.

It's yours for a gift of any amount. You can also download the free Turning Point mobile app for your favorite smart device or search in your app store for the keywords Turning Point Ministries for instant access to our programs and resources. Visit DavidJeremiah.org forward slash radio for details. I'm Gary Hooke Fleet. Join us tomorrow as we continue God.

I need some answers. That's here on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah. Thanks for taking time to listen to this audio on demand from Vision Christian Media. To find out more about us, go to vision.org.au. .