A GOD FOR ALL SEASONS

THE HAPPINESS THAT LEADS TO PRAISE

James 5:13b

INTRODUCTION Jonathan Edwards said that God has revealed Himself in two books; the book of Scripture and the book of Nature. There is so much we can learn about God by merely looking at our world. Have you ever bothered listening to natures sounds? Every morning I wake up to a free concert of birds singing and calling in a variety of different sounds and songs. Day after day as they sing their beautiful songs the birds have not a care whether or not I listen. The birds day after day just keep right on singing and chirping doing what their creator intended them to do. Not that they are consciously thinking about God as they sing, but they are worshipping their creator by doing what He intended them to do. Do you know what would fulfill the purpose for which God created and redeemed you? Isaiah 43:7 says, “Everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory.” We were all created and redeemed to reflect and express the infinite worth of God’s glory-to think and feel and speak and do whatever we must to make much of God. Our reason for existence, our purpose, our calling, and our greatest joy is to render visible the glory of God (1 Cor.10:31). Jonathan Edwards wrote: “All that is ever spoken of in scripture as the ultimate end of God’s works is included in one phrase, the glory of God…the whole is of God, and in God, and to God, and God is the middle, end, and beginning of this whole affair.” So life is about worshipping God through making much of God by doing what He made you to do. When we live in that way we are doing on earth what we will be doing in heaven: WORSHIP! James tells us that we make much of God when we pray to Him and we make much of God when we praise Him. Prayer and praise are the highest calling of humanity and our eternal vocation. For James, all of life should be lived with a God-ward, God-dependent, God-exalting focus. Last week: “Is anyone among you suffering? Then he must pray. God is glorified in man’s dependence on Him. Now today: Is anyone cheerful? He is to sing praises” God is glorified in man’s prizing Him expressed in joyful praise.

I. THE ROOT OF PRAISE: HAPPINESS IN GOD- “Is anyone cheerful?” The verb translated cheerful is "euthumei " which is in the present indicative tense. The word is made up of the preposition eu (well or `good') and the verbal form the noun thumos (`soul' as the principle of life and feeling). Putting all of this together, the word denotes not a superficial euphoria, but a deep inner sense of well-being. It means to be of a good mind, attitude. It has some "cousin" definitions meaning to rejoice, to be glad, to be peaceful, to be of good courage, and to be happy. The root of this word is used only four times in the Greek New Testament (Acts 24:10; 27:22, 25, 36). It is interesting to note that each time the word occurs in difficult circumstances, yet faced with difficulty Paul had a deep sense of joy rooted in the knowledge of God and faith in God. So James is raising the bar on happiness. Yes there is suffering, yes there are difficult circumstances, but in spite of those things, you can be the happiest of persons! Are you, James asks? Is your happiness based upon people, circumstances, or the gifts that God has given you? If so, that will explain why you may not be happy this morning or it may expose your own misplaced happiness in something less than God Himself. When our happiness is based upon anything less than God than our lives as Christians will be very up and down. But on an even deeper level, if we are happy in these things, our happiness is idolatrous because we make them central for our joy rather than rejoicing in God. This is the joy of the hypocrite! We end up diminishing God in our joy. Oh how many people pursue fleeting or misdirected happiness! C.S Lewis warns us of such a small pursuit in The Weight of Glory. “Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” Where is your happiness today? Are you far too easily pleased? Brothers and sisters, the true happiness in your life will only come when God is central in your life! Once God is really central, He will expose every joy as idolatrous that is not ultimately joy in Him. As Saint Augustine prayed, “He loves you too little who loves anything together with you, which he loves not for your sake.” Happiness in God is the key to living the purpose you were meant to live. Psalm 43:4 says, “I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy, and I will praise you with the lyre, O God, my God.” The final goal of life is not forgiveness or any of God’s good gifts. The final goal of life is God Himself, experienced as your exceeding joy. Or very literally from the Hebrew, “God, the gladness of my rejoicing.” That is, God, who in all my rejoicing over all the good things that he had made, is Himself, in all my rejoicing, the heart of my joy, the gladness of my joy. Every joy that does not have God as the central gladness of the joy is a hollow joy and in the end will burse like a bubble. David understood this and wrote, “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11). The Bible calls us to pursue our joy in God. The Old Testament commands us to delight ourselves in the Lord (Psalm 37:4) “Be glad in the LORD and rejoice, you righteous ones; and shout for joy, all you who are upright in heart.” Jesus commands us, "Rejoice and leap for joy for your reward is great in heaven" (Luke 6:23), and he tells us, "These things I have spoken to you that my joy might be in you and your joy might be full" (John 15:11). The apostle Paul commands us, "Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice" (Philippians 4:4). And on and on. And so it is with the other writers of Scripture. The message is: Christianity is meant to be a life of tremendous and abiding joy in God. Why? Because God is infinitely delightful, boundlessly enjoyable, infinitely pleasant, infinitely lovely, infinitely satisfying. The best joys in your life are when you forget about yourself and are enthralled with greatness. The greatest greatness is God’s. Every thing that ever made a man happy is amplified ten thousand times in God. Is it no wonder why Jonathan Edwards said, “The enjoyment of God is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows; but the enjoyment of God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams. But God is the fountain. These are but drops, but God is the ocean…Why should we labor for, or set our hearts on anything else, but that which is our proper end, and true happiness.” Oh Christian, God wants us to see Him, to understand Him, and know Him, in order that you might supremely enjoy Him and be satisfied with Him, and truly happy in Him. The great end of all bible study, all teaching, all preaching, is a heart for God and a life of joy. That is why the Westminster Confession writes: “The chief end of man is to know God and enjoy Him forever.” Therefore, we should be blood earnest-deeply serious, about being happy in God! If you don’t. You will be dull to His great worth, and you will not desire for Him. And soon your heart will be tied to lesser things. Edwards challenges us “to be endeavoring by all possible ways to inflame their desires and to obtain more spiritual pleasures. . . . Our hungerings and thirstings after God and Jesus Christ and after holiness can't be too great for the value of these things, for they are things of infinite value.” The implications every day of your life and every Sunday when we gather is that God’s glory hangs on our being happy in Him. George Mueller exhorts and instructs us, “above all things see to it that your souls are happy in the Lord. Other things may press upon you, the Lord's work may even have urgent claims upon your attention, but I deliberately repeat, it is of supreme and paramount importance that you should seek above all things to have your souls truly happy in God Himself! Day by day seek to make this the most important business of your life… the secret of all true effectual service is joy in God….But in what way shall we attain to this settled happiness of soul? How shall we learn to enjoy God? How shall we obtain such an all-sufficient soul-satisfying portion in him as shall enable us to let go the things of this world as vain and worthless in comparison? I answer; this happiness is to be obtained through the study of the Holy Scriptures. God has therein revealed Him self unto us in the face of Jesus Christ. In the Scriptures, by the power of the Holy Ghost, He makes Himself known unto our souls. . . . [Therefore] The very earliest portion of the day we can command should be devoted to the meditation on Scriptures. Our souls should feed upon the Word. . . . This intimate experimental acquaintance with Him will make us truly happy. Nothing else will.” Every Sunday my goal in teaching you is to “raise your affections and joy as high as I can with the truth of God.” I desire for you to be set on fire with white hot passion for God and overflowing joy in Christ in the preaching of God’s word with clear and compelling biblical truth. So that as Peter says, “Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory.”(1 Peter 1:8)This is the goal of God in the universe. The ultimate battle in your life is: Are you happy? Will God be your exceeding joy? What will happen when He is?

II. THE FRUIT OF HAPPINESS IN GOD-PRAISE `Let him sing praise.' The progression and movement of this text is very clear. If you are a happy in God- praise is the reflex response! Praising God is the consummation of joy in God. It is the joy that overflows from knowing, seeing, and savoring His infinite beauty and greatness. When we really see God, praise is sure to follow! This word sing (other translations say praise) is just one word in the Greek, is a command, and in this case the word is psalleto. Originally it meant 'to twang or twitch a stringed instrument with the hands', but later it developed to include wider aspects of sacred music and singing and, of course, it is the root of our English word `psalm'. The word came to signify the making of music in any fashion. But to cut across the technicalities, James's counsel is perfectly^- clear; if you are happy in the Lord, then sing praise to God! Praise is necessary to Christian faith and worship for the simple reason that the reality of God and Christ is so great that when that reality is known truly and felt duly, it demands more than discussion and analysis and description; it demands and song and music. Singing is the Christian's way of saying: God is so great that thinking will not suffice, there must be deep feeling; and talking will not suffice, there must be singing. All through the Bible that same counsel is given by example and directive. David says, “Oh give thanks to the LORD; call upon his name; make known his deeds among the peoples! Sing to him; sing praises to him; tell of all his wondrous works! Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice! “(1 Chronicles 16:8-10). The reason the Bible gives why God should be greatly praised is because He is great! “Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised.”(Psalm 96:5) He is more admirable than anything He has made. That is what it means to be God. Praise is gladly reflecting back to God, the radiance of His worth that responds from affections in our hearts towards Him. Praise reveals or expresses how great and glorious God is to us. That is why when feelings for God are dead, worship is dead! We praise what we prize! Praise is prizing Christ, treasuring Christ, cherishing Christ, being satisfied with Christ, and being happy in Christ! No wonder why the Bible says that praise-overflowing heartfelt admiration-is a pleasure. “Praise the Lord! For it is good to sing praises to our God; for it is pleasant.”(Psalm 147:1) And this pleasure is the best there is and it lasts forever. I like how C.S. Lewis puts it, “The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about…as regards the supremely valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can't help doing, about everything else we value. I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed.” The praise of God completes the delight we have in God. Think about it, there is something about expressing what is in us. When I tell my wife I love her, my joy in increased. As a matter of fact I find that when I tell her I love her, the happiness that I had before I told her is now increased by my telling her! Let me use another illustration concerning our gathering together on Sunday morning and during the week. After I went to the east coast, it is a great joy to tell people about what I saw and experienced. But you can’t really delight in what I’m saying unless you’ve been there. But my joy may give you a desire to see it too. So you go with me or yourself and then you see and understand what I’m talking about and you too have joy. Our joy increases when we talk about it together and even more if we are there seeing it at the same time! That’s what singing, preaching, and fellowship do. We together taste, see, savor, and show the beauty and greatness of Christ and together express our praise, which completes our delight and magnifies Him and it is what creates the desire, opens the eyes, and awakens true joy in others. God is most glorified when many are most satisfied with him. When the heart is abundantly savoring and cherishing and treasuring Christ above all else, this will overflow from the lips. It creates songs and sayings and conversations and testimonies and prayers and confessions and sermons ring out praise.

CLOSING THOUGHT Are you happy this morning? Are you praising? Many of us have not been used to finding our joy in God so it doesn’t come easy to praise. That is why we must pray, seek, and begin to go hard after joy. “Resolved, to endeavor to obtain for myself as much happiness, in the other world, as I possibly can, with all the power; might, vigor, and vehemence, yea violence, I am capable of, or can bring myself to exert, in any way that can be thought of.” (Jonathan Edwards) God’s demand for supreme praise comes out of His demand for our supreme happiness (Psalm 37:4). Authentic joy in God will overflow with praises. It’s not wrong to say, “We were made for God.” It’s not wrong to say, “We were made for joy.” It’s not wrong to say, “We were made to praise.” But it is more fully true to say, “We were made to enjoy God with overflowing praise.” This is the ultimate goal of life and when you give overflowing praise to the Lord you are truly doing what you were created and redeemed to do! This is what, I pray, will more and more mark you Lighthouse: that God will lead us now into true and lasting joy. That He will enthrall us with Himself and break the power of lesser pleasures so that the joy and satisfaction in all of you bubbles forth in praise!