February 2, 2025 • 26 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to turning point.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
For some people, life is all about the pursuit of happiness.
Others see happiness as a distraction to living a holy life.
How does Jesus view happiness today? Doctor David Jeremiah begins
a series to answer that question, How to be happy
according to Jesus? Can happiness and holiness coexist? Listen as
(00:28):
David kicks off the series with his message life outside
the Amusement Park.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Well, thank you so much for joining us in this
first Monday of February. We begin a new month together
and a new series together as we talk about how
to be happy according to Jesus. This is a study
of the beatitudes in the fifth chapter of Matthew. And
we have a very special book that goes along with this.
It's brand new. We've never offered this before. It's just
(00:55):
been completed. It's called Twelve Habits of Truly Happy Christians.
This is Jesus' prescription for happiness and these habits are
spelled out and their action portions for.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
You to fill out.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
We would love to make this beautiful little book available
to you during this month for a gift of any
size that's right, for a gift of any size during
the month of February, we'll send you this key companion
book called Twelve Habits of Truly Happy Christians. Do you
want to be a happy Christian, a Christian of joy?
(01:30):
Here's something that will give you a pattern for that
to happen in your life, and I hope you'll take
advantage of it. We need your help, but we want
to put something in your hands that will bring help
to you.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
And add value to your life.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
You can have your copy of Twelve Habits of Truly
Happy Christians by simply requesting it when you send your
gift to Turning Point during the month of February. Today,
we're going to talk about life outside the amusement park,
and we're going to discuss this whole thing about trying
to find happiness and sometimes trying to look in the
wrong places. Matthew, Chapter five one through twelve. This is
(02:06):
Turning Point. I'm David Jeremiah.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
The comedy film Cool Runnings is about the first Jamaican
bobsled team to go to the Olympics. The late John
Candy played a former American gold medallist who became a
coach to the Jamaican team, and the players grow to
like the American coach and affectionately dub him sled God
(02:33):
in the movie. Later in the story, the coach admits
to his dark history. In an Olympics, following his gold
medal performance, he broke the rules. What he did was
he added some weights to the US sled to make
it go downhill faster, and he got caught, bringing disgrace
(02:58):
on himself and on his team. One of the Jamaican
Bob's letters could not understand why anyone who had already
won a gold medal would cheat, and in the movie
he nervously asks John Candy to explain. And these were
the lines I had to win, he said, But I
(03:21):
learned something. I learned that if you are not happy
without a gold medal, you won't be happy with one either.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Happiness.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
Some wag of an Englishman wrote about us as Americans.
He said, trouble with you Americans is that you have
to be so confoundedly happy all the time. You have
dedicated yourselves to the pursuit of happiness. You boast about
it as an inalienable right, as though happiness were the
supreme and absolute goal of all existence. Surely there are
(03:56):
more important things in life. Than just being happy. But
you know what, he was right. It is an American thing.
Can you believe it? When you stop and think about it.
It's kind of silly, isn't it. Right alongside life and freedom,
we put in our Declaration of Independence the pursuit of happiness.
(04:19):
Americans are endowed with certain inalienable rights, among which our life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness. And some friends I know
have been living in light of the Declaration of Independence
at the highest level. Every day of their life as
Americans is devoted to the pursuit of happiness. And isn't
(04:41):
it strange to watch how they go about it. One
man buys a dozen homes to be happy, and another
man goes out into the wilderness to.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Live as a hermit.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
One woman becomes a nun and another woman becomes a harlot.
One young man thinks happiness is bodybuilding, and another tries
to find it by destroying his body with drugs. One
couple thinks happiness as children, and they have eight of them,
and another is convinced that children will get in the
(05:14):
way of their happiness, and they go childless. Malcolm Muggridge,
in a writing called conversion a spiritual journey wrote these
words about the pursuit of happiness.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
He said, of all.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
The different purposes set before mankind, the most disastrous is
surely the pursuit of happiness. Slipped into the American Declaration
of Independence, along with life and liberty as an inalienable right,
almost accidentally at the last moment. Happiness, he said, is
like a young deer. Fleet and beautiful hunt him, and
(05:52):
he becomes a poor, frantic query after the kill, just
a piece of stinking flesh.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
End of quote. C. S.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
Lewis, in his satire called Screwtape Letters, has the arch
devil Screwtape advising his devil apprentices concerning how they are
to go about deceiving the people.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
And he tells them that the way you do it
is this through an.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
Ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure. That he said,
is the formula of destruction, an ever increasing craving for
an ever diminishing pleasure. What I'd like to call this message,
(06:41):
if I could, is life outside the Amusement Park. And
the reason I chose that title is because of a
parable that I read, for it defines so very sharply
the two concepts of happiness.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
That are known to men today.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
The Parable was written by a girl named Gloria, and
she wrote the parable of herself, but listened to her words.
Many times, I have felt as if I am trapped
on a huge roller coaster that goes up and down
and round and round. Sometimes I manage to escape and
(07:25):
get off the mad ride, but I'm still in the
amusement park. Outside the park, the world looks exciting, but
it's too risky. I'm not sure that I could survive,
So the amusement park remains still the biggest attraction for
everyone is being persuaded to stay inside.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
And to get back on the roller coaster.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
Yet I still think of people in the past who
have gone outside the amusement park. They are the ones
who seem to truly seek for God with all their hearts,
art and mind, and soul and body, and are fully
prepared to give it all up. They are the ones
who live uncompromising lives, who don't feel the grip of money,
the pressure of society, the weakened desire for goodness, the
(08:14):
punctured self discipline, the crushing fear of the future, the
horror of death, the threat of injustice, the need of security,
the rule of self. They don't struggle for faith, hope
and love. Faith, hope and love pour out of them
and through them. It seems from my viewpoint inside the
(08:35):
amusement park that those who live on the outside are
those who are totally free. And I would like to
live out there, she wrote, But I feel the grip
of money, I feel the pressure of society. I am
not strong enough to stand up for what I believe,
partly because I am not even sure what I believe.
(08:57):
My discipline is worthless. Inconsistency myself inspires action to satisfy myself.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
I am not happy.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
I wish I could live an uncompromising life outside the
amusement park. I wish it, and yet I fear it
at the same time, life outside the amusement park.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Neil Postman wrote a book called Amusing.
Speaker 4 (09:22):
Ourselves to Death about the lifestyle of the American people.
And you know, even among Christians, if we're honest, if
we do not really have a vital relationship with the
Lord Jesus Christ, we can spend our lives on the
roller coaster, trying to deaden the pain of an empty life.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
In Matthew, chapter five.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
There is an entire discourse from the lips of Jesus
on happiness. It is in what we call the Sermon
on the Mount, And most folks have said the so
on the Mount is the essence of the Christian faith
and life. And everybody believes that the beatitudes are the
essence of the Sermon on the Mount. So what we're
(10:08):
talking here is the essence of the essence of the
Christian life. The very core, the very center of what
Jesus said was the values of the Kingdom. And in
these eleven verses the word blessed occurs nine different times.
(10:29):
Some modern translators have changed the rendering of the Greek
word makarios from blessed to the word happy. Blessedness has
kind of a richer, deeper, larger spiritual meaning than happiness,
but they come together in this teaching. The word blessed
in the Greek language is the word which means a
(10:54):
blessing that kind of goes along with being a god.
In the beginning of the use of the word, it
was it's never attached to anyone but the gods, the
blessed gods. But then in the New Testament we read
it twice concerning our God. One Timothy one to eleven
says the glorious Gospel of the Blessed God.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Also in Firs.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
Timothy, chapter six and verse fifteen, we read the blessed
and only potentate, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords.
And if you read the Book of Matthew chapter five,
verses one through eleven, you will notice that the little
word are in all of the verses is in italics,
which means that it is not really in the text.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
It is added by the.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
English translator to give fluency to the reading of it. So,
in essence, there is no verb in the beatitudes. If
you were to read it correctly, it would read like this,
Blessed the poor in the spirit, Blessed those who mourn,
Blessed those who hunger and thirst after righteous bushness, Blessed
(12:01):
the merciful, and on through the text. It is an
exclamation of exquisite joy and happiness for those who possess
these qualities. And we remembered, don't we in reading the Psalms,
that once in a while that word jumps out of
the Psalmas's mouth. For instance, do you know palone that
(12:22):
goes like this, Oh, the bliss of the man who
walketh not in the council of the ungodly blessed? Is
the man who walketh not in the council of the
ungodly happy? Blissful, exquisitely happy? Is that man? Or this
one in Psalm thirty two to two, Oh, the bliss
(12:44):
of the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity?
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Can I get a witness to that one? Aren't you
glad that God.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
Doesn't keep the page in his record book that has
all your sins listed on it after you once came
and applied the blood of Jesus Christ to it.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
And the writer of the psalm say, is it this way?
Speaker 4 (13:05):
Oh? The bliss blessedness is the man's who does not
have iniquity applied to his account. So this is the
form of expression that the Lord Jesus used. We call
it the blessings, the be attitudes. Someone has called it
the be happy attitudes, the blessings of true happiness. And
(13:31):
I want to talk with you about them because they
are truly incredibly unique. The greatness of the beatitudes is
not that they are some wistful glimpse of some future day.
They're not golden promises of some glorious future time. They
(13:53):
are shouts of joy and happiness that nothing in the
world can ever take.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
And they're available to us now.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
And Jesus says, if you want to truly be happy,
here's the formula. And we're going to take each of
these one at a time, and we're going to talk
about them the keys to true happiness. In preparation in
doing that, I'd like to take just a few moments
today and share some general thoughts about this section of
(14:22):
scripture that will lay a foundation for our study.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
I have four or five things I want to say.
Speaker 4 (14:28):
First of all, I think this needs to be down
at the very bottom of all of our discussion, and
that is that the pursuit of true happiness is part
of God's purpose for you. He doesn't want you to
pursue it, he wants you to have it.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Now.
Speaker 4 (14:45):
That may seem a little strange, because I know a
lot of folks who aren't really sure Christians are supposed
to be happy, and looking at them, they are an
advertisement for their philosophy. They are convinced that true holiness
produces a dour look that in order for someone to
really be godly he has to look like a reject
(15:06):
from a pickle factory.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
And you know them, don't you. You've run into them.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
The fact that we would laugh in our church would
be greatly offensive to such a person, for they are
absolutely convinced that holiness and unhappiness are synonymous.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
I'm reminded that C. S.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
Lewis one time said a school child was asked what
he thought God was like, and the child answered that,
so far as he could make out, God is the
kind of person who's always snooping around to see if
anyone's enjoying himself, so that he can put a stop
to it. Have you ever known anybody who followed that philosophy?
You know, that's kind of the way a lot of
(15:50):
folks think about God. But you know this Jesus, whose
words we have quoted here today, is the same Jesus
who said I have come that you might have life,
and that you might have it more abundantly. The joy
of the Lord Jesus is the desire he has for
(16:12):
each and every one of us. Whenever I think of
people who like to cast Jesus as a sorrowful, sad
player on the pages of the New Testament, I have
to believe in my heart they're reading some other book
than the one I've been reading. For What do you
(16:32):
do with the winsome Jesus of the New Testament, the
man of Nazareth, who took such great delight in all
the simple pleasures that were around him, who came eating
and drinking so much that his enemy said he was
a glutton and a winebeverer.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Remember that.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
The Jesus, who, in his life, as recorded for us
in the Gospels, enjoyed wholesome activities, who was at home
at a wedding, who enjoyed himself at a banquet, who
was always seemingly the center of the gathering of friends
in anyone's home, who mingled with publicans and sinners, and
(17:16):
attracted little children to him. Now that's a thought, isn't it.
You notice that there are certain kinds of people that
draw children to them, and there are others that scare
them away. Jesus attracted children to his knee. And I
don't think I'm reading too much into the story when
I tell you that he had an awesome sense of humor.
(17:41):
Because of the translation out of that culture into ours,
we may not always see it.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
But do you remember the word.
Speaker 4 (17:46):
Picture that he painted on one occasion, a ludicrous word
picture of a man with a plank hanging out of
his eye, painfully squinting as he tries to remove a
speck of sawdust from the i of his brother. I
tell you, when Jesus told that story, in those days,
there were some people who put their hands over their
(18:07):
mouth and turned their heads so that they could hide
the snicker in the giggle. Jesus got him with his
sense of humor. So when the bloodhounds of a sad
life try to paint Jesus into this morbid picture that
so often we see, even in the portraits that are
(18:27):
made of him, I have to tell you they haven't
read about the Jesus I know who wanted us to
find happiness so much that in the Sermon on the
Mount he devoted all of these verses to tell us
what it means to truly be blessed. So I want
to just go on record today as saying to all
of us, and to remind myself again. I know in
(18:50):
my heart that Jesus Christ wants David Jeremiah to be
a happy man. He wants me to walk with joy
in my spirit and have a smile on my face,
not a silly, superficial kind of ecstatic sentimentalism, but a
deep seated joy that can come only from him. And
(19:12):
he wants you to have that joy too. He wants
you to know that kind of happiness. I was rather shocked,
in preparing for this message, to read a book that
someone had given me on the subject of happiness, written
by a rather well known writer, someone whose name you
would know if I told you, who has taught us
(19:33):
much about the Christian faith, and when in the introduction
to his book he was explaining why he would pick
such a subject in his older years to write on happiness.
His explanation was that looking back on his life, even
as a Christian leader, he had discovered that there were
far too many places where he was profoundly unhappy. And
(19:57):
you know, as I travel and talk with people in
the Evangelical church, and as I meet often with Evangelical
leaders even here in our own community, and as I
examine my own life, that is a statement which is
far too true for many of us. God wants his
people to be a happy people. The Christian life is
(20:18):
a joyous existence, and for us to live in any
other way is to fall beneath the level than God
intended for us.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
All.
Speaker 4 (20:28):
If you don't have a sense of humor, we ought
to put you on the priority prayer list, because without
a sense of humor and without an ability to laugh,
life can.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Be very long, very long.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
Indeed, the second thing I want you to note is
that the pursuit of happiness, according to Jesus' statements, is
a journey inward. It is not an outward thing, as
we so often would purport it to be. Let me
tell you what Jesus said about the truly happy people.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
His list does.
Speaker 4 (21:05):
Not include one single reference to health or wealth, or
work or adequate income or financial security, or home or
love or even friends. Jesus knew that while all of
these things often accompany happiness, they do not ever produce it,
and so listen to his list.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
It so completely.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
Reverses the world's standards. Oh the bliss of the poor,
Oh the bliss of the hungry and the thirsty. Oh
the happiness of the persecuted, Oh the bliss of the sorrowful.
These are such startling contradictions to the world standards that
(21:48):
no man can hear them for the first time without
a sense of shock and amazement. Who is this one
who speaks so strangely about happiness? These attitudes are a
set of paradoxes to the human mind. They I believe
were meant to destroy all the foolish illusions that had
(22:10):
grown up in the minds of the people of Jesus'
day who were looking for a kingdom that to them
meant dominion and prosperity. And Jesus says, let me tell
you about the real kingdom. It is not out there
in dominion and prosperity, is in your heart, in the
attitude of heart. And let me tell you about the
kinds of attitudes which properly understand will bring true joy
(22:33):
and happiness to an individual. I read them, and have
read them over and over again, and I have to
tell you that my words today may have the same
impression on some of you that I'm sure our Lord's
word had on the people of his day. I'm sure
that for some of the people it disgusted them. Have
someone stand in front of them and read this list
(22:56):
and say, at the core of this list is true happiness.
Was like throwing cold water on the hot enthusiasm they
had for material prosperity and kingdom dominion. So I want
you to know that to find true happiness, you won't
get it at that party. Let me tell you they
won't be there. You will find misery there, but you
(23:19):
won't find true happiness.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
And what happens is we think we know what's going
to make us happy. I always think about this when
we're in the super Bowl season. I'm recording this kind
of during that season, and everybody marks this as the
greatest thing ever. And then they get to the super
Bowl and they kind of look at each other the
next day and says that all there is.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
And I remember reading a.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Whole article about guys who win the Super Bowl who
hawk their rings because they find that they either need
money for a drug habit or something, but they don't
really understand the value of what it means to be happy.
I can tell you one thing right now, when in
the super Bowl won't make you happy, nor will the
other exploits that we put out in front of us
(24:03):
as goals for happiness. There's only one way to be happy,
and we're learning about it. In Matthew. Chapter five one
through twelve will come to part two of this first
lesson tomorrow, but be sure you remember to order your
copy of this month's resource, Twelve Habits of Truly Happy Christians.
(24:23):
In this book, we will tell you about the benefits
of developing biblical principles that help you grow in your
spiritual walk. And I hope you will ask for this
when you send your gift to Turning Point today.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Wonderful to be with you, and I.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
Hope you'll join us tomorrow for part two of Lesson
one and how to Be Happy According to Jesus.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
For more information on Doctor Jeremiah series How to Be
Happy ac to Jesus, please visit our website, where we
also offer two freeways to help you stay connected, our
monthly magazine Turning Points and our daily email devotional sign
up today at Davidjeremiah dot org slash radio that's Davidjeremiah
dot org slash Radio, or call us at eight hundred
(25:18):
ninety four seven nineteen ninety three last for your copy
of David's valuable book, Twelve Habits of Truly Happy Christians
with Jesus Prescription for Happiness. It's yours for a gift
of any amount. You can also purchase the Jeremiah Study
Bible in the English Standard, New International and New King
James versions, complete with notes and articles from doctor Jeremiah's
(25:39):
decades of study. Get all the details when you visit
our website David Jeremiah dot org. Slash Radio, This is
David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we continue how
to Be Happy according to Jesus. On Turning Point with
doctor David Jeremiah
Welcome to turning point.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
For some people, life is all about the pursuit of happiness.
Others see happiness as a distraction to living a holy life.
How does Jesus view happiness today? Doctor David Jeremiah begins
a series to answer that question, How to be happy
according to Jesus? Can happiness and holiness coexist? Listen as
(00:28):
David kicks off the series with his message life outside
the Amusement Park.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Well, thank you so much for joining us in this
first Monday of February. We begin a new month together
and a new series together as we talk about how
to be happy according to Jesus. This is a study
of the beatitudes in the fifth chapter of Matthew. And
we have a very special book that goes along with this.
It's brand new. We've never offered this before. It's just
(00:55):
been completed. It's called Twelve Habits of Truly Happy Christians.
This is Jesus' prescription for happiness and these habits are
spelled out and their action portions for.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
You to fill out.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
We would love to make this beautiful little book available
to you during this month for a gift of any
size that's right, for a gift of any size during
the month of February, we'll send you this key companion
book called Twelve Habits of Truly Happy Christians. Do you
want to be a happy Christian, a Christian of joy?
(01:30):
Here's something that will give you a pattern for that
to happen in your life, and I hope you'll take
advantage of it. We need your help, but we want
to put something in your hands that will bring help
to you.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
And add value to your life.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
You can have your copy of Twelve Habits of Truly
Happy Christians by simply requesting it when you send your
gift to Turning Point during the month of February. Today,
we're going to talk about life outside the amusement park,
and we're going to discuss this whole thing about trying
to find happiness and sometimes trying to look in the
wrong places. Matthew, Chapter five one through twelve. This is
(02:06):
Turning Point. I'm David Jeremiah.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
The comedy film Cool Runnings is about the first Jamaican
bobsled team to go to the Olympics. The late John
Candy played a former American gold medallist who became a
coach to the Jamaican team, and the players grow to
like the American coach and affectionately dub him sled God
(02:33):
in the movie. Later in the story, the coach admits
to his dark history. In an Olympics, following his gold
medal performance, he broke the rules. What he did was
he added some weights to the US sled to make
it go downhill faster, and he got caught, bringing disgrace
(02:58):
on himself and on his team. One of the Jamaican
Bob's letters could not understand why anyone who had already
won a gold medal would cheat, and in the movie
he nervously asks John Candy to explain. And these were
the lines I had to win, he said, But I
(03:21):
learned something. I learned that if you are not happy
without a gold medal, you won't be happy with one either.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Happiness.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
Some wag of an Englishman wrote about us as Americans.
He said, trouble with you Americans is that you have
to be so confoundedly happy all the time. You have
dedicated yourselves to the pursuit of happiness. You boast about
it as an inalienable right, as though happiness were the
supreme and absolute goal of all existence. Surely there are
(03:56):
more important things in life. Than just being happy. But
you know what, he was right. It is an American thing.
Can you believe it? When you stop and think about it.
It's kind of silly, isn't it. Right alongside life and freedom,
we put in our Declaration of Independence the pursuit of happiness.
(04:19):
Americans are endowed with certain inalienable rights, among which our life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness. And some friends I know
have been living in light of the Declaration of Independence
at the highest level. Every day of their life as
Americans is devoted to the pursuit of happiness. And isn't
(04:41):
it strange to watch how they go about it. One
man buys a dozen homes to be happy, and another
man goes out into the wilderness to.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Live as a hermit.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
One woman becomes a nun and another woman becomes a harlot.
One young man thinks happiness is bodybuilding, and another tries
to find it by destroying his body with drugs. One
couple thinks happiness as children, and they have eight of them,
and another is convinced that children will get in the
(05:14):
way of their happiness, and they go childless. Malcolm Muggridge,
in a writing called conversion a spiritual journey wrote these
words about the pursuit of happiness.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
He said, of all.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
The different purposes set before mankind, the most disastrous is
surely the pursuit of happiness. Slipped into the American Declaration
of Independence, along with life and liberty as an inalienable right,
almost accidentally at the last moment. Happiness, he said, is
like a young deer. Fleet and beautiful hunt him, and
(05:52):
he becomes a poor, frantic query after the kill, just
a piece of stinking flesh.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
End of quote. C. S.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
Lewis, in his satire called Screwtape Letters, has the arch
devil Screwtape advising his devil apprentices concerning how they are
to go about deceiving the people.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
And he tells them that the way you do it
is this through an.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
Ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure. That he said,
is the formula of destruction, an ever increasing craving for
an ever diminishing pleasure. What I'd like to call this message,
(06:41):
if I could, is life outside the Amusement Park. And
the reason I chose that title is because of a
parable that I read, for it defines so very sharply
the two concepts of happiness.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
That are known to men today.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
The Parable was written by a girl named Gloria, and
she wrote the parable of herself, but listened to her words.
Many times, I have felt as if I am trapped
on a huge roller coaster that goes up and down
and round and round. Sometimes I manage to escape and
(07:25):
get off the mad ride, but I'm still in the
amusement park. Outside the park, the world looks exciting, but
it's too risky. I'm not sure that I could survive,
So the amusement park remains still the biggest attraction for
everyone is being persuaded to stay inside.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
And to get back on the roller coaster.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
Yet I still think of people in the past who
have gone outside the amusement park. They are the ones
who seem to truly seek for God with all their hearts,
art and mind, and soul and body, and are fully
prepared to give it all up. They are the ones
who live uncompromising lives, who don't feel the grip of money,
the pressure of society, the weakened desire for goodness, the
(08:14):
punctured self discipline, the crushing fear of the future, the
horror of death, the threat of injustice, the need of security,
the rule of self. They don't struggle for faith, hope
and love. Faith, hope and love pour out of them
and through them. It seems from my viewpoint inside the
(08:35):
amusement park that those who live on the outside are
those who are totally free. And I would like to
live out there, she wrote, But I feel the grip
of money, I feel the pressure of society. I am
not strong enough to stand up for what I believe,
partly because I am not even sure what I believe.
(08:57):
My discipline is worthless. Inconsistency myself inspires action to satisfy myself.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
I am not happy.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
I wish I could live an uncompromising life outside the
amusement park. I wish it, and yet I fear it
at the same time, life outside the amusement park.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Neil Postman wrote a book called Amusing.
Speaker 4 (09:22):
Ourselves to Death about the lifestyle of the American people.
And you know, even among Christians, if we're honest, if
we do not really have a vital relationship with the
Lord Jesus Christ, we can spend our lives on the
roller coaster, trying to deaden the pain of an empty life.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
In Matthew, chapter five.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
There is an entire discourse from the lips of Jesus
on happiness. It is in what we call the Sermon
on the Mount, And most folks have said the so
on the Mount is the essence of the Christian faith
and life. And everybody believes that the beatitudes are the
essence of the Sermon on the Mount. So what we're
(10:08):
talking here is the essence of the essence of the
Christian life. The very core, the very center of what
Jesus said was the values of the Kingdom. And in
these eleven verses the word blessed occurs nine different times.
(10:29):
Some modern translators have changed the rendering of the Greek
word makarios from blessed to the word happy. Blessedness has
kind of a richer, deeper, larger spiritual meaning than happiness,
but they come together in this teaching. The word blessed
in the Greek language is the word which means a
(10:54):
blessing that kind of goes along with being a god.
In the beginning of the use of the word, it
was it's never attached to anyone but the gods, the
blessed gods. But then in the New Testament we read
it twice concerning our God. One Timothy one to eleven
says the glorious Gospel of the Blessed God.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Also in Firs.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
Timothy, chapter six and verse fifteen, we read the blessed
and only potentate, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords.
And if you read the Book of Matthew chapter five,
verses one through eleven, you will notice that the little
word are in all of the verses is in italics,
which means that it is not really in the text.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
It is added by the.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
English translator to give fluency to the reading of it. So,
in essence, there is no verb in the beatitudes. If
you were to read it correctly, it would read like this,
Blessed the poor in the spirit, Blessed those who mourn,
Blessed those who hunger and thirst after righteous bushness, Blessed
(12:01):
the merciful, and on through the text. It is an
exclamation of exquisite joy and happiness for those who possess
these qualities. And we remembered, don't we in reading the Psalms,
that once in a while that word jumps out of
the Psalmas's mouth. For instance, do you know palone that
(12:22):
goes like this, Oh, the bliss of the man who
walketh not in the council of the ungodly blessed? Is
the man who walketh not in the council of the
ungodly happy? Blissful, exquisitely happy? Is that man? Or this
one in Psalm thirty two to two, Oh, the bliss
(12:44):
of the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity?
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Can I get a witness to that one? Aren't you
glad that God.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
Doesn't keep the page in his record book that has
all your sins listed on it after you once came
and applied the blood of Jesus Christ to it.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
And the writer of the psalm say, is it this way?
Speaker 4 (13:05):
Oh? The bliss blessedness is the man's who does not
have iniquity applied to his account. So this is the
form of expression that the Lord Jesus used. We call
it the blessings, the be attitudes. Someone has called it
the be happy attitudes, the blessings of true happiness. And
(13:31):
I want to talk with you about them because they
are truly incredibly unique. The greatness of the beatitudes is
not that they are some wistful glimpse of some future day.
They're not golden promises of some glorious future time. They
(13:53):
are shouts of joy and happiness that nothing in the
world can ever take.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
And they're available to us now.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
And Jesus says, if you want to truly be happy,
here's the formula. And we're going to take each of
these one at a time, and we're going to talk
about them the keys to true happiness. In preparation in
doing that, I'd like to take just a few moments
today and share some general thoughts about this section of
(14:22):
scripture that will lay a foundation for our study.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
I have four or five things I want to say.
Speaker 4 (14:28):
First of all, I think this needs to be down
at the very bottom of all of our discussion, and
that is that the pursuit of true happiness is part
of God's purpose for you. He doesn't want you to
pursue it, he wants you to have it.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Now.
Speaker 4 (14:45):
That may seem a little strange, because I know a
lot of folks who aren't really sure Christians are supposed
to be happy, and looking at them, they are an
advertisement for their philosophy. They are convinced that true holiness
produces a dour look that in order for someone to
really be godly he has to look like a reject
(15:06):
from a pickle factory.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
And you know them, don't you. You've run into them.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
The fact that we would laugh in our church would
be greatly offensive to such a person, for they are
absolutely convinced that holiness and unhappiness are synonymous.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
I'm reminded that C. S.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
Lewis one time said a school child was asked what
he thought God was like, and the child answered that,
so far as he could make out, God is the
kind of person who's always snooping around to see if
anyone's enjoying himself, so that he can put a stop
to it. Have you ever known anybody who followed that philosophy?
You know, that's kind of the way a lot of
(15:50):
folks think about God. But you know this Jesus, whose
words we have quoted here today, is the same Jesus
who said I have come that you might have life,
and that you might have it more abundantly. The joy
of the Lord Jesus is the desire he has for
(16:12):
each and every one of us. Whenever I think of
people who like to cast Jesus as a sorrowful, sad
player on the pages of the New Testament, I have
to believe in my heart they're reading some other book
than the one I've been reading. For What do you
(16:32):
do with the winsome Jesus of the New Testament, the
man of Nazareth, who took such great delight in all
the simple pleasures that were around him, who came eating
and drinking so much that his enemy said he was
a glutton and a winebeverer.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Remember that.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
The Jesus, who, in his life, as recorded for us
in the Gospels, enjoyed wholesome activities, who was at home
at a wedding, who enjoyed himself at a banquet, who
was always seemingly the center of the gathering of friends
in anyone's home, who mingled with publicans and sinners, and
(17:16):
attracted little children to him. Now that's a thought, isn't it.
You notice that there are certain kinds of people that
draw children to them, and there are others that scare
them away. Jesus attracted children to his knee. And I
don't think I'm reading too much into the story when
I tell you that he had an awesome sense of humor.
(17:41):
Because of the translation out of that culture into ours,
we may not always see it.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
But do you remember the word.
Speaker 4 (17:46):
Picture that he painted on one occasion, a ludicrous word
picture of a man with a plank hanging out of
his eye, painfully squinting as he tries to remove a
speck of sawdust from the i of his brother. I
tell you, when Jesus told that story, in those days,
there were some people who put their hands over their
(18:07):
mouth and turned their heads so that they could hide
the snicker in the giggle. Jesus got him with his
sense of humor. So when the bloodhounds of a sad
life try to paint Jesus into this morbid picture that
so often we see, even in the portraits that are
(18:27):
made of him, I have to tell you they haven't
read about the Jesus I know who wanted us to
find happiness so much that in the Sermon on the
Mount he devoted all of these verses to tell us
what it means to truly be blessed. So I want
to just go on record today as saying to all
of us, and to remind myself again. I know in
(18:50):
my heart that Jesus Christ wants David Jeremiah to be
a happy man. He wants me to walk with joy
in my spirit and have a smile on my face,
not a silly, superficial kind of ecstatic sentimentalism, but a
deep seated joy that can come only from him. And
(19:12):
he wants you to have that joy too. He wants
you to know that kind of happiness. I was rather shocked,
in preparing for this message, to read a book that
someone had given me on the subject of happiness, written
by a rather well known writer, someone whose name you
would know if I told you, who has taught us
(19:33):
much about the Christian faith, and when in the introduction
to his book he was explaining why he would pick
such a subject in his older years to write on happiness.
His explanation was that looking back on his life, even
as a Christian leader, he had discovered that there were
far too many places where he was profoundly unhappy. And
(19:57):
you know, as I travel and talk with people in
the Evangelical church, and as I meet often with Evangelical
leaders even here in our own community, and as I
examine my own life, that is a statement which is
far too true for many of us. God wants his
people to be a happy people. The Christian life is
(20:18):
a joyous existence, and for us to live in any
other way is to fall beneath the level than God
intended for us.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
All.
Speaker 4 (20:28):
If you don't have a sense of humor, we ought
to put you on the priority prayer list, because without
a sense of humor and without an ability to laugh,
life can.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Be very long, very long.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
Indeed, the second thing I want you to note is
that the pursuit of happiness, according to Jesus' statements, is
a journey inward. It is not an outward thing, as
we so often would purport it to be. Let me
tell you what Jesus said about the truly happy people.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
His list does.
Speaker 4 (21:05):
Not include one single reference to health or wealth, or
work or adequate income or financial security, or home or
love or even friends. Jesus knew that while all of
these things often accompany happiness, they do not ever produce it,
and so listen to his list.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
It so completely.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
Reverses the world's standards. Oh the bliss of the poor,
Oh the bliss of the hungry and the thirsty. Oh
the happiness of the persecuted, Oh the bliss of the sorrowful.
These are such startling contradictions to the world standards that
(21:48):
no man can hear them for the first time without
a sense of shock and amazement. Who is this one
who speaks so strangely about happiness? These attitudes are a
set of paradoxes to the human mind. They I believe
were meant to destroy all the foolish illusions that had
(22:10):
grown up in the minds of the people of Jesus'
day who were looking for a kingdom that to them
meant dominion and prosperity. And Jesus says, let me tell
you about the real kingdom. It is not out there
in dominion and prosperity, is in your heart, in the
attitude of heart. And let me tell you about the
kinds of attitudes which properly understand will bring true joy
(22:33):
and happiness to an individual. I read them, and have
read them over and over again, and I have to
tell you that my words today may have the same
impression on some of you that I'm sure our Lord's
word had on the people of his day. I'm sure
that for some of the people it disgusted them. Have
someone stand in front of them and read this list
(22:56):
and say, at the core of this list is true happiness.
Was like throwing cold water on the hot enthusiasm they
had for material prosperity and kingdom dominion. So I want
you to know that to find true happiness, you won't
get it at that party. Let me tell you they
won't be there. You will find misery there, but you
(23:19):
won't find true happiness.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
And what happens is we think we know what's going
to make us happy. I always think about this when
we're in the super Bowl season. I'm recording this kind
of during that season, and everybody marks this as the
greatest thing ever. And then they get to the super
Bowl and they kind of look at each other the
next day and says that all there is.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
And I remember reading a.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Whole article about guys who win the Super Bowl who
hawk their rings because they find that they either need
money for a drug habit or something, but they don't
really understand the value of what it means to be happy.
I can tell you one thing right now, when in
the super Bowl won't make you happy, nor will the
other exploits that we put out in front of us
(24:03):
as goals for happiness. There's only one way to be happy,
and we're learning about it. In Matthew. Chapter five one
through twelve will come to part two of this first
lesson tomorrow, but be sure you remember to order your
copy of this month's resource, Twelve Habits of Truly Happy Christians.
(24:23):
In this book, we will tell you about the benefits
of developing biblical principles that help you grow in your
spiritual walk. And I hope you will ask for this
when you send your gift to Turning Point today.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Wonderful to be with you, and I.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
Hope you'll join us tomorrow for part two of Lesson
one and how to Be Happy According to Jesus.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
For more information on Doctor Jeremiah series How to Be
Happy ac to Jesus, please visit our website, where we
also offer two freeways to help you stay connected, our
monthly magazine Turning Points and our daily email devotional sign
up today at Davidjeremiah dot org slash radio that's Davidjeremiah
dot org slash Radio, or call us at eight hundred
(25:18):
ninety four seven nineteen ninety three last for your copy
of David's valuable book, Twelve Habits of Truly Happy Christians
with Jesus Prescription for Happiness. It's yours for a gift
of any amount. You can also purchase the Jeremiah Study
Bible in the English Standard, New International and New King
James versions, complete with notes and articles from doctor Jeremiah's
(25:39):
decades of study. Get all the details when you visit
our website David Jeremiah dot org. Slash Radio, This is
David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we continue how
to Be Happy according to Jesus. On Turning Point with
doctor David Jeremiah
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