The Christian’s Pursuit of Happiness

0:10 I'd like to read the first psalm, Psalm 1. It goes as follows, Blessed is the man—the word that's used there for man is like man, generically man. So, blessed is the man or the woman who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. But their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He's like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

1:06 For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish." In the mail that came most recently during the past week, part of it was a letter that was accompanied by a book, a book that I had never seen, an older book. It was written by Alexander White, who lived in the 19th century into the 20th century. He was the minister of Free St. George's in Edinburgh, and for 40 years or so, he went there as an assistant to a man called Candledge, and eventually he became the senior minister. Anyway, amongst his writings, apparently, he wrote this book about a fellow called Thomas Shepherd, of whom I'd never heard, who he describes as Pilgrim Father and Founder of Harvard College. So that intrigued me and I had a little difficult actually figuring out who was writing and who was saying what. But I finally figured out that it was Alexander White that was describing these things and recounting aspects of his own ministry. And the part that intrigued me because I went to a chapter, I looked at all the chapters, and one of them, the chapter was The Thought of My Death. And I thought, well, I want to start with that one.

2:38 And as I read it, he describes going, being asked by his boss, that's the Reverend Candledge, to go and visit a gentleman on his deathbed. And he said, and when I got into the room, and I discovered the man was close to death, I discovered that on his pulpit lay a copy, not of Pilgrim's Progress, actually not even of the Bible, but of the Westminster Confession of Faith. And it was opened to the chapter on justification. And the dying man said to Alexander, he said, I am dying on that gospel chapter. In other words, I'm dying in faith, in what God has done for us, as described in the Bible, and then it's recorded in that. He then says that he went on later in the week to another deathbed, and there was neither a Bible nor any of the above books in all the room. And when I asked for a Bible, one was at last rummaged up at the bottom of a drawer full of family rubbish, cast-off clothes, and such like. And then this is what he says, Show me your most favorite books, and those nearest your table and your bed, and from them I will read your prospects when you come to die. Now, I don't know about you, but I have a constant battle with Susan, who kept saying, can we not move some of these books? After all, you can only read one at a time.

4:19 But when I read that, I said, well, I've got to go and look at, you know, what is there. And I think I got about a 50% out of it, but he wasn't checking anyway. But he said, I will read your prospects when you come to die. And then he goes on to say to his congregation, and often read in your Bible. Very few people ever open their Bible unless it is to find the text in church. I never all my life came on a man or a woman with their Bible open upon their tea table, but the one who is concerned to walk with God. So that got me thinking, and then it got me thinking about the psalmist and how much the psalmist has to say about the place of the Word of God in the life of the people of God. And of course, all of the Psalms are replete with that. Psalm 119, of course, the Psalmist talks again and again about the word of God being a lamp to our feet, a light to our path, and so on. But I thought, well, let's just look at what it says here in the opening Psalm. It's a series of contrasts, but the beginning is actually very straightforward.

5:34 word. Blessed is the man, or blessed is the man or woman. Or we can translate it, how happy is the person who? Who what? Well, the contrast is between the negative and the positive. The person who, in negative terms, has learned how important it is to say no. Or, if you like, has decided how important it is to make sure that when we compile our plans for reading, that we do not allow ourselves to succumb to the process which is described here. The person doesn't walk in the counsel of the wicked. Well, where's the counsel of the wicked? Well, in interpersonal conversation. Does that mean that the person doesn't engage with the wicked at all? No, you'd have to live in a box in order to do that. But the notion is that we sort of drift along with the flow of contemporary thought, a worldview that is framed by something different. There's no blessing in that, he said. You don't walk there or take your stand there. It's actually a spiral. It's a downward spiral, first of all, sort of drifting in it, then beginning to find that we're taking a stand on some of these things. You find people who once were very clear about certain truths in the Bible, and now they've become vague. What happened to them along the way? Well, part of it is what they read, who they listened to, and who they hung with. And it became easier and easier with time to begin to actually take a stand, or finally to become immovable and to sit down and say, I'm not going to budge from this position. There's no delight in that, he says.

7:31 That's not the person that is being described in this process that goes all the way through the Psalms. In contrast, his delight is in the law of the Lord. Delight. Delight is a good word, isn't it? I delight in you. I delight in this. I delight in the food you gave me yesterday. whatever it might be, and particularly in terms of writing, if you love books, then you will know that there are certain passages that you just absolutely liked, and you annoy people around you by wanting to read them out loud, and they tolerate you for so long, and then they just ask you to stop. Or if you think about it in terms of something that your children have provided for you along the way, It's the kind of thing that you say, oh, I want to keep that, and I'm going to enjoy looking at that again.

8:29 In my life, of course, as you know, autobiographically, I delighted in the letters that I got from this girl called Susan Jones. When they arrived in the mailbox, I didn't just grab them and read them. I kept them with me, and often I would read them quite a number of times because I delighted to hear what she had to say. That's the picture in terms of the psalmist here. This is where he finds his delight. It's not wearisome to him to read as we tried to read today through Judges 19 or Jeremiah 30 and 31 or the 16th chapter of Mark where the ending that nobody knows whether it's in or whether it's out. That's not drudgery, actually. That's a delight because God speaks to us in his Word. I guess all I'm putting a plea in for today, to anyone who's listening to this, make sure that if you are in Christ, make sure that you're in the Bible. I brought in my copy of Shakespeare's Hamlet here. It's virtually illegible because it's so small. But if you're gonna take a part, if you're gonna play Hamlet, you better know it. And if you're gonna know it, you're gonna have to learn it. And if you learn it, you're gonna have to memorize it. Because you cannot get up on the stage and just wing it. When we think about the place of the Bible and the place of memorization in the 21st century, you're really pushing up against the milieu of the age, where children by and large are taught that the memorization of things may actually prove to be harmful to them rather than helpful, partly because we want to develop the notion that we can view things in our own way, we can visualize them in our own way, we can express them in our own way, as if no one before us could ever possibly have done a better job.

10:34 job. The navigators in the twentieth century in America mastered for us all the importance of memorization. And I can well remember being with young guys who said, you know, if you just take business cards, just get a small box of business cards, and every day or every couple of days, write a verse on the back of the card and write the Bible reference on the front of the card. And as you go through your day every so often, test yourself. Do I know what the 33rd verse of Matthew 6 is? Well, probably not, unless I have learned it and memorized it. Not only in the memorization, but in the meditation. Meditation is an important art, depending that upon which we've decided to meditate. We can meditate upon—actually, it's not to meditate, but it's to ruminate on bad things or poor things or whatever it might be.

11:42 I find it interesting, because I just checked it, that the root word in Hebrew for meditation is a word which means to mutter or to mumble. To mumble. And in my experience, if somebody would say to me, well, what are you muttering about? Or what are you mumbling about? It is a question that has the expectation that whatever it is we're mumbling about is something that we shouldn't be mongling about. But then when you think about it in earlier years, and I mean, before the translation of the Scriptures into the common tongue, nobody had Bibles. The only aspect, the only appreciation they had was as a result of the Bible being read. If you go further back, the people that are being described in the Old Testament only had five books of the Bible. We've got not only Bibles but commentaries and every translation known unto man. I wonder if we could bring people back, and we went head to head, you know, like in a spelling bee, on Bible memorization with people from the early centuries, even the early church, and ourselves, who have so much more.

13:08 I think we'd be humbled to discover that they know far more of the Bible than we do, despite not having the access that we have. The bottom line, I suppose, is that the blessing of God, or the happiness that God intends for us, actually comes through the constant application of God's Word to our lives. There is no way in the world that a congregation that is made up the largest percentage of whom come to church, listen as best they can for however many minutes they can manage, and walk away, will ever actually be of significant impact to the surrounding community, only as God's Word dwells in our hearts. If I were making an application of this to young people, I would say, you know, this extends certainly to literature and certainly to lyrics. And as someone who has found lyrics easy to come by through all of my life, whether they're hymn lyrics or rock and roll lyrics or whatever they might be, you say, well, you must have a lot of real garbage flowing around in your head.

14:42 Well, that was nice of you to suggest. But I have tried, I've tried to keep in the forefront of my mind what Paul says to the Philippians in chapter 4. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever it is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there's any excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise, think about these things. So you can come up to me and say, so what have you been mumbling about lately? Happiness. Apparently, it's an inalienable, an unalienable. Is it unalienable?

15:37 I beg your pardon? Inalienable? Now we've got a debate. Anyway, it is apparently part of our deal as those who march under the Declaration of Independence. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. How happy is 21st century America? Well, if they walk in the counsel of the wicked, if they stand in the way of sinners, if they sit in the seat of the scoffers, they need to know that true happiness is found in God's Word because it introduces us to God's Son. Father, thank you. Thank you that no matter how long we go on in the Christian pilgrimage, basic essential truths are there for us not to neglect but to cultivate and encourage others in.

16:50 We're grateful, some of us, for those who taught us to sing, read your Bible, pray every day, and you'll grow, grow, grow. Lord, help us in this, because it's easy—I find it easy—to turn far too quickly to the counsel of the ungodly, rather than to find my delight in your Word. Teach us, then, to start each day, to set the trajectory of our day off by considering the wonder of your love for us as you have given to us your word, a story of salvation, a story of grace, a story of peace, a story of joy. Help us in these things and help us to encourage others in these things and help us at Truth for Life, particularly as we engage in the matters that are centered in the truth and the life that is found in Jesus who is in the truth.

17:49 help us not to deviate from course, but to keep our eyes on Christ, the author, the finisher of our faith, and the one in whose name we pray.