How Can I Be Happy?
PSALM ONE
In this lesson we will learn how righteousness leads to happiness.
OVERVIEW
Everybody today wants to be happy. The songwriter says, “Don’t worry, be happy,” as if we could in some cavalier way make it happen for us. People in our culture have an incredible thirst for happiness. They will try almost anything to find it and incorporate it into their lives. But it should be evident to us that if lasting happiness could be found in having material things and being able to indulge ourselves in whatever we wanted, then most of us in America should be delirious with joy and happy beyond description. We should be producing books and poems and art that describe our unparalleled bliss.
Instead, American books and movies say to the whole world, “We’ve been searching for it, but we just haven’t been able to find it.” The search for happiness, for many, has become a journey on a dead end street.
How do we find happiness? Psalm 1 is about two roads, one that leads to God and one that leads away from God. And the way of the righteous is the way toward happiness.
The Downward Pull of Evil
In order for us to understand what it means to be happy, the psalmist makes a checklist of the things people do to try and be happy. Then he says that happiness does not come from any of these things. The happy person is the one who avoids the downward pull of evil. The gravitational pull of evil is like a vortex that, once it catches us, pulls us down. Happiness is not getting caught in it.
The Momentum of Influence
We often talk about momentum—how important it is in sports, in projects, in life. But evil has momentum too. The psalmist illustrates this momentum by listing what the righteous person does not do.
“Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly” (v. 1). The counsel of the ungodly is nothing less than the philosophy of the natural man who seeks to understand his existence and his control without regard to God. To be ungodly doesn’t mean to be a murderer or rapist or bank robber, although it may include those things. To be ungodly means simply to live your life without God. It may not sound as bad as you thought, but in essence it’s the root problem of everything.
The Bible shows that the counsel of the ungodly is the beginning place in the downward spiral. The philosophy of the ungodly is that the best way to deal with seeking the key answers to life is to do it outside of God. The innuendos and subtleties of such counsel without God begins to have an impact. That information is then translated into action. Instead of watching from a distance, you start to walk along behind. You start to ask questions and investigate. The counsel now becomes something that’s captivated you and you want to know more about it. Then finally you come sit down. That is a picture of not only being a practitioner, but settling into the embracing of this philosophy of life—a comfortable lifestyle of ungodliness.
It starts by listening to the counsel, falling into the pattern, and then settling into the lifestyle.
The Momentum of Involvement
The influence of the godless counsel translates into involvement. First you walk, then you stand, then you sit (see v. 1). Someone has described the walk as a reference to those things we decide on a daily basis. The standing is a reference to the making of a commitment. The sitting is a settled attitude of lifestyle. First we make little decisions that are minus God. Then we make commitments that cement those decisions. And then finally we settle into the lifestyle of a life without God.
A lot of people tell me they’ve come back to God after having gotten into that. They wake up one day and say, “My goodness, twenty years ago we used to never miss church.” But they made a little decision. Then out of that decision came a little commitment. Suddenly they found themselves in a lifestyle without God. That’s the downward pull of evil.
The Momentum of Intensity
The psalmist lists three types of unrighteous people in order of intensity. He begins with the ungodly. That person is passive about spiritual things. He doesn’t have time for spiritual things, but he doesn’t mind if someone else does.
The next type is the sinner. The Hebrew word for sinner is a word which means to make a loud noise or to cause a tumult or to make trouble. It’s like saying a sinner is a party animal. He’s like the ungodly, not into God, but he also gets caught up in a worldly lifestyle.
The third type is the scornful. He’s not influenced anymore by the people outside. He has become the influencer. He’s moved from being passive about God, to practicing anti-God things, to being scornful about God. He curls his lip at God. He has fallen into the downward pull of evil.
How does a person stay away from the gravitational pull of sin? Somewhere between the counsel and the path and the seat, between walking and standing and sitting, from ungodly and sinning and scornful, you’ll get a wake-up call from the Holy Spirit. You will feel uncomfortable. When you get that wake-up call, you’ve scooted over the edge and you’re about to get caught in the downdraft. When that happens, you had better move away because you are not headed toward happiness—you’re headed toward misery.
Hearts Delighting in the Word of God
The righteous person takes his delight “in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night” (v. 2). Do you know how a lot of Christians read their Bible? They read it to find out how far they can go before they cross the line. They don’t read it to find out what God wants them to do. They read it to find out what God will let them do or what they can do without getting into a whole lot of trouble.
The person who delights in the law of God is the total opposite of that. He comes to the Bible with an incredible desire in his heart to please God. That’s how you delight in God’s Word. Because if you come to God’s Word with that spirit, you’ll find little nuggets everywhere. God loves to show His children how they can please Him.
Habits Dictated by the Word of God
When you delight in the Word of God, it will determine that your habits are dictated by the Word of God. Why? Because if you’re asking everyday how you can please God, He will show you and it will translate into life. The psalmist gives some clues as to what that will mean.
First of all, your strength comes from God’s Word. The psalmist says the righteous person is like a tree planted by streams of water. Just like a tree is nourished by the constant supply 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.
Second, your stability comes from God’s Word. A fruit tree that is planted by the banks of the river suggests stability. The tree is firmly rooted in the soil so that it can resist the storm. There are trees standing today that were here when this country was discovered. If you go to the right place you can see trees that are just as magnificent and beautiful as they were in their prime. Why? Because they’ve got a tremendous root structure and they are strong. If you’ve ever seen a redwood, a tree so big that you can drive your car through the middle of it, then you know what invincible means. That’s the kind of stability God wants His people to have. And when you put your roots deep down into His Word, you will become a person of great stability.
Third, your spontaneity comes from God’s Word. There’s a phrase in verse three that says, “whose leaf also shall not wither.” The leaf is the outward testimony of the tree. The leaf shows you what kind of a tree it is. The testimony of the Christian who is deeply rooted in God’s Word will not wither. It will be a vibrant, beautiful testimony of who God is. Someone has written that all God’s trees, Christians, are evergreens. Their testimony does not fall off.
There is a lot of talk these days about the testimony of the believer. How people we thought were great Christians withered under the pressure of temptation, under the pressure of sexuality, under the pressure of finances. But if this person withered, he wasn’t rightly connected. The leaf is the outward testimony of the life that’s in the person, and if you’re rightly connected, your roots go down deeply into the Word of God. You are drawing energy from your time with God. You will not wither.
So if withering happens, it’s not the withering that was the important thing—it was the unconnecting someplace that caused the withering to happen.
Finally, your success comes from God’s Word. The righteous person is like a tree that “brings forth its fruit in its season … and whatever he does shall prosper” (v. 3). You want to be prosperous and successful? Get your spiritual roots down deep into the Word of God. That doesn’t mean you will become wealthy. The Bible has a different definition of what it means to be successful than our culture does. Someone has said that prosperity and success for the believer is like a zero. When you put a one in front of it, it becomes a ten. Add on zeros, and it can become a thousand. But unless you put the One, God Himself, at the front of it, it means nothing.
The Ungodly Are Not So
Take everything that we’ve said about the righteous person and negate it, and that is the ungodly person. That’s what the psalmist means when he says, “The ungodly are not so” (v. 4). Then he adds some more about the ungodly.
The ungodly cannot stand in the time of difficulty. The psalmist says the ungodly are like “the chaff which the wind drives away.” It’s worthless, you can’t collect it, you can’t use it. Get these two pictures in your mind: The tree planted by the river; the chaff which the wind blows away. Could anything more graphically describe the difference in lifestyle between a person who’s firmly rooted in the Word of God and a person who is captured by the fantasies of the day and just floats around on any wind that happens to blow? The ungodly can’t stand in the time of trouble because there’s no stability.
The ungodly cannot stand in the day of judgment. When believers come before the Lord in judgment, they can look into the face of their Lord because they know it’s okay. God has taken care of everything. The sin problem is over. Believers are accepted in the Beloved and can stand before God with confidence. But when the psalm says, “The ungodly shall not stand in the judgment,” (v. 5) it means in the Hebrew that an ungodly person can only bow his head in the presence of God. He can’t lift his head to look at God.
The ungodly cannot stand in the congregation of the righteous. The ungodly live today in a world where there are still many righteous people whom God calls the salt of the earth. God is not going to allow both classes of people to live together forever. Someday the ungodly are going to be separated forever from any righteous influence. That means going through eternity with the wicked and never hearing a righteous word, never witnessing a righteous act, forever and ever. I don’t have to describe hell. If there were no more to it than that, that would be enough.
Charles Hadden Spurgeon wrote, “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. 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.” Happy is the one who trusts in God.
APPLICATION
1. Read Psalm 1:1. The word “blessed” in the Hebrew is in the plural form. Possibly the best translation of this first phrase into the English is “How awesome are the happinesses of this man.”
Read the following verses for other instructions on happiness:
Psalm 32:1–2
Psalm 33:12
Psalm 40:4
Psalm 41:1–2
Psalm 84:4–5, 12
Matthew 5:3–12.
Looking back on your life, how have you tried to attain happiness? What has made you happy?
Have you ever been surprised into happiness—has something made you happy that you didn’t expect?
Do you feel that you have a better understanding of happiness than when you were a child, or did you have a better understanding as a child?
How would you describe happiness?
Can you pinpoint a particularly happy event in your life? Did you recognize the happiness at that time, or did you not realize the full happiness until later?
3. Have you ever experienced the downward pull of evil? If you have, describe the circumstances.What are some examples of little decisions that make a big impact on your life with God?
Read 1 Thessalonians 5:21–22. Why do you think some people skate close to the edge of compromise? How are you doing in this area?
Read Isaiah 59:1–15. Make a list of the results of sin in a person’s life.
4. Do you have a loud automatic sin alarm? Do you feel uncomfortable when you are at a place in your life that is not where you should be?
What is the positive side to the feeling of guilt?
Read the following verses:
Genesis 3:7–8
Luke 5:4–8
John 8:3–9
Acts 2:36–38
What different examples of reactions to feelings of guilt are given in these passages?
5. According to the definition in this chapter, do you delight in the Word of God? Do you read it to find out what God wants you to do, or to find out what you can do without getting into a lot of trouble?
If you do the latter, how can you change your reading habits around so that you can delight in the Word?
Do your roots go down deeply into the Word of God? Is the leaf of your testimony rightly connected? Or is it withering?
DID YOU KNOW?
There really is a street called Easy Street. It is in Honolulu, Hawaii. If you take the Pali Highway Northbound, travel about a third of the way to Pali Pass, turn right on Park street and go one block, there you will see it. Easy Street. The problem comes when you turn left onto Easy Street and go one block more. There is a sign that says “dead end.” Easy Street is a dead end in Honolulu, Hawaii.
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