with every fleeting breath, and
may the music of thy name refresh my soul in death. Well it's a joy for my wife and
I, Nicola and I, to come amongst you today and we always have
thankfulness to God in our heart when we think of you and we trust
that our time together will be blessed of him as we look into
his word today. I do bring the greetings of the
church at Bordock to you all and I know they will have been
praying for us. So I'd like this morning to turn
to the 32nd Psalm and look with you what the Bible teaches about true happiness. It's one of the most fundamental
questions that the Bible answers in the clearest and most glorious
way that you can ever imagine. How can we be happy? And where
is happiness to be found? And we see it in this word blessed
here. It has a far more richer meaning
than our word happy. It means to be flourishing, to
be healed, to be full, to be blessed, is far greater. And so we read here in verses
one and two, blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose
sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom
the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is
no guile, no pretense, no falsehood. And so men are seeking on every hand
happiness. And I think it's in the American
Constitution. Is it life, health, and happiness? This is the inalienable rights,
they say, of every man, every woman, every boy, and every girl. And so wherever you go in the
world, people want to be happy. And yet, they are not looking. Millions, billions are not looking. the right place but rather in
the wrong direction. And the first thing that we can
speak about when we think about happiness is some of those wrong
directions. If you go on Instagram or social
media constantly popping up in the feed will be little quotes
of various philosophers from the past or various people from
the present with their idea of happiness. And yet, of course,
they fail. The first one we learn even in
the Bible is of a man called Epicurus. He was in Acts chapter
17. Paul came across some of his
followers What did they believe? Well, they believed that happiness
was found by maximizing pleasure, having as much fun, getting as
much pleasure as you can. They saw life really just on
a scale. On the one side there's pain
and suffering. And on the other side, pleasure.
And they said, you want to get as much pleasure, much luxury,
that will be happiness for you. That was the philosophy of that
man, Epicurus. Then there was another one in
the Bible we read of, the Stoics. Paul came across those as well
in the same chapter. What did they teach? They said
the way to be happy is when problems come along you just suppress
your emotions you try to ignore the problem you try to endure
it that's where we get the word stoical from to endure somebody
who in a sense is just trying to paddle under the surface of
life as hard as they can just to keep the surface smooth they
endure And so then you'll be happy. Well, of course, in modern
days, we come across hedonism, living a life of pleasure, just
like the Epicureans. We come across ancient philosophies
resurfacing again and again. If you go to the garden center,
what do you find? little Buddhas statues of the
Buddha and of course his idea of happiness was well you just
have to treat life as really a place of suffering and the
reason for suffering is your fault your desires they're the
problem And so what Buddhism teaches is that you just have
to suppress your desire and then you'll be happy. Put down every
desire to do anything and instead focus yourself through meditation
on being content. And so instead of thinking about
a path to happiness, he says happiness is the path. In other
words, you just have to endure and ignore your desires. Life is suffering. Well, the
Bible has so much to say to us this morning. And I know we could
go on. We could think about materialism, living a life for the things
that we possess. And that's what a lot of people
do in Britain today. They're on to the next thing.
They want the next gadget. They want the next holiday whatever
it might be something they can possess some experience even
that they can enjoy that's how they will be happy I wonder do
you have a philosophy of happiness for yourself where do you get
your happiness from I remember hearing of a an atheist who one day went to
a town centre and he put up his platform and he began to tell
everybody, forget the Bible, throw out your Bibles, if you
really want to be happy forget God, forget the Judgment Day,
all these things are false. He was telling everybody. And
this old lady came up to him after a while, and she said,
Sir, are you happy? And he just dismissed her, pretended
she was just a silly old lady, and he carried on. But she kept
on asking him. And in the end, the crowd had
gathered, and in the end, this crowd, they wanted him to answer
this question. Are you happy? But there is no
happiness in atheism. And in the end he had to get
down off of his pedestal and go home with his tail between
his legs because he couldn't honestly say that he was happy
because he didn't know the Lord. The Bible has so much then to
say about this question and we need to have very clear view
of what it is that makes us happy. Where is it to be found? And
the Bible answers this so wonderfully. And so people look in the wrong
place, and maybe you've been looking in the wrong place. and
this morning you come to the service and you in a sense are
suffering because you have tried to seek happiness in the wrong
place some people put their hopes upon one that they love And they
say, my happiness is going to be a perfect marriage or a perfect
relationship with this person. And then they become bitterly
disappointed and let down. And life is dreadful and miserable
and awful because their hopes have been centered upon that
one person. Others have put their hopes in
riches. J.C.Royal, his father was a very
wealthy You remember J.C. Rowe became the Bishop of Liverpool
in the time of Spurgeon. And one day as a young lad, he
lived, he grew up in luxury in a grand house. But one day he
had to get into the carriage for the last time and the carriage
drove off and his father's business had collapsed. And he said, all
my hopes of a wonderful life, of going to Oxford University
and becoming perhaps a Member of Parliament, becoming an important
person, in that moment my hopes of riches had gone. And so people put their hope
in so many things. Others put their hope for happiness
in education. achievements in the academic
world. Others say, well to be happy
I must be very religious. I must have a religion that's
very formal. I must be somebody who just goes
along to the services and rub shoulders with the people of
God. This is where happiness is. I believe there must be something
in it. And so as long as I associate
myself with them, then I shall be happy. Well, of course, this
verse of Scripture, and you may wonder why such a long introduction. But we have to understand what
David, by the Spirit, is saying here. He had discovered something
about the path to happiness. What is its secret? And really,
it's answered for us here in these two verses. Blessed, he
says, is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man. And the original
here says, oh, the blessings of the man. unto whom the Lord imputeth not
iniquity. And here is the secret of true,
deep, lasting happiness and it is found in the forgiveness of
our sins. Notice the word that he uses
here in verse 1, transgression. A transgression is a rebellion,
a pushing beyond the boundary. God has set his holy law and
he's called mankind to walk within the boundaries of that law, his
ten commandments. And if we go beyond, then we
are a transgressor. If we break one of those commands,
We've transgressed his holy law. But then you notice in the second
verse another word. Iniquity. Unto whom the Lord
imputeth not iniquity. And you might wonder It's an
old word, we don't use it, do we? Day to day. What does it
mean? Well, it means the twistedness
of the heart. The twisted ways, the schemes,
the plans, the plots. And as a result, the guilt that
comes because our nature is so corrupted and distorted. And so that's the picture that
David is saying here. The Lord imputeth not iniquity. And we missed another word there
at the end of verse 1, whose sin is covered. What does sin
mean? Well, sin is missing the mark. It's where God has set his standard
and we fail to keep that mark, to hit that standard. And so
you can see here, David, he's thinking of his sins, the twistedness
of his character, and the fact that he's tried to cover up his
sins. And maybe we try to cover them
up. I'm sure we do. But that's really what he's speaking
of here in verse one. He's saying, God has covered
up my sin. And that's a wonderful thing.
Think of it, imagine this morning if you knew that God when he
looked upon you could find no sin, not one sin, how would you
feel? Wouldn't you feel blessed and
happy? Well this is what David discovered.
You notice in verse three and four, He is full of guilt and
full of anxiety. Here he had of course broken
one of God's laws, many of God's laws, at least two of them, when
he had gone in to Bathsheba. He'd looked at another man's
wife and he'd taken her and then he'd arranged the death of her
husband in the battle. And David was a guilty man. You can see the corruption of
his heart. Nathan, the prophet, had to come,
didn't he? And speak clearly to David. And David is saying here in verse
3 and 4 what life was like when he tried to cover his sin. And
I wonder if there's somebody here this morning who is really
described, pictured here by David. He says, when I kept silence,
my bones waxed old through my roaring. In other words, there
was so much guilt within his heart that his bones, he felt,
were drying up. His whole body felt affected. He was under great pressure because
that guilt, the weight of it, was so great upon his heart. And then in verse four, day and
night thy hand, he recognised that God was behind this sense
of conviction that he had for his sin. And he said, for day
and night thy hand was heavy upon me. My moisture is turned
into the drought of summer. So all the life was being sapped
out of David. He had no joy. He had no sense
of God's presence. He had no sense of his smile
at all. And it convicted him. It broke
him. It caused him to be so restless. But you notice what he says here
in verse 5. The reason why it was like this. When he concealed his sins. You
see the answer to it was when he confessed it. He says, I acknowledged my sin and I said I will confess
my transgressions. Can you notice all three words
are mentioned again? His sin, his iniquity and his
transgressions. All of the sin. All of the twistedness
of his heart was dealt with. And so this is the great lesson
that we have this morning. Where is happiness to be found?
Blessed is that man whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. If you want to know joy, that this world cannot afford. It is found in the forgiveness
of sins. And how is sin forgiven? It's
through the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is by looking,
by faith to Him, believing that God has laid on Him, on the cross,
all your guilt, all your sin. and giving you new life through
him. And so, blessed is he whose transgression
is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Wouldn't it be amazing if we
could all say today that I'm looking to Christ That's why
I read there from Romans chapter 4, where it is speaking, you
might say, quite technical language, talking about circumcision and
uncircumcision, laying that all aside, what is the great thrust
of that chapter? Well it says there in verse 7,
repeating what David said here, he describes the blessedness
In verse 6, the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputeth
righteousness without works. It simply means this, that all
of the goodness and the perfection of the life of Jesus Christ is
given over to you as a guilty sinner. His clothing of righteousness,
which was his perfect life, Close you. And how do you know that
you're forgiven? And this is the key question.
Because you do need to know, don't you, that you're forgiven? It is by your simple faith in
the Lord Jesus Christ. We mean that you are looking
to Christ alone for your forgiveness not to yourself not to your supposed
goodness that he describes here as works it may not be physical work of
course that he's describing it could just be that we have a
desire to worship God and serve him And he's saying, even that
cannot save you. You need to have faith in Christ
and believe upon Him. And this is why it goes on in
verse 16. He says, therefore it is of faith
that it might be by grace. In other words, it might be a
gift. You believe wholly in Jesus Christ for salvation, and that
salvation is a gift. You cannot give anything to God
to deserve it, but you must just believe and trust that Jesus
died for your sins. And if you believe, then the
blessedness comes. I remember reading of a lady
recently who, she wrote books, I think she's American, and for
some ten years or so she lived as a lesbian. And she was not
only a lesbian, she was an activist against everything that was in
any way trying to influence the political system in America from
a Christian perspective. She was vehemently opposed to
the gospel. But there was one man called
Ken Smith who wrote her a letter. She received many letters, many
of them from Christians complaining about all that she was teaching
in the university. But then this one man, Ken Smith,
and he wrote a letter of kindness and in the end he and his wife
invited her for tea and she was obviously initially reluctant
to go but she went after some correspondence and in the end
as she discovered this man was a pastor who had cared for her
soul enough not only was he praying for her But he was trying to
encourage her to think about the claims of the Lord. And that
woman's life was totally changed. And the very ways which she once
loved and tried to promote, she turned her back upon the whole
thing. Rosaire Butterfield, I think her name is. And you can learn
of her life. But the point is this. that her
sins are totally forgiven. Their old life is gone and a
new life has come by her faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And
we give thanks to God that this is the message we proclaim. There
is no happiness in this world other than when we have peace
with God. And my question to you this morning
is this. Have you that peace with God
that David knew? He knew deep joy in his spirit
because he discovered this source, not by hiding his sin, but by
calling upon the Lord. And everyone that calls upon
the Lord shall be saved. those that trust in Him wholly.
Not one can be lost if they're looking to Christ alone. Their
sins, which are many, are all forgiven. That's what we're taught
in Scripture, therefore being justified by faith. We have peace with God through
our Lord Jesus Christ. That is the great message of
the Gospel, friends. And I'm sure many of you have
known this joy. Oh, the blessedness of the man
or the woman or the boy or girl unto whom the Lord does not see
any twistedness, whose guilt has gone, whose stain has been
removed by the blood of the Lamb and in whose spirit is no pretense. He's come sincerely. And this
is what David did. He said, I acknowledge my sin
unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I will confess
my transgression unto the Lord. And this is what we say this
morning to you all. Maybe you're in that situation
where you have not yet made confession. you're really holding on to perhaps
just one sin that you love and you cannot let go of that sin
and because of that you've never known the true forgiveness of
God and so the answer of course you know you have to flee that
last sin And you might be holding on to that sin because you think,
well, is it real, this? this joy in the Lord Jesus Christ. What if I let go of my sin and
then, as it were, when I look to Christ and cling to him, that
there is no joy sufficient to repay me for the joy that I will
lose? And of course Satan will tempt
you and he'll say, you're exactly right, you won't enjoy being
a Christian. But of course, the greatest joy
is to know Christ. Whom to know is life eternal. And Satan will try to hold you
back. He'll try to keep you. But David
said, I confessed my transgressions, my sins, unto the Lord, every
one of them. Even those in the dark recesses
of my soul, I laid them bare before my gracious God. and he
forgave me. And now, now I have peace with
him. And through that peace flows
happiness that I've never known or tasted before. This then is
the secret. The Bible gives its forgiveness
of sins and peace with God. But there's also the indwelling
of the Holy Spirit of God. The Spirit of God brings us joy. We remember the fruits of the
Spirit are love, joy, peace, and you remember all the supplementary
fruits of gentleness and so on. But the key fruits are love to
God and love to men, Joy and peace, they go together when
one has rested their soul upon the Lord Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit comes and indwells
the believer and they know the blessing of God, the joy of God
within their soul. But also there is the hope of
heaven, the forgiveness of sins, peace with God, the presence
of the Holy Spirit and the hope of heaven. We rejoice, the Apostle
says, in the hope of the glory of God. This world is not a resting
place for the Christian. It's not our hope. It's not our
home. We are sojourners and pilgrims. and so we don't rest in the world. We know it cannot really deeply
satisfy our soul and so we look beyond the world. Our hope is
in heaven and we lay up, as Jesus said, treasures in heaven. The things of this life for the
Christian they become very disconnected from our joy. The worldly person,
their joys are connected to what is going on in the world. But
for the Christian, he lives above the world and his hope is in
God. And so we have this great and
glorious picture forgiveness of sins, peace with God, the
indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and a hope of heaven. Do you
know these things? The happiness of the one who's
come to trust in Christ. John Bradford, he was one of
the Smithfield martyrs. Those that were put to death
because they refused to bow the knee before Queen Mary and her
Catholicism. And he said the night before,
he said, if Queen Mary releases me, God's will be done. But if she burns me, God's will
be done. You see, he lived above the world.
He had peace with God. He had his happiness anchored
in Christ. And come what may, nothing would
disturb him. His soul would still be the same.
His hopes and joys were so centered on Christ, even the flames could
not hurt him. Now what is the hindrances to
this happiness? Perhaps, as we've noticed, it's
unrepented sin. Sin buried deep in the soul.
robbing you of comfort in the scriptures, robbing you of joy,
distracting you. And worldliness can creep in
and worldliness will choke the heart. You remember what Jesus
described worldliness as. He described it as the weeds
growing up. The good seed had been sown but
the weeds, the thorns, the thistles grow up and they choke the word. and it becomes unfruitful. And
so the Christian has to watch for worldliness. Anything that's
distracting us from seeking the Lord and resting in Him, it will
choke our joy and our hope, pride and self-will. You notice what
it says there. We read it earlier in verse 9. Be ye not as the horse or as
the mule which have no understanding. It doesn't mean to say they don't
have any abilities to function mentally. But what it's saying
is there is a stubbornness in their will. Once they've got
something in their mind, there's no changing them. And whose mouth, he says, must be
held in with bit and bridle. You see, they will bite, they
will lash out, lest they come near unto thee. Do we, when the
Lord touches our heart by the Spirit, do we say, well, I'm
not having anything to do with the Word of God. I don't want
to give my attention to the things of God. Do we dismiss them? That's
pride and self-will at work. but there's also doubt and mistrust. Maybe you've been robbed of your
joy and your happiness in Christ and sense of forgiveness because
you are full of doubts and mistrust. Jesus spoke about this, didn't
he, in the Sermon on the Mount when he said about how your Heavenly
Father He is able to provide for you. Lay not up treasures
on earth where moth and rust do corrupt. But he speaks to
those who serve two masters. They've got one foot in the world
and they want also one foot in the kingdom of God. But Jesus
says, can you not fully trust your heavenly Father? He who
feeds the sparrows He who clothes the lilies of the field. Don't
take one thought, he says, what you will eat or what you will
drink or what you will put on. But trust your heavenly Father
wholly. Has distrust. Is that the problem
why you've been robbed of your happiness and you doubt that
God can really have mercy on you and help you? And so you're
trying to also do something for yourself. You're trying to contribute. And really you need to let go
of all of those hopes and lean wholly on the Lord. Well, our
time has gone this morning. We must come and lean upon Jesus
Christ. If you really knew the depth
of your need, the guiltiness of your soul, the judgment to
come, then you would lay aside all false refuges and come and
trust wholly in the Lord Jesus Christ as your saviour. You need a personal union with
him. What does it mean? It means simply
you must begin with Christ You must abide in Christ. You must follow Christ. That
is the path to happiness. And so David was taken from guilt
to gladness. And the deep gladness he shares
with us here. You notice he was taken from
silence in verse 3 to singing, full of joy. And he was taken
from shame to service. Notice what it says finally here
in verse 11. Be glad and rejoice, ye righteous,
and shout for joy all ye that are upright in heart. We're not very good at that,
are we? We struggle, perhaps, to be too joyful. It's not our
national character, but here is a picture of those who are
rejoicing. The king has come. and he has
made his people glad and that is the case. With everyone who
knows forgiveness of sins, there is a joy. Rejoice, the Apostle
says, in the Lord always. And again, I say, rejoice. May the Lord bless his word to
us that we might discover joys in him. Amen. Let's sing our final hymn together
from Gadsby's, hymn number 988. 988. Happiness, thou lovely name,
where's thy seat? O tell me where, learning, pleasure,
wealth, and fame, all cry out, it is not here. Hymn 988, tune
485. Happiness, Thou lovely name,
West I see, to tell me where, Learning pleasure, wealth and
fame, O cry out, it is not here, Not the wisdom of the wise, can
inform me where it lies, not the grandeur of the great Can
the bliss I seek create? Object of my first desire, Jesus
crucified for me. All to happiness aspire Only
to be found in Thee Here to praise and here Constitutables below, they to
see and they to love. Constitutables above. Lord, it is not life to live
if thy presence not divine. Lord, if thou thy presence give, since
no longer dare to die. Source and giver of repose, singly
from thy small head close. mine, mine it is, it thou art
mine. that woman that Jesus spoke of
who lost that coin and yet found it and was filled with joy. We think of that father who looked
for his son returning and was happy to have a time of merriment
in his house because his son that was dead was now alive. O we thank thee for our Lord
Jesus Christ, who is that pearl of great price, that if we find
him, he is the greatest treasure. We will be willing to sell the
field of this world and cling to him, for he is our all and
in all. Our Lord, do give to us each
a desire to seek and find him, to lay hold upon him by faith,
believe that he has died for our sins, that when we come to
die and leave this poor and needy and broken world, that we may
have an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not
away, reserved in heaven for you. Now may the grace of our
Lord Jesus, the love of God, our Heavenly Father, the help
of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.