Happiness
Transcript of FLOT Line Episode 543 aired on January 17, 2016
Good morning and welcome to the FLOT Line. I’m your host Rick Hughes and for the next few
moments I’m going to ask you to listen up, stay with me. It will be a time of motivation,
inspiration, education and as we always say, done with no manipulation. That’s right, because we
don’t have hidden agendas. We’re not trying to solicit money. We’re not trying to sell you
anything. We’re not trying to ask you to join anything. The only thing that I’m trying to do is to
communicate accurate information, information that will assist you, help you in verifying and
identifying the plan of God for your life. If I’m able to do this then you can take this information
and orient and adjust to the plan, it’s up to you. You only have one shot at life. You’re not going
to get two or three shots at it. And you want to have the best life possible.
I can assure you God
the Father laid out a plan in eternity past where you can have the most fantastic happiness,
security and peace the world has ever known.
I hope you will listen to our show. I hope you’ll
pay attention and I hope you’ll make the application because my job is always to communicate,
communicate truth. This show is about content. No, I’m not a comedian. I am a communicator
and so if I can give you accurate content, then God the Holy Spirit, if in fact you are a believer in
Jesus Christ, He can capture this information and He can cycle it into your brain where you
understand it, you comprehend it. I communicate, God the Holy Spirit will capture it, you will
comprehend it. But now comes the big thing. Once you have an academic understanding of what
we’re teaching, then you must convert it. You must convert it by faith, that’s the only way you
can make the application into your life. I communicate, God the Holy Spirit captures this
information, you comprehend it by means of the Holy Spirit, and then you must convert it.
Comprehending it, in the Greek New Testament, is called knowledge or
gnosis
and the
application of this knowledge is called
epignosis
or full knowledge. There’s a big difference
between understanding and application. So in spite of what you may understand, if you don’t
apply it, it does not do you any good at all. So I hope you’re listening, I hope you’re paying
attention because I’m talking about a brand new way of thinking. I’m talking about a new life and
the mandates for the new way of living given in the Bible. You know the plan of God revolves
around three things. First of all salvation, that’s you coming into the plan, you getting to know
Jesus Christ as your Savior. Unfortunately, many people think they can buy their way in. Many
people think they can earn their way in or work their way in and that’s just not possible because
the Bible says,
“For by grace are you saved through faith.”
That’s how you get in,
“For by
grace are you saved through faith, it’s a gift of God and not of works lest anyone should brag
about it.”
What does it mean to have faith? It means to believe. “What am I suppose to believe?”
We believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God and that He went to the cross and
bore our sins on His own body. That’s why the Bible says,
“He who knew no sin was made sin
for us so that we could be made the righteousness of God through Him.”
When we come to the
cross by faith, believing who He is because this is what He said in John 6,
“This is the will of the
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One that sent Me, that you believe on Me whom You have sent.”
That’s exactly what His hearers
in His life did not do. They did not believe, especially the religious crowd. They did not believe
that He was the anointed Son of God even after He resurrected from the dead, even after He
walked out of the grave and was seen by hundreds of people. Many people still did not believe
and they do not believe today. If you are a believer, you are in the plan of God. You have been
saved and Jesus said,
“I will never leave you. I will never forsake you. I give unto you eternal life
and you will never perish and neither shall anyone ever pluck you out of My Father’s hand.”
That’s a tremendous encouragement. We start by entering the gate of salvation and then we move
into what’s called spirituality. You say, “What is this?” Well the Bible commands all of us to be a
spiritual person, not a carnal Christian, but a spiritual Christian. The difference is the carnal
Christian lives under the influence of his sin nature. The spiritual Christian lives under the
influence of God the Holy Spirit. Spirituality is different from maturity. Maturity is the Christian
living under the influence of God the Holy Spirit combined with maximum content of the Word
of God in his soul. If you’re a Christian and you understand how to be filled with the Holy Spirit
by rebounding, using problem-solving device number one, that we’ve taught many times and if
you’re filled with the Spirit and if you’re learning God’s Word under a well-qualified pastor,
somebody that can teach you God’s Word, if you’re learning it and applying it, then you are
moving toward maturity. What does this do? Well it does a lot of things. Number one, it
guarantees you maximum happiness in your life. Number two, it guarantees your family
maximum blessing by association. And number three, it guarantees your nation blessing by
association.
The Word of God teaches you can be happy and you can give maximum
blessing to your family and your nation.
Spirituality and maturity are the quest of the
believer.
If you’re filled with the Holy Spirit you are spiritual. If you’re not filled with the Holy
Spirit because you have unconfessed sin in your life, you are carnal. Carnality is not where you
want to be. Carnality is not ever going to glorify God. Carnality is you not using the problem-
solving devices. It’s you resorting to your own fleshly desires. Remember, there are three
enemies: the world, the flesh and the devil; and carnality is you giving into any of these. This
happiness that I’m talking about, a review of these 10 problem-solving devices, is problem-
solving device number nine in fact called happiness. It is the most fantastic problem-solving
device for any mature believer. Listen, if you are a mature Christian, this happiness must be
directed toward self. It guarantees that you never, ever have to be unhappy. Is that a promise in
the Bible, that I never have to be unhappy? The answer is yes.
Listen to John 15:11,
Jesus told
His disciples,
“I have told you these things that My happiness may be in you and your
happiness might be fulfilled.”
Do you want to be happy? Then you need to learn what the
disciples had to learn. It’s imperative that you learn this and Luke 11:27-28 is the key to it. Here
Jesus says,
“Happiness belongs to those who hear My Father’s Word and who keep it.”
See
this whole passage in Luke 11:27-28 was directed toward a woman who interrupted Jesus as He
was giving a message. Let me read it to you this morning.
“And it came to pass as He spoke
these things a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice and she said unto Him, ‘Blessed
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is the womb that bore You and the breast on which You nursed.’ But He said, ‘Yeah rather,
blessed are they that hear the Word of God and keep it.’” “A certain woman lifted up her voice,”
her voice, the Greek word
phone,
P.H.O.N.E., sounds like we get the word phone from this
doesn’t it?
“Lifted up,”
epairo
in the Greek New Testament, E.P.A.I.R.O., this means she talked
louder than anyone else in the crowd, louder than Jesus. So here is our Lord giving a message,
talking to people that had come to hear Him and in the back of the room, much like some
instigator would interrupt a political rally, she jumped up and began to shout these words,
“Jesus, Jesus, happiness belongs to the womb that bore You and the breast on what You nursed,”
and I’m sure everybody turned around and looked and thought, “Who is this idiot?” She had an
emotional experience. Maybe she had a child of her own. Maybe she had a son of her own but
she had an emotional experience and it led her to do something stupid. Stupid? That’s right, you
do not interrupt Jesus Christ, the Son of God when He’s speaking. That’s rather stupid, to think
that what you have to say is more important than what He has to say. However our Lord is very
gracious. He didn’t say, “Throw the lady out,” He simply rebuked her. She interrupted the
Savior’s message and the message was about how the Pharisees blasphemed the Holy Spirit by
claiming that the miracles He did were in fact coming from Satan. That’s what the message was
about and so this is how she interrupted Him. She corrected Him. In Luke 11:21,
“When a strong
man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace but when a stronger one comes and
overcomes him, he shall take it from him, all of his armor in which he trusted.”
You see, here’s a
person that’s trusting in his weapon, not in his Lord. You know, that’s a big deal in America
today, the government seems to want to take our weapons away from us, but this is not where our
security lies. Our security lies in Jesus Christ our Savior. He knows everything that we face every
day and human solutions are never the solutions. Nothing wrong with owning a weapon, I’m not
saying that but I’m saying that your security is not in the weapon. It’s in the person of Christ. So
most of this passage in this Luke thing here, in Luke 11 is dealing with demon possession of
unbelievers and here’s this woman. We don’t know if she was a believer or not. I assume she may
be, but I know she was demon influenced. She was influenced to interrupt His message. The
whole idea here was to divert the message that Jesus Christ was giving, away from the subject
that He was talking about. To divert His attention, to divert the message, and so if she could
interrupt Him and if she could shout these words out, then instead of thinking about what He’s
been teaching about demon influence and what’s going on in the country and the religious crowd,
she could get people to think about something else. Isn’t this amazing? Our Lord had fantastic
aisthesis.
He is God you know, so He understood exactly in His perspicacity. He understood
what she was up to. He had just finished admonishing Martha for griping about having to fix the
food all by herself in Luke 10:38 and then He has to deal with this woman. Mary chose the one
thing that is necessary He told Martha and that is the words of our Lord. Nothing was going to
stop Mary from getting face-to-face with the Savior and that doesn’t stop this woman. This
woman doesn’t want to be face to face with Him. She wants to interrupt Him and tell Him what
she thinks. Now Jesus replied to her and she says first to Him, “
Blessed is the womb.”
This is her
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words now, not mine.
“Blessed is the womb.”
She uses the Greek word
makarios
for blessed,
M.A.K.A.R.I.O.S. You say, “Why do you use this?” Because the Bible was not written in
English. This was not written in the archaic language of the King James Bible. This was written
in the Greek New Testament in the
koine
dialect of the Greek and the word used here is
makarios
and could be better translated happiness.
“Happiness is the womb that bore You,”
she’s saying.
The word for womb is
koilia,
K.O.I.L.I.A. meaning, “The hollow,” and so here is where she
begins to make an issue out of the womb and out of human life and that’s not the issue that Christ
was talking about. Here are a couple of principles. Happiness is not related to the womb. If we
learn this we’ll be a lot better off. Bearing children will not fulfill our lives. So many people
think if I could just have a kid or two or three, then I’ll be happy and that’s not true. Happiness is
not related to children. Happiness is not related to marriage,
actually marriage compounds
problems and children triple compound problems. See mothers can have pride in their children,
just like fathers. I have tremendous pride in all four of my children but that’s not the happiness
God designed for me, that’s temporal happiness. You know, sometimes they make me unhappy
when they make a decision that I don’t particularly think is a good decision. They don’t always
ask my opinion but I’m free to think something. This whole thing was a trap, a trap to lure Jesus
away from what He was teaching, down to a road He did not need to go on, the road to the
womb. She wanted to talk about the womb and then she wants to talk about the breast, the
masthos,
M.A.S.T.H.O.S. the breast,
“The breast that Thou nursed upon.”
Wow, most men do
want to talk about the breast but the problem is there’s no happiness there either so Jesus
interrupts her, He stops her. Once she started this silly conversation He interrupts her. He said to
her,
“Yeah, rather,”
this is a very strong contradiction. What He basically said is, “Wrong,
wrong, I don’t think so,” and this was not a rude rebuking. It was a gentle reminder, “You are
wrong lady. Happiness is not related to the womb and it is not related to the breast.” You know
she was saying that, “I bet Your mother is so happy, I bet Your mother, if she could see You,
she’d be so happy.”
“Happiness belongs to the womb that bore You and the breast on which You
nursed.”
Now that’s not true so He said, “You are wrong,” and then He said,
“Happiness belongs
to those that hear
[hear, do you hear this?]
the Word of God and keep it.”
Hearing means to listen
and to understand, to perceive and then the word
“keep it”
means to apply. When you put these
two together, hear and keep, now we have what’s called momentum in the Christian life.
All
momentum in the Christian life is related to you hearing and keeping God’s Word.
You
know, it’s funny when you listen to the teaching of the Word of God and take notes, do you jot
down things in your Bible? Do you make notes in the margin? Do you have a notebook where
you write notes? I would encourage you to do this, even when you’re listening to this show. I
would encourage you to get a notebook and take notes because you can always go back and read
over the notes and rethink the information. That’s how the application comes, you can write the
Scriptures down and read them for yourself. Some pastors will give you notes when they teach
but it’s imperative that you take notes so that you can apply what was taught. To hear means to
listen and understand, to perceive with the senses, and then the Bible says to,
“Keep it,”
to guard
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it, to watch it, to put it to work. The words of Jesus are a great treasure, a great treasure to be
guarded. That’s why the Bible tells us in James 1:22,
“Don’t be just a hearer of the Word, but be
a doer of the Word.”
In other words, the hearer deceives himself. He thinks he’s done something
great. So a person goes to church on Sunday morning, hears the sermon, sits there, pays
attention, hears what’s said, walks out, goes to lunch, goes home, watches the football game or
does whatever he does with the family. It hasn’t done him any good if he didn’t apply it. It hasn’t
done him any good if he can’t retain it. “What was it, honey, the preacher said?” Well, if you had
written it down, you could go back and read it for yourself. That’s why taking notes is critical. If
all you do is sit there and listen, you might retain about 10% of it, but if you will take notes and
then go back and re-read your notes, you have a lot better opportunity to retain much more and
apply. Keeping what you hear is metabolizing God’s Word. Sooner or later you’re going to have
to be tested on what you learn and so this woman said, “Happiness is related to the hollow of the
womb,” but Jesus said, “No, happiness is related to the Word of God,” Bible doctrine. This takes
us to the doctrine of happiness, it’s a critical doctrine that we all have to learn. We all have to
understand that true Biblical happiness is there and it must be learned.
Listen to Proverbs 3:13,
“Happy is the one who finds wisdom and the one who obtains understanding.”
Wisdom and
understanding must be learned.
You do not inherit either.
“Happiness belongs to the one who
finds wisdom and to the one who obtains understanding,”
intelligence, to know your options.
You don’t walk around in the fog all the time, you have to understand what’s going on. I
remember the illustration about a lighthouse and a Navy ship in a very foggy night and I
remember the Navy Captain being told by the forward observer that there’s a ship off the bow,
there’s a light off the bow when actually it’s a lighthouse. The Navy captain got on the horn and
said, “The vessel must move, you must take a side. This is a U.S. Navy vessel coming, you have
to move.” And the lighthouse radioed back, “Take your best shot, I’m a lighthouse.” Now, no
understanding would have led to this Navy ship cracking up because they thought the light was
something else.
If you depend on any person or any set of circumstances to make you happy,
you are being weak and you will not have true happiness.
If you’re depending on winning the
lottery to make you happy, if you’re depending on finding the right mate, if you’re depending on
having grandchildren or having children and you think this is the key to happiness, you don’t
understand God’s plan. You’re never going to have the unique life called the spiritual life. The
mature believer doesn’t depend on people or circumstances. You see, pseudo-happiness, false
happiness is Satan’s attempt to counterfeit the true happiness that God gives. You want to know
what this true happiness is called? I’m going to give you a word, listen carefully.
True
happiness is called contentment. It is the blessing of God to all Church Age believers for
learning His plan.
That’s why Paul said,
“I can do all things through Christ who gives me the
strength.”
In Philippians 4:12 he said,
“Whether I have a little or have a lot, I have learned the
secret of being content.”
That’s the key to happiness. Pseudo-happiness or the happiness that
Satan may try to throw at you can be some sort of stimulation. “Let’s take a vacation.” “Let’s take
a trip.” “Let’s go to the movie.” “Let’s go out to eat, you know that makes me happy.” Well that’s
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fine, that’s fun, that’s entertainment but it is not permanent, it’s only momentary. It depends on a
set of circumstances and an environment that is pleasant. What if you go out to eat and you sit
next to an idiot that interrupts your dinner, that won’t shut up? I’ve been in a few places like this
where they were nice restaurants and the table next to us was loud and boisterous and it ruined
our whole meal. You had to sit there and listen to the idiots. I mean, if happiness depending on
circumstances or pleasant environment, that’s not the happiness Jesus is talking about. That’s a
neutral happiness. That’s a pseudo-happiness. For beyond all the moments of the good times,
there will come the bad times, the routine times, even dull times. You will never be sustained.
You can never be carried by the good times of the past, they are just memories, that’s all.
This
neutral happiness, this false happiness, will not sustain you, it will not motivate you, it will
not encourage the believer in times of adversity or times of testing.
Instead of true happiness,
the world, the cosmic system offers a temporary fix and this is followed by self-induced misery
and eventually divine discipline. Much like the drug addict that looks for the highs and gets his
temporary fix and then goes from the highest of high to the lowest of lows, you can do this too
when you are looking for happiness in people or circumstances. Because the true Biblical
happiness that I am talking about, used as a problem-solving device, is not related to some
stimuli in life. It is something we have within us all the time and it relates to the soul and the
spirit, not to your body, not to your circumstances.
Capacity for happiness has to precede the
function of happiness. See, if you don’t have capacity for happiness, then you don’t have
contentment
because these two go together.
If you have contentment, then you have capacity.
Remember when David said,
“My cup runneth over
?” That’s capacity.
“Surely goodness and
mercy will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
If
you have the capacity, God can fill up your cup but it only comes when you’re content with
what you have.
You see, if you’re content with what you have, then whatever God gives you
won’t distract you. But if you’re not content with what you have, then you’re going to want more
and more and more, and nothing will satisfy you because you’re not content. Are you content
today? Do you have this sort of contentment in your life that in spite of people, in spite of
circumstances, in spite of what you’re facing, you’re happy? If not, then you need to confess your
sin to God. Your sin of anger and bitterness and frustration, let God hear it. Tell Him, rebound, be
filled with the Spirit, learn God’s Word, and develop true capacity for happiness which comes
from wisdom and understanding. You will be much better off when you do this. I hope you’re
listening and I hope you’re paying attention. It’s a critical message for you to learn. Until next
week, this is your host Rick Hughes saying thank you for listening to the FLOT Line.