God is The Only Way To True Happiness

When Saul was sore distressed, you remember, all the jewels of his crown couldn't comfort him for a moment. His wine went sour, his food was rotten in his stomach cause there was no real happiness in his soul.



“Holiness differs nothing from happiness but in name,” Brooks boldly writes near the opening of the book. And that's because of a New Testament truth. All the qualities that make up real happy life do involve some pain, do involve some misery, as we'll see when we move through the study. But we need to get the picture of all of it as it lays out before us. Once a person comes to know God through Christ, then comes this happiness.



And I want to begin tonight by just giving you a bit of an overview and then starting next Lord's day we'll look more carefully at each of these Beatitudes. He drank wine, it says, in the golden vessels of the temple, but when the figure of a man's hand appeared and wrote, "Mene, mene, tekel upharsin," on the wall, you'd been weighed in the balances and found wanting, it says his face changed. That really is the issue here. It's ridiculous to spend your whole life trying to make yourself happy on things that are all going to end up on the junk heap. Happiness is nothing but the quintessence of holiness.” Near the end of the book, he reiterates the point, “An absolute fullness of holiness will make an absolute fullness of happiness. So all that we're going to learn here in this portion of Scripture is for Christians. All is vanity, he said over and over again. Happiness is never found in the cursed earth and it's never really ultimately and finally found in the evil system. Anyone that has a deep longing for true happiness is unsatisfied with any material thing, things which cannot quiet the heart. That's not the key to happiness. “Holiness is happiness in the bud, and happiness is holiness at the full. To most people, though, this might not make any sense. Why? Because physical things do not touch the soul. It is for those who have come to God through faith in Jesus Christ. When our holiness is perfect, our happiness shall be perfect; and if this were attainable on earth, there would be but little reason for men to long to be in heaven.”. You cannot fill a spiritual need with a physical substance. King Belshazzar, according to the book of Daniel, was carousing and drinking and living it up. It is for those who believe in the Lord God. No one can know true happiness if he is not a partaker of the divine nature. Read the musings of Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes, and all appeared empty and useless. The Lord Jesus Christ has come into the world to provide to men and women real happiness, lasting happiness.

I have to say, however, at this point that even in the midst of this happiness there is a paradoxical picture of misery. He sent His Beloved Son to carry out the Atonement so we can be happy in this life and receive a fulness of joy in the eternities.

However incompletely, Christians taste this true happy-holiness as we live out our union in Christ. A man's life consists not in the abundance of things which he possesses. It is for those who have come to the cross to obtain forgiveness for sin and to receive the gift not only of righteousness imputed, but the gift of a new nature, the divine nature and can thereby enter in to true and divine happiness. Things which cannot bring peace to the heart in a storm cannot provide any true lasting happiness. I suppose the world assumes that true happiness means the absence of misery and the absence of pain, whereas believers understand that true happiness is found in the midst of pain, in the midst of misery.

Heavenly Father desires that we find true, lasting happiness. His plan for our salvation is often called “the great plan of happiness” (Alma 42:8). In him we find the inseparable organic connection between our obedience and our joy, between our pursuit of true holiness and our experience of true happiness (John 15:1–17).

But did he find in it happiness? No, he found in it emptiness. You cannot pour oil on a wounded spirit. Possessions aren't the path to happiness. Pleasure isn't the path to happiness. Another New Testament teaching is that she that lives in pleasure is dead while she lives. Our happiness is the design of all the blessings He gives us—gospel teachings, commandments, priesthood ordinances, family relationships, prophets, temples, the beauties of creation, and even the opportunity to experience adversity. And to start with, to acknowledge the fact that Jesus is committed to providing true happiness.