Preaching the Gospel of the Happy God

00:00:04.000 | Sound preaching, happy God.

00:00:08.000 | Those two themes are connected in Paul's mind, as evidenced in today's question from a podcast listener who is also a preacher.

00:00:15.500 | Pastor John, hello, and thank you for this podcast.

00:00:18.500 | My name is Matt, and I have been the lead teacher and preacher in a congregation for about five years now.

00:00:24.500 | I find myself stunned by 1 Timothy 1, verses 10 and 11,

00:00:28.500 | and I'm wondering if you can riff on these verses for a full episode.

00:00:34.000 | Explain to us how the happiness of God relates to the soundness of our preaching.

00:00:41.500 | This link seems essential, and if such a connection can be made, you seem like the guy to do it. Thank you.

00:00:49.500 | Well, to riff on that will be my pleasure.

00:00:55.000 | So let's put this amazing text in front of us, 1 Timothy 1, 10 and 11.

00:01:01.000 | Paul is describing the kinds of ugly behaviors that the law exposes.

00:01:08.500 | And then, in verse 10, he gives another way to discern those behaviors, and the good ones.

00:01:16.000 | He says they are contrary to healthy doctrine or healthy teaching.

00:01:24.000 | And then he says that healthy teaching is healthy because it "accords with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God."

00:01:38.500 | Now, there are four great realities here.

00:01:42.000 | First, the blessed God.

00:01:44.500 | Second, the glory of the blessed God.

00:01:48.000 | Third, the gospel of the glory of the blessed God.

00:01:53.500 | And fourth, the healthy teaching that accords with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God.

00:02:03.000 | And Matt is asking about how the blessedness of God affects the healthfulness of pastoral preaching and teaching.

00:02:17.000 | And that's a great question, which I'm very, very eager to talk about.

00:02:21.500 | So let's move backward through each of these four realities.

00:02:26.000 | First, the blessed God.

00:02:28.500 | What does blessed mean?

00:02:31.500 | There are two ways the word blessed is used in the New Testament and Old.

00:02:36.500 | It's used for "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus."

00:02:42.000 | Now, that's not the word that's used here.

00:02:45.000 | That's eulogitos, and it means "I bless God."

00:02:47.500 | He hasn't blessed me, I bless him.

00:02:50.000 | This word is makarios, which means "blessed" in the sense of "fortunate" or "happy."

00:02:57.500 | And here are the uses of it in Paul.

00:03:00.500 | Just a few examples so you can taste what this word means when it's applied to God.

00:03:06.000 | Titus 2.13.

00:03:07.500 | "We are waiting for our blessed"—that is, joyful, wonderful, satisfying—"hope."

00:03:16.000 | "Blessed hope," the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.

00:03:21.500 | So, the adjective "blessed" is used to describe the hope, meaning a joyful hope, a wonderful hope, a satisfying hope.

00:03:30.000 | Here's Romans 4, 7, and 8.

00:03:33.500 | "Blessed"—that is, happy, fortunate—"are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered."

00:03:43.000 | "Blessed"—same word, makarios—"happy is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin."

00:03:49.000 | I mean, we're supposed to picture a man in the courtroom.

00:03:52.000 | He is dead guilty.

00:03:53.500 | Everybody knows it.

00:03:55.000 | And he's pronounced innocent and sent into eternity with infinite joy.

00:04:00.000 | And he goes out of that courtroom, clicking his heels and dancing for joy into eternity.

00:04:05.500 | That's makarios.

00:04:07.500 | That's the word.

00:04:09.000 | And here's one more.

00:04:10.500 | 1 Corinthians 7, 40.

00:04:13.500 | Paul says, "of the widow," because he loves his own singleness.

00:04:18.500 | He says, "Yet in my judgment she will be happier if she remains single as she is."

00:04:26.500 | Makarioterosity, the relative form or the comparative form of the word "happy," makarios.

00:04:34.500 | So, my conclusion, "blessed" means fortunate, objectively, happy, subjectively.

00:04:43.000 | God is happy.

00:04:45.500 | And if that word bothers you, it just sticks in your craw to say God is happy, because it's just too superficial.

00:04:55.500 | And God is big and great and glorious.

00:04:59.000 | I sympathize with that.

00:05:00.500 | And I suggest, choose another word.

00:05:04.500 | Okay, contented, joyful, euphoric, felicitous, glad, rhapsodic.

00:05:13.500 | I mean, get your thesaurus out and find some words.

00:05:15.500 | But don't conceal the reality, the affectional reality.

00:05:22.500 | He's not glum.

00:05:24.500 | He's not morose.

00:05:26.000 | He's not gloomy.

00:05:27.500 | He's not dour or moody or sour or grim.

00:05:32.500 | He is the glad and happy God.

00:05:35.500 | He's not disappointed in being what he is.

00:05:39.500 | Now, what's he happy about?

00:05:42.500 | Well, it all starts in eternity, except that nothing starts in eternity.

00:05:49.500 | Language just won't work.

00:05:51.500 | It all is in eternity.

00:05:54.500 | God had no start, and his happiness had no start, but that's where we are.

00:05:58.500 | We're back in eternity.

00:06:00.500 | And from all eternity, he has been supremely happy in the fellowship with his Son, Matthew 17, 5.

00:06:10.500 | "This is my loved Son, with whom I am well pleased."

00:06:18.500 | There is no greater energy in the universe, no greater intensity, no greater zeal, no greater passion, no greater esteem, no greater force or vehemence of affection than the infinite, eternal love and delight that the Father has in his Son.

00:06:46.500 | That delight belongs to the very nature of God.

00:06:51.500 | From all eternity, he is happy in his Son eternally, infinitely.

00:07:00.500 | Then he's happy in the wise and just and holy ways that he does everything that he does.

00:07:11.500 | So here's Isaiah 46.10, "I am God."

00:07:15.500 | So this is the very heart of what it means to be God.

00:07:18.500 | "I am God, and there's none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, 'My counsel shall stand, I will accomplish all my good pleasure.'"

00:07:33.500 | And that is a literal translation of the Hebrew.

00:07:36.500 | "I will accomplish all my good pleasure."

00:07:39.500 | Or Psalm 135.6, "Whatever the Lord pleases, he does in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps."

00:07:50.500 | In other words, God approves what he does.

00:07:54.500 | He's pleased with his wisdom and his power.

00:07:57.500 | He is happy with the choices that he makes.

00:08:01.500 | His sovereign will cannot be thwarted, and therefore he is a consistently happy God.

00:08:10.500 | But most amazing of all, perhaps, is God's delight in the people whom he created for his glory.

00:08:23.500 | Listen to these breathtaking statements from God's happiness in his people.

00:08:29.500 | Psalm 149, verse 4, "The Lord takes pleasure in his people.

00:08:35.500 | He adorns the humble with salvation."

00:08:38.500 | Zephaniah 3, 17, "The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save.

00:08:45.500 | He will rejoice over you with gladness.

00:08:50.500 | He will quiet you by his love.

00:08:53.500 | He will exult over you with loud singing."

00:08:59.500 | You know, if God gets loud, it can be heard billions of light years away.

00:09:04.500 | Jeremiah 32, verse 40, "I will make with him an everlasting covenant."

00:09:11.500 | Now this, for all of us Christians, this is what Jesus bought with his blood.

00:09:15.500 | He called his blood the blood of the covenant.

00:09:17.500 | "I will make with you an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them,

00:09:24.500 | and I will put the fear of me in their hearts that they may not turn away from me,

00:09:29.500 | and I will rejoice in doing good to them,

00:09:34.500 | and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness with all my heart and with all my soul."

00:09:42.500 | Now, in 1 Timothy 1, 11, Paul calls this overflow of God's happiness onto his people,

00:09:52.500 | I think he calls that God's glory.

00:09:56.500 | This is the glory of the blessed God.

00:10:00.500 | When God's eternal happiness in himself is seen in all its various manifestations,

00:10:10.500 | it reveals God's fullness, completeness, perfection, glory.

00:10:16.500 | A gloomy God is a deficient God, a defective God.

00:10:22.500 | He lacks something. He has a defect.

00:10:25.500 | He's not glorious.

00:10:28.500 | But the eternally, infinitely happy God is glorious in the overflow and the fullness of his happiness,

00:10:37.500 | perfectly glorious, without any defect or deficiency.

00:10:42.500 | And then Paul says that the gospel is the gospel of the glory of the blessed God.

00:10:51.500 | So this glory of the infinite fullness of God's happiness is essential to the good news of Christ.

00:11:01.500 | Why is that?

00:11:02.500 | Because 1 Peter 3, 17 says, "Christ died to bring us to God."

00:11:09.500 | That's why he died.

00:11:11.500 | It is not good news to be brought to a gloomy God.

00:11:16.500 | Watch out for him. He's got his moods.

00:11:18.500 | Stay in your bedroom when he's out of sorts.

00:11:22.500 | That's not good news. That's not the gospel.

00:11:26.500 | A dour, downcast, unhappy God is not good news.

00:11:32.500 | Who wants to go there?

00:11:34.500 | And yet Christ died to take us there, namely to a happy God,

00:11:42.500 | a Father who is infinitely happy as he overflows onto his children with his own happiness.

00:11:50.500 | What's good news is when Jesus says in John 15, 11,

00:11:55.500 | "These things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you, and your joy may be full."

00:12:03.500 | And when we hear Jesus say at the last day in Matthew 25, 23,

00:12:09.500 | "Enter into the joy of your master."

00:12:13.500 | In other words, the glory of the happy God is good news because we will share in it.

00:12:23.500 | That joy that God has in the fellowship of the Trinity, in his Son in particular,

00:12:31.500 | will become our joy.

00:12:35.500 | As it says in John 17, 26, this may be the most amazing statement of it.

00:12:41.500 | Jesus says, "The love with which, Father, you have loved me."

00:12:46.500 | So this is the infinite, joyful delight in the Son from all eternity.

00:12:52.500 | "The love with which you have loved me will be in them, and I in them."

00:13:01.500 | The very love that the Father has for the Son will be our love for the Son,

00:13:08.500 | our joy in the Son.

00:13:11.500 | This is why Jesus died, so that undeserving sinners who cast themselves for mercy on Christ

00:13:20.500 | could actually share God's joy in God.

00:13:25.500 | Now, the last thing Paul says in 1 Timothy 1, 10, and 11 is that we pastors and elders

00:13:34.500 | should make sure that our teaching and preaching are healthy teaching and preaching.

00:13:43.500 | Sound the old translation.

00:13:45.500 | Healthy doctrine.

00:13:48.500 | Now, what is that?

00:13:50.500 | Well, here's what he says.

00:13:52.500 | "Healthy teaching accords with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God,"

00:13:59.500 | which means that we preachers will ask these questions.

00:14:05.500 | "Does my preaching sound like and look like I have been in the presence of such God-centered glory?"

00:14:15.500 | "Does my preaching echo the infinite worth of the glory of the happy God?"

00:14:22.500 | Do I open the gospel so clearly and so faithfully, so biblically, so deeply,

00:14:29.500 | that people can see that the final reason, the ultimate reason it's good news

00:14:36.500 | is not that our sins are forgiven or that we escape hell and wrath

00:14:43.500 | or that our guilt feelings are gone or that our bodies are going to be glorious

00:14:48.500 | and get well and not suffer anymore or that we're going to see loved ones again

00:14:53.500 | or there are going to be no more tears?

00:14:55.500 | Those are glorious, but they're not the ultimate glory.

00:14:59.500 | Rather, the ultimate glory of the gospel, the ultimate thing that Jesus bought

00:15:05.500 | when he shed his blood is that we will share in God's immeasurable happiness in God.

00:15:13.500 | Do all our doctrines ring with this God-centered hope?

00:15:19.500 | Do all our doctrines ring with the serious joy of God and our share in it?

00:15:29.500 | That was a beautiful riff.

00:15:32.500 | It was a pleasure, as you can imagine.

00:15:35.500 | Love it. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for joining us today.

00:15:40.500 | Ask a question of your own, search our growing archive,

00:15:43.500 | or subscribe to the podcast all at AskPastorJohn.com

00:15:49.500 | #winning

00:15:51.500 | You could put that tag over all of Paul's missionary aspirations.

00:15:55.500 | He was all about winning, and we'll see why that matters for us today.

00:16:02.500 | I'm your host, Tony Reike. We'll see you back here on Wednesday.

00:16:07.500 | [Silence]

00:16:10.500 | [Silence]

00:16:13.500 | you