Sermon Transcript
All right, that was a first.
It’s a good thing Jonathan came to town.
I don’t know, Kirby on this end probably couldn’t have been doing what Jonathan was doing on that end. Wow, that was great. Thanks, you guys, for all the work you did to make that possible. Those of you— I mentioned Jonathan last week or a couple weeks ago. He’s this guy that’s going to marry Samantha Stinfort, the man that was here doing the hosting, his daughter’s getting married to that guy that was doing all that stuff down there on the end.
So that might have been part of what he was talking about when he said, you know, I’ve been watching these people rehearse in my home and the rest of it, whatever. But yeah, that’s fun. Well, I hope your holiday is going well, that Christmas is going to be a great time for you. Of course, this is a time of year where we just want to have fun, right? And there are a lot of good things that we’re going to do that hopefully will just simply add to our fun.
This week I watched a movie that I was encouraged to watch. Oh, I don’t know, somebody said to me a couple of years ago, you’ve got to watch this movie. So I finally got around to watching it because I knew it would connect with what we’re going to talk about this morning. The movie’s just called The Happy Movie. I don’t know if you’ve seen it.
It came out a few years ago. It’s actually a documentary. It’s 75 minutes long, so I was able to, you know, get it through Netflix and watch this movie that really focused on happiness throughout the world. The whole focus of the movie was in seeing people’s conditions. How did happiness connect to their conditions?
And whatever the conditions that you find people, wherever they live, all those circumstances that are part of life throughout the world, there’s just a driving desire on the part of all of us for happiness. If you ask a person, what is it that you want out of life? Honestly, people will say, I want to be happy. Now they might say that in a variety of ways. But ultimately, most people are going to say, I just want to be happy.
That’s why we do certain things at this time of year or not do certain things. That’s why some of us go to the gym. We say, because it makes me happy. Others of us, the reason I don’t go to the gym is because it makes me happy. You know, so it just depends on what makes you happy.
I play guitar. I enjoy that. It makes me happy. I play the piano. I play drums.
So maybe it’s a musical instrument that makes you happy, and that’s That’s why you’re doing what you’re doing. Some of you, you know, I don’t really shop online because I love to go to the stores. It makes me happy to go to the stores. I don’t get that, but anyway, you know, so if that’s what works for you, whatever it is. I sleep in at this time of year.
Why? Because it makes me happy, or I dance or whatever it is. So there’s sort of this universal thing, and this is brought out in this documentary movie, The Happy Movie. There’s sort of this universal thing that we want to be happy. We’re looking for happiness.
Charles Spurgeon, pastor, lived years ago. He made this statement. He said, God made human beings as he made other creatures to be happy. They are in their right element when they are happy. So Spurgeon is saying God actually hardwired people for happiness.
We want from within to experience happiness. C.S. Lewis actually went so far as to say this. It is a Christian duty for everyone to be as happy as he can. I mean, that’s quite a statement, isn’t it?
For him to actually say it’s a duty for us to be happy. So you might think of it at this time of year. It’s a duty for us to be people who experience happiness. Now, of course, the big problem with that is, is that we live in a world that’s been marred by sin. We are living in a sin sick world that obviously is filled with death and unhappiness and sorrow and pain and tears.
And all of that’s a part of life. So you’ve got to ask the question, if it’s a duty for a Christian to be happy, if God hardwired us to be happy, well then how can you live with happiness in an unhappy world? Not everything in this world is happy. How is ongoing happiness possible? Have you heard of the good news of happiness?
It’s actually a phrase that’s used in the scripture. If you have your Bible, why don’t you open it up with me or take out the message notes or whatever you’re going to use. I was with the YOPros this Wednesday night. We were studying through the birth story, the Christ story, and Marcus was leading the conversation. And this is the first time I’ve actually experienced this, but there were 17 of us that were there.
I counted around the room. And Marcus asked that we would read through the Christ story. And so everybody took out their Bible, but nobody took out, you know, like a soft copy Bible or something. Everybody took out their phone and they read from their app on their phone from the Bible. And we went all the way around the circle.
There wasn’t— it was— I was astounded. I seriously was astounded. I have never seen this before. So I know when I just asked you to take out your Bible, many of you just took out your phone. That’s fine.
Or the message notes sheet or whatever you want to look at. But in Isaiah 52:7, it says, how lovely on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who announces peace, and who brings good news of happiness, who announces salvation and says to Zion, your God reigns. Now that’s a prophecy that you find 2,700 years ago So 700 years actually before Jesus lived, there was an announcement that was made, and the announcement was that someone would come and they would bring the good news of happiness. And this good news of happiness would be announced throughout the world, and this happiness would come and bring peace— notice that— and also this happiness would bring salvation. Now, that sounds good, doesn’t it?
It sounds like something we want in on. It’s what we would call in the Bible a messianic passage, which means it pointed to the coming Messiah or the coming Savior. And so, you see salvation spoken of here. You can ask yourself, well, who was this pointing to? And we actually are told who it was pointing to by the Apostle Paul in his writing to the church at Rome.
In Romans chapter 10 and verse 15, Paul quotes this verse in the context of the need for people to hear the good news or the gospel to be preached. That how are they going to hear unless somebody preaches the gospel? How will they know that if a person confesses with their mouth Jesus is Lord and believes in their heart that God raised him from the dead, that person will be saved? How will they know that except somebody Teach them. Well, in that context, Romans 12:15— or 10:15, Paul says this: How can they preach unless they’re sent?
As it’s written— and here comes Isaiah 52:7 into the New Testament— how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news. What good news is he talking about? He’s talking about the good news that was predicted back in Isaiah chapter 52, verse 7, the good news of happiness. Somebody’s gotta preach the good news of happiness. This good news of happiness was announced, and we talk a lot about this at this time of year.
It was announced by the angels to the shepherds. So let’s look at that passage just for a moment. Luke chapter 2, verses 8 and following tell us this. There were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.
But the angel said to them, to these shepherds, do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David, a Savior has been born to you. He is Christ the Lord. So there you have the Savior identified by these angels.
He’s Jesus Christ. He’s Christ the Lord. And this is good news of great joy. Well, this good news of great joy that we find here is the same news that’s announced in Isaiah 52:7 in a prophetic way. It’s the good news of happiness, the good news of happiness or the good news of great joy.
Now take that apart with me just for a minute. Good news, good news as opposed to bad news. They, like us, were living in a world that was filled with bad news. So they were living under the tyranny of Roman government, they were living with high taxation. That’s enough to give you bad news.
They were living in unsafe living conditions. They were living with a heavy burden of religious requirements. So all of that was a part of their life. Certainly, they would welcome good news. Us, we live in a world that has its own problems.
Terrorist threat is rampant. Sin is everywhere. We live with an uncertain government these days. We live with religious oppression, changing value systems, disease, and death. So in other words, we long for good news just like they longed for good news at that time.
And if you turn on the news these days, there’s not a lot of good news. I can’t even remember the last time that I turned on a newscast, you know, like around 5:00, 5:30 in the evening. I can’t remember the last time I turned on a newscast and it began— the leading story was a good news story. I can’t, I can’t remember one. Usually if you watch the news and we watch the news usually every night, we try to capture some of it.
But usually when we watch the news, you know, if it’s a half-hour show, there’s at least 25 minutes of bad news. And then maybe you stick it out the whole broadcast. There’s this little 2-minute clip at the end that has some good news so that, you know, you want to come back to this network and watch their news again kind of thing. Yeah. Kind of leaves you on a good note.
And I’m glad for the good news. But the fact is most of the news is usually bad. This is good news, and this good news would bring great joy. So as opposed to bringing sadness or as opposed to bringing a little joy, this good news is going to bring a lot of joy. Now the adjective that’s used here, great, is actually the word in the Greek language which is megas.
Megas. So you already get an idea right now. You’re talking about something big. Megas. As we’re talking about megas joy, we’re talking about stupendous joy.
What’s stupendous? Something that’s astounding, something that’s huge. It’s wonderful. It’s amazing. It’s marvelous.
It’s immense. Immense joy comes from this good news, this good news of happiness. The word joy Think about that for a minute. The word is chara in the Greek language, and it’s important here just to point that out for simply this purpose, because then if you look at chara in the Greek language and you look at a lexicon, like a dictionary, a Greek dictionary, you’re going to find that this word is translated in lexicons as joy, as gladness, and as great happiness. Great happiness.
In fact, you’ll find often a comment, some kind of lexical comment, and here’s one that comes from one of the lexicons. It simply says, idiomatically, if we have this joy, we would say my heart is dancing or my heart shouts because I’m happy. Now you say, Dave, why are you giving me all that information? Because I want you to know one thing, that this translation could just as well be great happiness as it is great joy. And if it could be translated great happiness like it’s translated great joy, then we have a direct connection to Isaiah chapter 52, verse 7, that the great happiness is the great joy, the good news of mega joy that’s found in Jesus Christ.
Now, some of you may remember that a few weeks ago I mentioned a book that I’ve been reading over the past couple of months. It’s written by Randy Alcorn. Randy Alcorn’s the guy who wrote the book Heaven. It’s a big fat book and it’s an incredible book that helps us understand more about heaven. Well, his most recent book is a book called Happiness, and this is a 480-page book that I’m weeding through, and it’s been absolutely amazing because it is the best thing that I have ever read on the subject of happiness, especially as happiness is found in the Bible.
Now, that statement right there may actually be a little bit strange to some of you because you’ve probably heard, as so many people that are a part of the church have heard, that happiness is not something that God’s interested in. Not so. This 480-page book does an excellent job at going back and looking at earlier translations, especially prior to the 20th century, and shows that happiness was regularly translated happiness in the Bible. But what has happened since then is there’s been a translation bias that actually is connected to a pastor and author that lived around 1900. And this pastor in 1900 came out against happiness and said, it’s really all about joy, it’s not about happiness.
And since that time, there’s been sort of a tentative pursuit on the part of translators to take a word that could be translated happiness, and instead they translate it oftentimes as joy. And so in essence, what that has done is it’s pushed joy from the front seat— or excuse me, it’s pushed joy from— or the happiness from the front seat to the back seat, and it’s pushed joy up to the front. So that most of the time when we’re reading the scriptures where it could be talking about happiness, the good news of happiness, we read instead the good news of joy. What Randy does in this book is he shows essentially, if you look at the languages very closely and you look at many of these translations, you will find that joy and happiness are virtually synonyms. They’re virtually the same in the scriptures.
That’s why John Piper says this, if you have nice little categories for joy, for joy is what Christians have and happiness is what the world has. You can scrap those when you come to the Bible because the Bible is indiscriminate in its uses of the language of happiness and joy. He went on to just give a really contemporary illustration. Joni Eareckson Tada has done some study on this. She has a real interest in happiness and joy because she’s lived almost 50 years paralyzed.
Because of a diving accident. She said this: We’re often taught to be careful of the difference between joy and happiness. Happiness, it is said, is an emotion that depends upon what happens. Joy, by contrast, is supposed to be enduring, stemming deep from within our soul, and which is not affected by the circumstances surrounding us. Erickson says, I don’t think God had any such hair-splitting in mind.
Scripture uses the terms interchangeably along with words like delight, gladness, blessed. There’s no scale of relative spiritual values applied to any of these. Happiness is not regulated to fleshly-minded sinners, nor joy to heaven-bound saints. What are they saying? Joy and happiness in the Scripture is essentially one and the same.
Let me just say it this way: if you’re joyful, you’re happy. If you’re happy, you’re joyful. Isn’t that true? I mean, come on, explain to me the difference between the two. If you have that joy or happiness, you have it.
Now you may say, well, I don’t know if I agree with that. Okay, well maybe you can agree with this. Happiness comes from good news. Would you agree with that? Happiness comes from good news.
You hear good news, you get happy, you get excited, you are joyful. You probably celebrate. You’re probably going to tell somebody your good news. You may have seen this photo that first appeared in Life magazine. It was a kiss between 2 strangers.
You know the backstory on this one? You know why they were kissing, why people were kissing strangers? It was due to an announcement. You know what the announcement was? Anybody?
It was August 15th, 1945, this picture is taken in Times Square. What was the announcement? The war was over. Yeah, President Truman declared that World War II was over. And as a result of that good news, people running around kissing strangers.
Times Square. Why would they do that? Because good news is enough to make you happy, right? Some of you were pretty happy this week because you finished your exams, and that produced some real happiness inside of you. That was good news.
You might have even told somebody, you know what, this week I finished. And now you’re telling them, I’m on vacation, and that’s probably producing some happiness inside of you too. You get a new job, you say, I got a new job, and you probably felt a little bit of happiness inside of you. Maybe you’re pregnant and you told somebody, I’m pregnant, we’re going to have a baby. And that produced some happiness inside of you.
And you told the grandparents to be, and that produced happiness inside of them. I mean, there’s so many things that produce happiness inside of us, right? Well, the good news of Jesus’ birth, guess what? It’s going to make people happy. You’re going to experience the good news of happiness, great joy.
You read C.S. Lewis’ book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Some of you have seen the movie. You know that in the book Lewis depicts the lion, who is Jesus, as who? As Aslan.
So at one point in the book, as he’s kind of introducing all of this, the beaver, who is one of the characters, speaks, and he says, the beaver says, Aslan is on the move, perhaps already landed. After that announcement, then Lewis writes this, and now a very curious thing happened. None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do. But the moment the beaver had spoken these words, everyone felt quite different. Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says something to you which you don’t understand, but in the dream, it feels as if it had some enormous meaning.
It was like that now. At the name of Aslan each one of the children felt something jump in his inside. Now what do you think they felt jump on the inside? Joy? Possibly.
Happiness? For sure. Have you ever heard somebody say, and I jumped for Joy. Yeah. I mean, what are they connecting that to?
They’re connecting that to some event. Something has transpired. That’s what Lewis is trying to picture here. There is happiness that was just simply connected to the announcement that Aslan had arrived. And that is the very picture that you see in Luke chapter 2.
There is this good news. That is going to bring happiness that has been announced by the angel to the shepherds. Pick up the account, Luke chapter 2, verse 15: When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, Let’s go to Bethlehem and let’s see this thing that’s happened, which the Lord has told us about. So they hurried off, and they found Mary and Joseph and the baby who was lying in the manger. And when they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child.
I mean, all of a sudden now they see the good news, and as a result of seeing the good news, they get out and they start spreading the word. What word? The word that the Savior has been born. Having seen the Savior for themselves, The natural reaction is for them to go announce the good news of happiness to others, that God has sent the Savior, the Savior that was promised in the Old Testament scriptures, the Savior who’s come to save us from our sins, the Savior who’s come to make it possible for us sinners who are separated from God to be brought back into relationship with God. That Savior That salvation is a gift.
It’s a gift that God has given to the world. And this gift is found in Jesus, the one who was born. It’s found in the one who lived. It’s found in the one who was crucified on the cross. It’s found in the one who was resurrected from the tomb.
And that’s good news. And that good news had an impact on these shepherds. So much so, look at verse 20. The shepherds returned After they had heard the good news, they had seen the good news. The shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.
Now you tell me, what demeanor are they in now? What do you see there? They’re happy. Are you kidding? They’re glorifying and praising God.
This is true. We, we not only heard it, We not only saw it, it’s true. And so they believe it now. They believe that Jesus is the Savior. And the result of what they’ve heard, what they’ve seen, and now what they believe is great joy, great happiness.
They’re glorifying God. They’re praising God. They’ve experienced what we might call conversion. They’ve experienced all of a sudden whole different viewpoint, whole different connection to this Savior, this baby that had been born. I like what J.C. Ryle says.
He says, I assert without hesitation that the conversion described in the Scripture is a happy thing and not a miserable one, and that if converted persons are not happy, the fault must be in themselves. I am confident, Ryle says, the converted man is the happiest You believe that? I mean, that conversion is going to produce in a person a different emotional reaction. Great joy, great happiness. I mean, if we have truly been converted and we truly understand what Christ has done for us, it’s going to change our outlook and it’s going to change our demeanor on the circumstances that are happening in our lives right now.
Some of you may remember Sister Act 2, a movie that was out several years ago. Some of you won’t remember this movie because you weren’t alive when this movie came out, but maybe you’ve seen it. Doesn’t matter. You found a clip somewhere, you know, your parents have it or whatever. But anyway, so there’s this scene in Sister Act 2 where Whoopi Goldberg, who’s, you know, the sister who’s a big part of the show, obviously.
Well, she, she is this choir director working with the school choir, and she’s preparing the school choir for a presentation of a song, and things are going pretty well. So I’m going to show you part of the presentation or the preparation and then show you the presentation. And this presentation happens, as you can imagine, in a school assembly. And so they bring everybody in for the assembly. They bring the sisters in, the nuns in, the priests and, you know, the students in.
But when they came in, they came in kind of like a lot of you go into school assemblies, you know, oh, another school assembly, you know, not a whole lot of happiness being there. None of that’s going on. They just came in. And so this choir is, you know, going to present this song and this scene to a group of people who could really use some happiness. So watch how this plays out.
Oh, happy day. See, now you got it.
Okay, you guys, relax. Okay? Take a deep breath. Be fine. Don’t worry.
You ready? Oh, happy day. Oh, happy day. Oh, happy day. Come here.
Come here and stand over here. When Jesus washed. When Jesus washed. When Jesus washed.
When Jesus washed. Jesus washed. When Jesus washed my sins away. Y’all gonna have to do better than this.
All right, you guys, take your cue from me.
Oh, happy day. Oh, happy day. Oh, happy To watch, to watch, to fight and pray, to fight and pray, fight and pray. And he taught me how to live, pray and rejoice, rejoice in him. Hey yeah, every, every day.
Oh yeah, every day. Oh, happy day. Oh, happy day. Oh, happy day. Yeah, happy day.
When Jesus washes, when Jesus washes me. When Jesus washes, when Jesus washes me. When Jesus washes, when Jesus washes me.
Now I love that because as you can see, obviously from the beginning, the tentative feeling and all of that, but then all of a sudden they get caught up. In what they’re singing. I just absolutely love that because it not only changes them, but it changes the audience, right? And I think that’s the message that’s found here. I honestly do.
I believe that if you experience conversion, it’s a happy day. Don’t you? Don’t you agree with that? The day that Jesus washed our sins away, how could that not be but a happy day? And if you’ve experienced that, that good news, that good news of happiness, it’s gonna make you happy.
It’s gonna make you happy unless you haven’t experienced the good news of happiness. And that’s another question, right? But if you’ve experienced the good news of happiness and you live in light of the good news of happiness, it’s going to change your demeanor. It’s gonna change your outlook. It’s gonna change your perspective.
On what’s happening to you right now. Chrysostom, who lived in 400 AD, said, all life is a festival since the Son of God has redeemed you. If God has redeemed you, if God has saved you, then the rest of life is a festival. It’s a happy day. It’s a celebration because happiness comes to those who embrace the good news.
That’s essentially the message of this passage. Happiness comes to those who embrace the good news. I like what Robert Hodgkin says about this. Christians ought to be celebrating constantly. We ought to be preoccupied with parties, banquets, feasts, and merriment.
You know, you like that idea? Yeah, preoccupied with parties. We ought to give ourselves over to celebrations of joy because we have been liberated from the fear of life and the fear of death. I love that phrase. We’ve been liberated from the fear of how to live this life or living this life without confidence in the Lord’s plan.
That’s all. We’ve liberated from that and the fear of death. We ought to attract people to church quite literally by the sheer pleasure of being a Christian. You know, one of the things that Randy Alcorn makes very clear in this book is that we have removed, unfortunately, happiness from the church. And that happiness is something that happens out there and it doesn’t happen in the church.
And he makes a strong point to say, and in removing this, we have removed one of the strong witnesses that the church has, that the church has good news of happiness that can transform people. It transforms them initially so that when you come to faith in Jesus Christ, you’re going to experience the good news of happiness. And it’s going to be a happy day for you. And I’m sure that there are many of us that are sitting here this morning that would say that about our conversion experience. We can go back to our conversion experience and say, the day that I came to faith in Jesus Christ, that was a happy day.
But it’s not meant to only be for the day that we come to faith in Jesus Christ. Happiness should be something that we could experience every day, day in and day out. And you say, how is that possible? By rehearsing. By remembering, by reflecting on what we have found in Jesus Christ.
That if we go back over and over again to the message of Christmas, and it’s wonderful that we have one time of year where we focus on the message of Christmas, but the message of Christmas, if it’s continual, a part of our lives, continually a part of our lives, that’s going to produce in us happiness, the good news of happiness, or the good news of great joy. Unless, listen, unless this good news becomes old news. And if this good news becomes old news, then yeah, probably we’re not benefiting by the happiness that is found in the good news. It’s kind of like recently I had lunch over at Google with one of our YoPros, one of the friends that works over there. And if you’ve ever had lunch over at Google, like other tech companies, they give the food away to their employees.
And I was a guest, so I was able to enjoy free food. And I’ll go wherever there’s free food. So, you know, if you work at a company and they have free food, I’ll come to your company too. Just, you know, let me know, we’ll get it on the calendar. And so I went in to this food venue that’s got all these choices in there.
If you’ve ever been over there, you know what I’m talking about. Some of you that work over there, But you know, one of the things that could happen if you work there is that you could lose the happiness that’s connected to eating in that place where they give you free food. See, for me, it was an absolute delight. I loved it. I even commented to my friend, this is so cool.
Do you realize? I said, do you realize what you have here? Do you realize how good of a deal this is? And sometimes when you have this and you have it day in and day out and day in and day out, guess what? The good news becomes old news.
It becomes old news, and you don’t see it that way anymore, and you no longer experience the happiness that’s connected to this news. You know how to get that back? Gratitude. Gratitude. You see, as our gratitude goes up, As our gratitude goes up for what the Lord has done for us, Jesus Christ the Savior came into the world because God so loved the world and he wanted a relationship with us.
If that’s not enough to give you some gratitude, something’s wrong. That’s a happy day just to reflect on that one. And that every one of us in receiving Jesus Christ and receiving this gift, not something that we earn or deserve, that when we receive this gift, Our sins, all of them are washed away. All of them are forgiven. That’s a happy day, right?
And it’s not just an initial happy day, it’s a continual happy day. C.S. Lewis said, do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose.
For a lot of us, that’s where our happiness camps. It’s camped in things that we can lose. It’s not to say, you know, if it’s a happy experience, don’t enjoy it. That’s not— he’s not saying that. Fine.
We’re going to experience a lot of things in life that will bring happiness to us. But what Lewis is saying is don’t let your happiness depend on those things. There’s something better that you can live on when it comes to happiness, and that is This new life that’s found in Jesus Christ. And this life, when you come into relationship with God through Jesus Christ, that’s something that can’t be taken away. I had a friend down there in Southern California.
Whenever we would pray, he would rehearse in his mind the good news of happiness. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I’ve come to realize it since. He would say things in his prayer like, thank you, God, that no matter what happens today, that no matter what happens, if I put my head on my pillow tonight and I die, I’m going to spend eternity with you.
You say, what a morbid thought! No, are you kidding? He was rehearsing the good news of happiness. He was rehearsing the life that he has in Christ. He was not allowing the good news to become old news.
And through his gratitude, he was actually, if you will, through rehearsing that, putting himself into a position to experience the happiness that comes from Jesus Christ. So this is a wonderful, wonderful passage. Embrace the good news of happiness. Is found in Jesus Christ, not just once, but embrace that good news time and time and time and time again. Go out and throw some more parties.
Let’s pray. Father, thanks for this special focus that is so much a part of Christmas that in the first announcement You said there is good news that’s coming, and it is good news that’s going to bring great joy. And we are so thankful, God, for the happiness and joy that you bring. May we experience that not just once or twice in our life, but may we experience it daily. And so even today, as we reflect on a message that’s so much a part of this year, may we not only find joy and happiness in the message today, but may it bring us joy and happiness every day for as long as we live.
And may I just say before I end this prayer, if you’ve never come to faith in Jesus Christ, you’d never by faith receive the good news of happiness. The offer is still there. There’s a gift that’s there for you to take. You can’t pay for it. You can’t earn it.
You can’t deserve it. It’s a gift, and God wants you to receive it. He’s given it, and he asks you to receive it by faith, to believe in Jesus as your personal Savior. And if you’ve never done that, We invite you to do that even right now. Just tell God, Lord, I want this, this gift.
I want a new life with you, and I thank you that you’ve made it possible through your Son Jesus.
Please adopt me into your family. Forgive me of my sins.
I want to follow your leading. Make me the kind of person you want me to be. God hears prayers like that. And if that’s your prayer this morning, then you just became a member of his family by receiving the gift. And we rejoice and celebrate with you.
We’d love to help you. Talk to us after the service so we can help you get started in this new life in Christ. Father, thank you for this season of celebration. May we celebrate it to its full. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Well, we’ll have our team come back up and sing a final song that obviously ties in with the joy that’s ours in Christ. And I trust as we sing this song this morning, we sing it with hearts filled with thanksgiving. And then we go out and we live in front of people the good news of joy, the good news of happiness. It will have an impact on the lives of people. Christiana Tsai used to live in China.
She grew up in a rich family. She came to believe in Jesus Christ as her personal Savior because of some missionaries that were running a school there. She came to faith. She grew up in a Buddhist family. After she came to faith, her family disowned her.
They They hated what she had done. They took her Bible and tore it up. But her brother saw a difference. He said to her, there’s something about you that’s different. You are happier.
What is it? And she shared with him that she was happier because of Jesus Christ. It wasn’t a prophecy that convinced her brother. It wasn’t, you know, a Bible study that convinced her brother, even though those are all good, obviously. It was the happiness that was now a part of her life.
And we have the privilege of going out and helping people see that happiness as we continue to experience that happiness that’s found in Christ day after day. So let’s, Ask God to help us live that way in light of a world that— in the midst of a world that so desperately needs light. Amen. Well, let’s sing this song from our hearts.
