Well, good morning again. And hey, let me just start this morning by just giving an incredibly big shout out to our student pastor Chip Paul, for last week just walking us through what it looks like just to live not necessarily the American dream. But just the dream that God gives us and walking us through that Psalms last week. I want you to do something for me this morning. I want you to go ahead and get to the book of Psalms for me. All right?  I want you to get there. If you're new to church, just open it into the middle of your Bible. It usually falls about that spot. If you open to Corinthians, that means you just have a New Testament, and it's probably somewhere on the back side, just in case, you're wondering that.  We've been walking through this book of the Bible called Psalms. And what we've been doing is showing that 3000 years ago, this book was written to a group of believers to kind of generations of believers to give them some ideas of how to walk their faith out.  How to praise God, and really, truly tell Him who He is to them. And it's been incredibly just rich this summer.  I'll just confess from my own life, just to be walking through this book, again, to be walking through the praises of God, the promises of God and who God is and it's shown me that even more today, than really I feel like ever,  this book this 3000 years old is incredibly relevant. It's incredibly relevant to where we're walking in today's society. I mean, because really isn't there like some stuff going down right now? I mean, you guys been noticing that things are a little heavy outside In the world, have you been noticing there's maybe a little bit of difference in culture right now that there may be a little tension between you and some of your friends right now. I mean, I don't know about you, but I don't think you can be in the middle anymore. I don't know what happened to just kind of being able to kind of go, hey, I love everybody. You can't do that anymore. Evidently, is what I'm seeing online. It's just kind of not there anymore.

But the book of Psalms answers, one of life's biggest questions that I feel like that we're walking in right now. And we're gonna look at that question this morning. And it's the question of what does it take to be happy? What does it take to be happy? Because here's what I know. Now many of you are alright, there it is. I'm just kidding. It's not us it's for somebody else. You can take some notes and send them to your friends. All right? Um, but here's what I know. Man, this is a big question in life. And the reality is, can you ever really be happy? I mean, let me make it real personal, are you? I mean, are you happy right now? Let me kind of just dive a little bit farther.  If nothing changed in your current circumstance, all right looking at your current life right now, if nothing changed, if your relationship status didn't change, which is pretty easy for some of us and not so easy for the others. If your current job situation, if your current friendship group, if your current health, if from this point forward, if it never changed, could you be happy? 

Could you be happy? You know what, I was talking to someone this week that goes to this church. I'm not gonna mention who it is, or even if, or whatever. But here I asked them this week, I was like and they were like, hey, what are you talking about this week? I was telling them and we were talking about what it looks like to be happy and how that works. And they said, Matt, I can just be real honest with you. I'm not sure I've ever really truly been completely happy. And I was like, wow, that's pretty strong. You know, you might not fall into that category. But you may fall into the category that you fall in one of the polar opposites that one day you are like the highest of the high person on the planet. But the next day, you're like, your family stays away from you.  You know, the people that I'm talking about, right? That either you are high of high or low of low that there is no middle ground. Or let me ask you this. I mean, do you find yourself just slipping deeper and deeper and deeper and kind of thinking this just can't even happen? You know, this is a big question. I mean, it really is a big question. The more I thought about it over the last couple of weeks, the more I just saw that this is really big. It's so big. If I really want to know something is big in life, do you know how I can figure out if it's big, and if people are asking it, I go online, I click onto my browser, and I go to Google and I start to type something you know what I'm talking about, right? When you start to type something and there's this auto populate in Google and I took a picture of it this week because I think they're gonna think I'm lying. Look at this right here this week I started typing the word, "How can I", and look at what popped up? How can I be happy? How can I be happy? Now I need to confess I was really looking at how can I lose weight? But this is just kind of what popped up on my auto correct this week,  but it shows that there's just so many,  "How can I", I mean, there's a lot of funny ones there.

How can I be happy alone?

That one sounds pretty, um, how can I be rich? That's valid? I get it. I mean, how can I? That just fell off right there. They were done asking that one. But it's such a relevant question today because we're all asking it. And here's the point. The Book of Psalms, chapter one. The first word in the whole book, I  want you to see it this morning because it's going to show that this is a big deal. I want you to see what it says look at what it says Psalms 1:1. First word says this, "Blessed is the man". It says, "Blessed is the man".  Now you could put the word woman ahead of that, you could put the word girl or boy, whatever works. All right?  All the pronouns work there. But here's what I want you to see this word blessed right here is literally the Hebrew word ashray. Ashray.  If you want to sound smart, you can write that out to the side somewhere. And what that Hebrew word ashray means is it literally means happy. It literally means happy. So this whole chapter of Psalms that starts off with this idea of happiness.  Of happiness.  Did you know that there's nothing on this planet that God wants more than for those that He has a relationship with, for those to be happy, for them to be blessed. But we've lost this somewhere. In fact, many scholars believe that the first chapter of the book of Psalms is really a prologue to the rest of the book. 

Now, for those of you that aren't readers, if you just kind of skipped that on the Kindle app, the prologue kind of gives you an idea of what's coming up to the rest of the book, it gives you the theme, it gives you the promise, it gives you where it's going, and scholars says this whole chapter, or this whole Psalm is laying out one of the largest themes through the whole book, the longest book of the entire Bible. And so here's the question, How can I be happy? Can I? Now this is the point many of you that have been hanging out in church go, well, Matt, we know what you're gonna say. And we've been in Sunday School long enough, there's only two answers, right? Moses and Jesus. If you answer one of those two things, you're gonna get it right. And I get that. I mean, that's kind of where we're going. But there's more to this Psalm than that. And I want you to see because here's the thing, I just want to build the case right here. Happiness is hard. It's hard. Happiness is hard in a fallen world, because we don't gravitate towards happiness. And in fact, I've heard some people kind of describe happiness like this. They'll say that when you're young,  when you're a young man like myself in my 20s when you're young, um, some of you all will get that at lunch.  When you're young, you think that happiness is inevitable? You think that.   I mean, you really do. So if you're like, yeah, I remember those days, right?

You think that as long as you're faithful, as long as you keep pressing, and you'll meet the one, right?  You'll, fall into the career, everything will line itself up, and you're gonna live this happily ever after life, right? You think that when we're young, right, when we're young, we think that but when we're old, happiness moves from inevitable to unattainable. And you don't really know when that swap is, but you just wake up one day and you become your mother or your father and you're like, where did this come from? I don't even know how this happened. I've never heard that come out of my mouth before but it did. Why?  Because we grow up in this mindset that if I'm just faithful, I'm gonna be happy. And then all of a sudden, one day something happens and a switch is flipped in our mind. And then we're like, well, happiness is just unattainable. Just give up.

I mean, you've met people like this. All right, not in this church. Other places you've met people that this is their minds. I've heard other people describe this kind of contrast is kind of like, a Hallmark movie versus Hamlet. All right? Can you see where I'm going with this? I mean, think about a Hallmark movie for just a minute. You gotta love them. I mean, you gotta love them. Everybody that meets gets married. The town is always saved. The old uncle always gives it to the rich little guy that doesn't really deserve it. And then everybody lives happily ever after in a town that is now celebrating Christmas all year long. All right, that's what always happens in a Hallmark movie, right? But what about Hamlet? What about Hamlet? Spoiler alert for some of you that have never read it before, everyone dies. Every person in the whole play dies. Now, let me show you this. All right? When you're young and naive, you think life is kind of like a Hallmark movie and it's all just gonna work out. But as you get older, something happens inside of you. And you start living your life like it's really just like Hamlet, like everybody's just gonna die and just go away one day. Well, here's the thing. The Bible gives us a principle in the Psalm that can split those two. And let me just give it to you this morning. Here's the principle that we're going to kind of lay out for the morning. And it's this, the principle is that happiness is neither inevitable or unattainable. But it's possible. Now, let me say it again, the Bible says that happiness, it's neither inevitable. It's not just gonna happen to you.  You're not just gonna fall into it. 

But it's also not unattainable. All right? In other words, you can get there. It's possible. It's possible. So what I want us to do is I want us to walk through this Psalm because it's gonna give us some ideas on this content. Psalms 1:1.  Now for those of you that are new to church, just remember to keep the "P" silent or you'll sound like a rookie. When you say what about those "P" Psalms.  All right?   And, what is a Psalm anyway?   I kind of literally heard someone say that and I was like you don't do this a lot,  do ya?

You can basically look at Psalms like this. They're kind of like the top 150 greatest hits of ancient Israel. All right?  That's kind of what the Psalms were. They were just songs they used to praise who God was. Let's read this together. Psalms 1:1. It says, "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly." Now that's already stepping on some toes.  "Nor stands in the way of sinners nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. And on His law, he meditates on it day and night."  Verse 3, "He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season and its leaf does not wither in all he does, he prospers."  Verse 4,  "The ungodly are not so, but they're like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the ungodly will not stand in the judgment nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly,"  it says.  What does it say?  "Will perish." 

Now what does the Psalmist do in this Psalm? All right, we got to look overall at the Psalmist. What he does is, he begins to contrast the godly life and the ungodly life. And he says that those that live in godliness, what do they do? He says, they're like trees with these roots that are diving deep into the water and they bear fruit year after year, after year, they prosper in all that they do, and they're always flourishing. And then he gives us the other contrast to the story and he says, but the ungodly are like chaff. Now, chaff is not a word that we use a whole lot but chaff is literally the outside of a seed. It's the light coating that is around the wheat seed or the barley seed. And what would happen is, they had to separate the wheat from the chaff so they could sell it. So all they would have to do is put it all in a big basket, throw it up in the air and the slightest, awe I love this word picture, the slightest little breeze would blow away the chaff. And the good stuff would fall back down into its place, and the chap would just be blown away. And they didn't even worry about cleaning it up, because it was so light that they didn't even find it after that. You're seeing the picture, right? You're seeing it.  Godly life planted, chaff, blown away and forgotten about. It's what the Psalmist is given us right here. And he uses this metaphor of the seed to show us how those who know God, can be happy in a way that those who do not know God cannot be happy. And what he does is he starts by identifying two things that will never make us happy. And these two things are pretty prominent. He gives it to us pretty plainly. He says, first of all that you will not be happy when your happiness he says, number one is built on your circumstances. You're not gonna be happy.  I promise you, I will bet you a 50 spot can't do that. I will. I will shake your hand over this. All right?   You're never gonna be happy. You're not. 

When your happiness is based on your circumstances, it's just not gonna work. Why? Because the Psalmist tells us something that we know that we don't like to admit, the Psalmist assumes and he tells us just like the rest of the Bible that your life, listen to me is gonna go through seasons. Your life is going through seasons, your life is not going to be a constant flow in one direction. It's not going to happen. Look at verse three, he tells us he says this in verse three. He talks about the godly, "He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields his fruit in season and its leaf does not wither and all that he does, prospers." Now what the psalmist says is he says that there are going to be some seasons of your life where the environment is incredibly conducive to growth and happiness and to joy and to bounty. And he says those spring and summer seasons take advantage of them. But he also says there's going to be winter seasons that threatened to kill you, that threatened to destroy you. But there's gonna be drought seasons that threatened to just make you crumple up and starve and become brittle in your life. Hear me when I say this, you cannot cut out the winter seasons of your life. You can't.  I know you're like, man, you're yelling.  Yeah I'm yelling,  because this is big. You can't cut the winter seasons out of your life. You can't do it. No matter how hard you try. No matter how much money you have, no matter how good your family is.  It is not going to happen. It's not and if your happiness is dependent upon you being in a summer season of your life, you are rarely going to be there. You're rarely going to get there. 

In fact, there's a book and I would recommend it if you want some light reading. There's a book by Tim Keller called, "Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering." This is some light reading right? Um, and he says, and rightfully so, I love this. He says that the modern day approach to happiness, he says, is to remove all suffering.  He says that we should, the culture says that we just avoid pain and if you can't avoid it just sedate it or eliminate it all together in your life.  And here's the deal, that's a great goal. All right? That's a great goal. But I want you to hear this quote that he has later on in the book Keller says this, "No amount of money, power or planning can prevent bereavement, dire illness, relationship betrayal, financial disaster or a host of other troubles from entering your life." Look at what he says, "Human life is fatally fragile and subject to forces beyond our power." What does he say, to manage? The point he's making here, is he's saying that you will never have full success at removing all of the obstacles or all of the winter and drought seasons from your life, it's not gonna happen if that is your strategy for joy. If that's your strategy for happiness, you're not going to be able to live in a much.  You may hit it every now and then.

But it's not going to happen very often. See if your happiness strategy, alright, because it's a strategy. If your happiness strategy is getting into the summer season of your marriage, or getting into the summer season of your schooling, or getting into the summer season of your health, or getting into the summer season of your career, or getting into the summer season of your friend group. If that is your happiness strategy, you're rarely going to get there.  Why?  Because it's based on your circumstances. But that's culture. That's how culture tells us to do it, isn't it?  In fact some of you,  I'm gonna lose a lot of credibility for this, but I don't care. Here's the thing.  This week I looked up, on wiki how, all right?  Wiki how, it's like the culmination of all earthly wisdom. Um, I looked up on wiki how this week how to be happy. I just wanted to know right? How do I be happy? Let me give you the top eight because I think they're pretty incredible on the human races collective wisdom right here. 

Number one, it says this; be optimistic. Just be optimistic. But here's the thing. What if your life is a huge mess? You know? I mean, what if there's problems that you just can't? You can't fix them? You can ignore that being optimistic. Wow, that's a great goal. It doesn't. It doesn't get you there. Right? Number two, I love it. They get better every time; follow your gut. 

That's the number two way that all humanity says that we should be happy except for the fact that Jeremiah told us the heart is deceitful above all, all right? I mean, you ever met a person that follow their heart and it didn't go right Hmm. Yes, lots of them Miley Cyrus, I mean, lots of them right?  I probably shouldn't have said that.  

Here's number three. Let's keep moving or I'm gonna get into a lot of trouble. Number three, here it is; Own yourself.  Own yourself. I mean, don't apologize for who you are just be you. What if you're a terrible person?  That's doesn't really work out. We need to ignore that.

Number four; Make enough money it says, if you want to be happy, make enough money to fulfill your basic needs.  Except for the fact that most of the miserable people that I know have most of their needs met and so that doesn't really work. 

Here's number five, I love this one; Treat your body like it deserves to be happy. Because cancer never hits happy people right? I mean, no, that doesn't work. Number six; Stay close to family and friends. Now that sounds really good until your family's like a jerk. I mean, you no? And, that doesn't work all the time. You don't get to choose them. You're born to them and there it is, or what if they leave you or one of your family leaves you that doesn't work. Here's number seven. I love this one; Have deep and meaningful relationships. Unless you're depressed or sad, and you don't want anything to do with anybody, so it doesn't, that one doesn't work. And here's my favorite one out of the whole, collective mankind's wisdom on how to be happy; Smile, just smile. If you can't do the rest of it, just fake it. I mean, just fake all of it. 

Here's the deal. We laugh at those. But that's how many of us operate, is it not? That's really how most of us, if we were to lump it in together, that's how most of us find our happiness. And I mean, seriously, is this the best that we have in all mankind? Here's the question.  Is your happiness dependent upon your happenings? Because if it is, you need something deeper to drive your root into. You see, David would say it like this.  

He says in Psalms 4, "You have put more joy in my heart God than they have when their grain and their wine abound."  What does David say?  He says, my happiness is not based on me having all I need having all the grain and having all the wine, he says no, no, no, my happiness, he says, I have more joy in my heart because who God is then those people have even when their life is flourishing, I have all the joy that I need. And David says, I hate when I'm in a season where my grain and my wine do not abound. David says, I still have joy. I still have happiness. And can I just tell you for the Christians in the room and for the Christians that are watching online right now. It's at those points in life where you have nothing else to find joy in, that God grows you the most to see that it is only in Him that you find sustainable joy. For the Christian, seasons of drought actually deepen our joy levels because we see that at this moment, Christ is all we have. So he says number one, you're not gonna be happy if you find your happiness in your circumstances.

But number two, he says this, you will not be happy he says when you have no anchor point outside of yourself. Look at the Psalm, I love it you will not be happy when you have no anchor point that is not you. Now, this gets a little heavy right here, right? Because what are we taught? We're taught to rely on us to be us that we are the makers of our destiny that we are the king in charge of our lives. But here's the thing, the truly happy person, what does the Bible say right here? It's like a tree whose deep roots anchor him? Now what is that saying? It's attacking one of the biggest myths of our whole culture. And it's the myth of this that happiness comes from complete freedom. You see, there's this myth that we live in that for some reason, we believe that happiness comes from complete freedom. That if nobody's telling me what to do if I'm making my own rules, if I'm answering to no one, you know, you've said these things before, right? I can't wait to get out of the house so that I can fill in the blanks. I can make my own rules. I can make my own meaning. But here's the thing. C.S. Lewis described it like a fish that decides it wants to be free by escaping the ocean. And he said, fish swim around one day flop out of the ocean onto the shore one day and is the fish free from being in the ocean? Well, yes. Is he happy? No. C.S. Lewis said because the fish was created for water.  Man, draw that down to who we are. 

When we decide to drive our roots into who Jesus is and not flop ourselves up into the freedom of life, we figure out that we are created for God by God, and it's only in those moments that we can walk in true joy. You and I are made for God. You'll never be free and happy without Him. Look at what the Psalmist says he unpacks this for us in verse four. It's not me look at it. It says this, "The ungodly are not so." All right, he's contrasting here.  "But they're like chaff that the wind drives away." In other words when you're not anchored into something outside of yourselves, there will be a point in your life where you're forgotten, where you're blown away, where nothing matters and no anchor outside of your life means there's no real significance. He keeps going in verse five, if it wasn't enough not to be significant on this planet, look at verse five.  It says, "The ungodly will not survive the judgment." 

So not only will you be swept away, and nothing on this planet, the Bible says there comes a point in which man will be judged will die and be judged and God is going to either say to us forgiven or condemned.  And what it's saying here is you think it's bad to be insignificant on this planet? What if you're insignificant in eternity? And it only comes from being anchored in who Jesus is from nothing else. So what's the Psalmist do,  he's given us these two ways to live. I love the wisdom here, cuz he's saying that the man that lives abundantly with this never ceasing joy through all the seasons with eternal significance and eternal glory has driven his roots deep. The man who's living on his own trying to do this on his own as I chaff that is blown away, not ever even remembered. So there's two ways to live. And the question is which way do you want to live? It's all through the Psalms. Here's one more thing that the Psalmist does before we close, and that's just a preacher trick to we're not closing.  The Psalmist here, he gives us not only the warning, you know, remember when your parents would always just warn you and not tell you how to do it. Right?

Well, the Psalmist he gives us the secret here to how to really be happy. And, he says this to us, he says, hey, if you really want to be happy, he says the secret to being really happy,  he says is to let your mind, your behavior and your full identity be shaped by God. He tells us.  He gives us the case, right? He lays out the contrast and then he gives us this idea. Hey, if you will, if you let your mind, your behavior and your full identity be shaped by God, is at that moment you will find yourself in the happiness of God. See, it's not enough to simply say that I'm Christian or go to church or try Jesus or whatever. He says, no, no, that's not enough. Look at verse one. He says this, "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly." What is he talking about there? He's talking about the way you think. He's saying, listen, you've got to think differently to drive your life down in to Jesus.  He says this, he keeps going nor stands in the way of sinners. What's that? He's talking about how we behave. He's laying out the case, right? It's how we think is counsel, how we behave is where we're standing and then what does he say nor sits in the seat of scoffers. That doesn't make a lot of sense to us. But as a Jewish person, you would realize right here that you sit where you feel you belong.

The old people sat with the old people, the young people sat with the young people, the rich sat with the rich, the young, or the poor, sat with the poor, the influential with the influential. So when you sat down, it was a sense of you saying, this is where I belong. And what the Psalmist is saying is when you put together your thinking and your behavior, and where you are sitting and belonging, your identity is now wrapped inside the root of who God wants for your life. When you combine these things, that's your identity. But the problem is, we don't always combine all those things. We want to live maybe one of them, maybe two of them, but not the rest of them. You see, it's not enough just to come to church. He says, listen, if you want to be shaped in to who the man or woman of God is, he says, listen, you've got to let all of these things in your identity be wrapped around it. And then he says, but you need to be serious about two things. And he lays it out for us right here,he says we all need to be shaped by being more serious about two things and the first thing he says is the word of God.  He says you got to be shaped by the word of God. Look at verse 2 it says, "But his delight is in the law of the Lord."  

Look at the contrast that you find? He's not walking with the scoffers he's not sitting in judgment? What is he doing? He's delighting in the law of the Lord and on his law, he meditates on it day and night. I love the two words meditate and delight.  Delight is an incredible word because it just means that I find my richness. And I desire it. Did you know that meditation is not duty? It's something you desire to do? Something that you want to do.  You can equate this to kind of like remember when you first started dating, or maybe if you're married your spouse, or maybe you're together with somebody or maybe like there was that one time you had that date? I'm not sure,  but remember when you started dating, and they wrote you a letter, just because?  Do you still do that? I guess, I don't know. Maybe it's just texting you a letter now? I don't know. You wouldn't just read that letter once. Man, you put that thing somewhere where you could pull it out anytime you wanted to.  Nobody had to tell you to keep reading that right? Nobody had to tell you to keep going back to it and back to it. No, no. Why? Because you wanted to read it. You wanted to meditate. You know what meditate, it really meditate just means that you just want to get everything out of it that you can and delight in to it. 

The idea is that the word of God, he's saying becomes such a delight to you that you begin to lose the seductions of the world. That's what the root does for you. That's why rules never work. That's why rules and obligation in the Christian life, it doesn't work. I can't get up here and just hammer you and tell you to live better. It doesn't work until you figure out that nothing else is going to get you to the point of life being satisfying to you. There's nothing else I can do. But here's how you can do it. You can begin to meditate on the Word of God. You can begin to read the Word of God. Some of you have never experienced this. You're still in the rules based life where you're just like, oh, they tell me I need to read my Bible. Listen, if you're still in that stage, you're not gonna find the joy until you begin to desire it.  Listen to what Jonathan Edwards says.  Jonathan Edwards a long time ago pastored revivals.  A Puritan pastor he says, "Sometimes only mentioning a single word will cause my heart to burn within me. Only seeing the name of Jesus Christ, or some attribute of God will suddenly make my heart burn. And God will suddenly appear glorious to me, making me have exalting thoughts of him. When I enjoy the sweetness, it seems to carry me above the thoughts of my own estate. It seems that at such times, I'm at such a loss that I cannot bear it. And I cannot bring myself to take my eye from the glorious present object to turn it to myself for my own interests." You see, that's what happens when you begin to meditate on the word. It begins to take your eyes. What does it say?  When the things of this earth go strangely dim.   What?  In the light of his,  what?  Glory and grace. That's what he's talking about. You say Matt, how do I do that? The first thing you do is just to confess your cold heart to God and quit faking it. Can we please just quit faking it?

And just say God, I want this. God I need this.  God I need you to do this me.  A.W. Tozer did it by this prayer. And I've had this prayer for a long time every now and then pull it out. Listen to this prayer by Tozer he says," Oh God, I have tasted thy goodness and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I'm painfully conscious of my need for further grace and I'm ashamed of my lack of desire, oh God. And I want to want thee.   I long to be filled with longing.  My thirst to be made thirsty or still.  God give me the grace to rise up and follow thee. Now that's a prayer. You want to begin to drive your roots down into who God is? You begin to confess that.  You begin to meditate on his word. Literally the word meditation is just a mumble it back to yourself like a crazy person. That's what it means over and over and over. I heard one theologian describe it as how a cow chews his cud to get every single bit of vitamin out of that grass. That's what meditating on the Word of God is. But he says, you want to get serious about the Word of God. But then number two, he says, get serious about the people of God. Get serious about the people of God.

And he gives us this contrast of how the wicked lives.  Psalms 1:1 says, "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, who stands not in the way of sinners, who sits in the seat of scoffers," and then he contrasts it by saying, "But those that surround themselves with the Word of God and the people of God will flourish, even in seasons of drought." Listen, I don't know about you, but that's what I want. Can I just tell you your friends are going to be the future you.  And, if you're not surrounding yourself with the people of God, you're gonna become the average of the five people that are around you the most.   You really are. You parents, can I  just tell you over and over again, you take three or five of your kids closest friends and in two years from now, they'll be the average of those friends.   I guarantee you it happens over and over and over again, just where it happens. You listen, the church is not just an event that we come to. It's a place that we drive our lives into the lives of other believers to walk in this life together. And even during a pandemic. So many ways to do this. He says if you want joy in your life, attach yourself to the Word of God, attach yourself to the people of God, and there's so much joy. Listen to what David said in Psalm 16. He said, "God, you make known to me the path of life and you fill me with joy in your presence with eternal pleasures at your right hand."

You know what that means? That means that God not only does he fill you, you can't get any more when you're filled. But He makes the joys eternal. You know, it reminded me this week that that's the life that I want to live. I want to live a life that God has filled me with his joys and when He is reminded me that they are eternal, I don't want to live the life that Spurgeon said is incredibly miserable. You know, the most miserable people on this planet are?   It's people that are just enough like God to be miserable in the world, but are just enough like the world to be miserable with the people of God. That's a thought right there, isn't it?

And what David is telling us is you don't have to walk like that. What the Psalmist is saying is that you don't have to be that.  You can drive your route to find your identity, not in your circumstances, not in yourself, but in something that is planted and makes you produce fruit. I'm doing everything but begging you to say this, God wants to put joy in your life this week. But it's gonna take you disconnecting from some of the things that are stealing it from you. You know what some of those things are? Might be what you're watching?  Might be the news station you're glued to? Might be the social media you're scrolling? It might be some of life's decisions that really don't make a difference? What God's telling us is to plant  your life in the things that matter. And then the rest of it is going to fall into place to drive your roots into Him.

Here's the question. Have you ever done that before? Have you ever come to a point in your life where you've put your stuff and say, God, I'm done with me, because me did not work. But God, I need you to take control.

Now, you can do that right now.

You know what?  God is so amazingly graceful and so amazingly loving that He says that if you will confess your mouth, that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart, that God raised Him from the dead, that you can be saved. There's a moment in our lives where something inside of us is telling us that this life is not about me. And that's the Holy Spirit beginning to call you into a relationship with Him. Maybe that's today for you. Maybe through the midst of the whole craziness of this pandemic. And maybe through the midst of this today, you see that there's true joy, happiness and satisfaction in the planting of your life in Jesus. Because you're saying, Man, that's the life that I need. Listen, if that's you today, all you got to do is just pray. God, I need you. I'm asking You to forgive me. I'm asking You to come into my life. Make me a believer. Make me a follower of You. If that's you today, man we'd love to hear from you later on today. You know what, maybe today you're on the other end of the fence. You've been a believer for a long time, but you just about withered out. Maybe today's the day that you plant your life back into the deep roots of who God is and His Gospel. You know, we're gonna walk into a time of communion here. And, you know, at first glance, it's kind of weird to swap over from this message to Communion, the Lord's Supper, but it's really not, and here's why.

If we're basing our life on circumstances, this means nothing right? Because Christ was put on a cross and He died. The circumstances surrounding this, from an earthly point of view, are very grim. But can I tell you, this is the source of our happiness. It's the source of our love. It's the source of our life. Why? Because Christ went to the cross for us. He was beaten, He was bloodied. He died for my sins, but He didn't stay that way. He rose, He rose. So listen, whether you're at home joining us, man, we want you to join in with this time of the Lord's Supper, we know that you don't have one of these little self contained snack packs, but the rest of us do. We want you to grab whatever you have at home, whether it be crackers and some kind of juice or water or whatever it is, and, and we're going to celebrate this time together this morning because it's incredibly valid for us to see that this circumstance of death did not steal the joy that is in our lives. In fact, let me read it to you out of Corinthians Paul says it like this.  If there's any man if there's any example of us having joy in hard times this is it right? 

This is what Paul said. He said, "The Lord Jesus on the night He was betrayed took bread and when He had given thanks, He broke it. And He said, This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of Me.

In the same way after supper, He took the cup saying, this cup is the new covenant of My blood and whenever you drink of it, remember Me? For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes again."  You know what this is doing with us? This is forcing us to look back at what Christ has done for us. Do you know this is just for believers? No offense to those of you that don't know Jesus.  We love you, but Jesus left this for us. As part of the family to be able to celebrate His broken body and blood allows us to look back. It allows us to look right now in our lives. So what Christ is doing in us and it also just allows us to look forward at who Christ is and what He's going to be for us in our lives.

So this morning, as we walk into this time, I'm just praying that today, this shows you that circumstances don't make the difference,  Christ does. You know, if you take this little pack and you kind of push this tab down, there's two little tabs there and keep you from spilling it all over yourself.  And you can pull the top one off first and grab the bread and then you can pull the bottom and off and we're gonna have a little short time of worship. For those of you at home. We want to give you time to grab your elements and sit with your family and have this moment together. It will be a little bit awkward, maybe but that's okay. It's your family celebrating this together this symbol of who Christ is and what He's done for us. 

Lord Jesus As we walk into this moment today, God we ask you to remind us of who you are. remind us of your broken body remind us of your blood. And remind us that no matter what life tells us that you have sealed us in Your love, in Your grace.  It is in Your name we pray Jesus. Amen. 

As we worship together and as your heart gets in a position to where you need to do this, feel free on your own time to take the bread and take the juice and I'll be back in just a minute.