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Well, I have some news for you this morning that I'm gonna try and break softly. Christmas is over. And uh and that's a sad thing for some of us and a happy thing for others of us. Uh but whatever place you find yourself in this morning, staring down the bat barrel of Christmas 2015 being over, it does mean a couple of things, practically speaking. It means that 2015 is drawing to a very quick end, and it means that this this very week we get to start off with a brand spanking new year, 2016, right? And this time of year is one of those times of year that we typically try to evaluate things a little bit, or at least most of us do. I think some of us don't like evaluating things, but most of us take stock and think about, you know, what happened this year? What did I do this year? We ask all sorts of questions. We ask questions like, did I do anything that was meaningful this year? What did I accomplish? For those of us who like to scratch beneath the surface, we may ask questions like, what is fulfilling in my life? Or what do I need to do to find fulfillment, meaning, or purpose? Ultimately, all of us are asking a pretty simple question. We're asking a question of, am I happy? And if I'm not happy, how do I find happiness? This is a question that as humans we've asked for all of history. I believe that this isn't a new question. This is a question that has come to us throughout all of history. And it's a pretty logical question when you think about it. I don't know how many of you have been fortunate enough to watch the Lego movie that came out a year or two back. But the main character in the Lego movie, Emmett Brykowski, suitably named, who is a little Lego man, by the way, likes to run around his little world, his little universe, singing a song. His song is Everything Is Awesome, right? And as he's got his happy face on singing his everything is awesome song, I think some of us approach life much in the same way. We like to think that everything can and should be awesome and that we've got to keep our happy face plastered on. But the fact is that happiness we find in life is fleeting and reality bites, and we struggle with that. We struggle to find happiness, we struggle to find meaning, we struggle to find purpose. And like I said, this isn't a new new problem. As humans, we've asked this question of how do I find happiness, how do I find joy and peace and contentment for all of history. And God isn't surprised by that because he made us. And God has very intentionally placed certain scriptures and stories and verses and chapters in his word that talk specifically to this area. And so this morning, here we are at the start of a new year, or almost at the start of a new year. I feel like it's a very important time for us to go to God's Word and ask this question together. You know, where do we find happiness? Where do we find conversations about peace and contentment and joy and living the life that God's called us to live? And so this morning we're gonna turn to Psalms 112 and look together at a passage that I think speaks to this very well. So if you don't mind, find your Bibles and let's turn to Psalms 112. It's right in the middle of your Bible, if that's helpful for you guys. You'll find it there, and it's not a very long Psalm. We're gonna read the whole chapter, okay? So we'll get through it together. Psalms 112, we'll start in verse one. It'll be on the screen if you don't have a Bible in front of you. Hallelujah. Happy is the man who fears the Lord, taking great delight in his commands. His descendants will be powerful in the land. The generation of the upright will be blessed, wealth and riches are in his house, and his righteousness endures for ever. Light shines in the darkness for the upright. He is gracious, compassionate, and righteous. Good will come to a man who lends generously and conducts his business fairly. He will never be shaken, the righteous man will be remembered forever. He will not fear bad news, his heart is confident, trusting in the Lord, his heart is assured, he will not fear. In the end he will look in triumph on his foes. He distributes freely to the poor, his righteousness endures forever, his horn will be exalted in honor, the wicked man will see it and be angry, he will gnash his teeth in despair. The desire of the wicked man will come to nothing. Psalms 112 is interesting because it's it's kind of got these three segments to it. If you think of it in terms of food, which I like to think of things in terms of food, it's like a a three-course meal, right? You've got the first segment, and let's let's let's talk about these. The first segment is is a statement, it's a truth that we have. If you're filling in your blanks, that's the first fill-in-the-blank this morning. A truth is found in verse 1. And it's the key to this whole chapter. Now, I don't know if you notice this, but the chapter kind of actually starts in an interesting way. It says, hallelujah. That's the first word and exclamation mark. Now that word hallelujah means praise ye the Lord. It's actually an invitation and a call to praise God. That word hallelujah. And so essentially what it's saying is, hey, let's praise God. Let's talk about life, let's talk about happiness, let's talk about how we should be living our lives and what life can and should look like through the lens of realizing that it's all about God and all about his glory. A great way to start the psalm. Then it goes on and makes this truth statement, but it makes it in a very interesting way. Because what it does in this truth statement, which we're going to look at this morning, is it gives it to us in two oxymorons. Oxymots? Oxymorons, okay? An oxymoron, let's think back to English class. An oxymoron is a linguistic device, something we use in the English language, where you take two contradictory concepts, ideas, and you mash them together, right? So typically you wouldn't put these two things together, but we have in the English language. That's what an oxymoron is. I'll give you a couple of examples. If I said an exact estimate, that's an oxymoron, because is it exact or is it an estimate? I don't know. Another one I found this week as I was looking up oxymorons. Airline food. I think that's a good oxymoron. Like those two things don't really belong together. I've got one more for you. This one my wife's not going to like so much. Country music. That's an oxymoron to me, but uh, maybe not some of you, now that I've offended half the room. Uh oxymorons is where you bring two things that don't belong together together. And what we see here in God's word, it says, happy is the man who fears the Lord. Happiness and fear aren't two words that you would typically put together, right? And then it goes on in the second part of the sentence to say, and takes delight in God's commands. Like, delight and commands aren't two words that you would typically put together. Like, I don't know about you, but when I think about commands, I think about, okay, yes, sir, yes, ma'am, like, I'm just gonna do what I'm told to do, not yippee, like let's let's do this. And so you've got this this interesting truth statement with these two oxymorons in it, and we're gonna look at this in more detail because I think that there's a lot of good stuff in this truth statement, but before we do that, I want to go on and look at the second segment of the psalm. Because I think this second segment really kind of wets our appetite to understand the truth found in verse 1. If you look at verses two through nine, we have uh what what I would uh say is an articulation of the outcomes of fearing the Lord. It basically tells us, hey, these are the outcomes if you live by the truth that we've been talking about in verse one. So what does it say there in verses two through nine? Well, in verse two, it tells us that this person's descendants will be blessed. That sounds good. And then it goes on and talks about wealth, how that how this person has wealth, and I think when it's saying wealth, it's talking about, yeah, physical things, but also about spiritual wealth and well-being. It goes on and says, talks about enduring righteousness, how this person has clarity in the darkness. Verse 4, it says that. Verse 4 specifically says, light shines in the darkness for the upright. And I don't know about you, but that sounds kind of good to me. I'd like to live a life where I'm in a in a hard situation and I can really tell with discernment and clarity what's going on. It goes on though, and it says, a bit talks about some of the good characteristics flowing out of the life of this person who fears God. It says that they're gracious, they're compassionate, they're righteous, they're generous. All good stuff, right? And then it goes on and talks about how this person isn't shaken, they're not fearful, that they're remembered, they leave a legacy, that they're victorious. And ultimately in verse 9, it kind of summates all of this and says that they're honored. So as you read verses 2 through 9, I don't know about you, but I'm like, man, I want that stuff in my life. I want to be this type of person. It kind of creates in me a desire to live the type of life that's talked about in verses two through nine. But then the third segment of the psalm is kind of strange. Verse 10 is a weird one. The psalm ends a little strangely because what it does there is it presents an alternative for us to the truth. An alternative to the truth. It's this non-positive contrast of the wicked man, right? So it's like it's been talking this the first nine verses about the happy man, and then all of a sudden in verse 10, it contrasts it with the wicked man. And as you look at the two, it's kind of obvious to us, like, okay, yeah, I want to be the happy man. I don't want to be the wicked man. It'd be like us going to a group of kids this morning and saying, hey kids, do you want some ice cream to eat or some dog food? Like it it's obvious the choice that we want to make here. We want to be like the person talked about in verses one through nine. So let's go back and let's examine what this truth statement says in more detail. Let's reread verse one of Psalms 112. Here it is, one more time. Hallelujah. Happy is the man who fears the Lord, taking great delight in his commands. There's three key words in this truth statement that I'd like for us to look at this morning. The first one is this word happy. It says, happy is the man. Now, some of your translations, if you're reading along with us this morning, probably say blessed. This word happy and blessed can kind of be interchanged. Okay, I don't know if that kind of helps you in thinking about it, but blessed is the man who fears the Lord. And when it's used, it's used to denote, when it's used on a person, it denotes a state of happiness, a state of well-being. And it contains to it kind of like a congratulatory element. So when it says happy or blessed is the man, it's like, hey, good for them. Like that's that's good, that's awesome. A couple of years ago, uh, before we had kids, just before we had kids, Liz and I were in Australia and uh we were visiting family and friends, and we had the opportunity to catch up with one of my friends who'd been living overseas. And uh so we were there at the same time they were there, he and his girlfriend, so we got together and we got to catch up, and it was really a good time of just talking and catching up on life. And the next day or two, we emailed back and forth after we'd met up, and in his email, it was kind of this interesting email because uh he was trying to articulate certain things. He was saying to me in his email, hey, I just can't believe how good your life is and all the good things that I see going on in your lives. I'm so excited for you, and and it's cool to see all the all the good, you know, coming out of your life. And and what I really think he was trying to articulate was God's blessing and hand on our lives. And as somebody who wasn't a Christian, he didn't really have the vocabulary to articulate that. It was kind of this interesting conversation. I didn't actually know how to respond to well. I prayerfully thought about it and I I sent him back a message that said, hey, it'd be amiss for me not to tell you that I believe that it's God's God's hand and God's grace and God's blessing on our lives. But what I think my friend was really trying to articulate was some of what we're we're talking about here. God's blessing and happiness, God's this state of being that exists, that we can exist in when we fear God and delight in his commands. So that's our second key word. Fears is our second key word. Now, this word fears, this should not shock you, means to be afraid, okay? That shouldn't be too surprising to you guys, but if you've grown up in church circles like I did, you probably had some, have had some well-meaning people in your life tell you that when you read fear in the Bible, specifically when you read about fear and God, that that just means love and honor and respect. You don't that doesn't really mean fear. People have probably told you that. Well, in recent years, I've been challenged on that. And even this week, as I was uh reading this and looking up the definition of this word and what it meant originally in the in the Hebrew language, I was reminded again that when the Bible says fears God, it means to be afraid. Now it does also mean reverence and honor, but that comes from being afraid, that comes from standing in awe of. It comes from there's an element to this word that means being terrified. And when the Bible tells us that we are to fear God, that kind of sounds strange to us, but I think that it's there for a reason. Think about it with me. Have you ever been completely afraid of something in your life? Or have you seen somebody being completely afraid of something in their life? People say that when they're afraid of something, then when they have fear in their lives, they're gripped by fear. You know what I'm talking about? That type of fear? And when you're gripped by fear, you can do absolutely nothing. You're completely surrendered to that fear. And so when the Bible tells us that we're to fear God, I think that what it's talking about is us realizing who we are in light of who God is and being completely surrendered and in awe of who he is. Remember, God is infinite, he is the creator of the universe, we are finite. And oftentimes we approach Jesus and God and we're like, oh yeah, we're best friends, and he loves me. He does love you, but he is also awesome and worthy of praise and worthy of fear and worthy of worship. That word awesome is an interesting one. It means to stand in awe of. We throw it out all the time. And I actually had a friend a couple of years ago and say, he said to me, Hey, you use this word awesome a lot. I challenge you to only use that word awesome when you're talking about things of God. He challenged me on that because he himself had gone through a process of really thinking about when I say something's awesome, do I really mean that it is like something that I should be worshiping and honoring and fearing? Because the reality is this when fear grips us, when we understand who God is and who we are, when we're completely surrendered to him like a fear, we realize our proper place, we realize the proper perspective we should have on life. In some of the notes I was reading this week, uh, one of the theologians I was reading on this passage summarized verse one like this: True fear produces obedience and happiness. I'll say that one more time. True fear produces obedience and happiness. Psalms 9, sorry, not Psalms, Proverbs 9, verse 10, probably a proverb that you're familiar with. It says this the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Now I want to show you something interesting. If you go to Psalms 112 where we've been reading, and if you go back just one verse from the start of Psalms 112, so to the very last of Psalms 111, do you know what it says? It says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. All who follow his instruction have good insight. That's how Psalms 111 finishes. I don't think it's without uh I don't think it's by coincidence that Psalms 112 follows it and then goes on to articulate for us what it looks like to live a life of fear and how God blesses that, how there's happiness and joy and contentment and fulfillment in living a life of fear. It's great wisdom to live a life of fear. Now we could talk about this more, but I want to go on to the third word that we find here. So happy is the man who fears the Lord, who takes great delight in his commands. That's the third word that we're going to look at in this truth statement. This word commands means demands made of God's people, obligations, responsibilities. If we go through God's word this morning, if we were to go through all of the Bible and look at the different stories and things we see there, we'd see that being God's people involves responsibilities and privileges. Responsibilities and privileges. Much in the same way as I've experienced what this looks like is through being a part of my wife's family. So eight years ago, tomorrow, Liz and I got married. And uh when that happened, I went from having zero American family members to having a whole bunch of family members here in America, right? You don't just marry your wife, you marry into their family. And that involves some responsibilities, some obligations, and some privileges. I got to experience that even this week. You know, it's Christmas Day, and so there is a responsibility that we have to love and to care for one another. And so we're obligated to meet together and to spend time together, and that involves rearranging schedules and getting food and you know, working with the kids and figuring all of that out. Now that also means some privileges. I mean, there's some good stuff that came out of our week this week of spending time together. But that's much like what it is like having a relationship with God. We get to experience his love, his grace, his mercy. He gives us meaning and purpose in our lives. But in exchange, he also has things that he expects of us that he we're obligated, that we're commanded to do. Jesus was actually asked once what those things were. Point blank. I love that somebody asked him directly, hey, what do I need to do in this life to honor God, to love God, to be in a right relationship with God? And when Jesus was asked that, what did he say? He said, You're to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, and you're to love your neighbor as yourself. So when we're told here in Psalms 112 that we are to take delight in keeping his commands, essentially what we're told to do here is to delight in loving God and loving people. We've talked about this before. Loving God and loving people. You can sum up the whole of the commands of God into those two categories of things. You can sum up all of the Ten Commandments, you can sum up all the books of the law into loving God and loving people. And so as we zoom back out and look at verse one, what we can see is this happiness stems from a fear of and obedience to the Lord. Happiness stems from a fear of and obedience to the Lord. To kind of expand that out in the conversation we just had, if we want to be happy, if we want to experience God's blessing, we are called to fear God and to delight in obediently loving Him and loving the people that He's placed around us. It kind of sounds easy, right? I just made that sound like a little pretty sentence and statement. But it's not so much, right? We live in fear and awe of many things, but it's not always or even often God that we're worried about. We take delight in God's commands sometimes, but it doesn't really come naturally to us either. We delight in the things he's blessed us with, but not in the task that he's given us. I don't wake up and naturally just find myself loving God and loving people. That's not my default operating system. I typically wake up in the morning and find myself loving the most important person in the universe, me, right? That's how we live, that's how we operate. And so as we look at Psalms 112 and we look at our lives, does this mean that it's hopeless? Are we not able to live out Psalms 112? Are we not able to fear God and and to delight in his commands? Because if you're anything like me, as I look at that, I'm like, yeah, I want to be Psalms 112, I want to be the person talked about in in verses 1 through 9, but man, as I look at verse 1, that's actually harder than than it sounds at first reading. That's hard to do, that's hard to live out. Is that possible? And this tension raises us for us something that's actually really good. Because this tension reminds us that even though we try our best, and even on our best days, we're gonna fall short. This points us to need for help, and we find help in Jesus. Jesus can help us find happiness, and Jesus helps us in two specific ways that I want for us to spend the rest of our time talking about this morning. The first way that Jesus helps us is that Jesus is the example of how to live this life. I'm grateful, you should be grateful that God wasn't like, hey guys, here's what you need to do. I'll see you later. Bye. He didn't just walk out at that point, right? He tells us what to do. He gives us scriptures like Psalms 112, but then he gives us the perfect example of what that looks like. He shows us exactly what it looks like to fear God and to take delight in his commands in Jesus. I'll give you an example of Jesus' example. If you go to, not Psalm, sorry, if you go to the Garden of Gethsemane, and Jesus is there and he's getting ready to go to the cross for the sins of the world. He's there praying in the garden. He's humbling himself before God, right? And he's praying a prayer and he says, God, if possible, would you take this cup from me? He's saying, hey, God, if possible, I really don't want to have to go through with this. But then he goes on and says, Not my will, but yours be done. And where do we find Jesus a few hours later? Hanging on a cross for the sins of all of humanity. He obeys the Father's will. He obeys. He delights in his commands. How do I know he delights in his commands? Well, read Hebrews 12, verse 1 and 2. It tells us something that's quite amazing. It says, Let us run the race with endurance that sorry, let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus, the source and the perfecter of our faith, who, listen to this, for the joy that lay before him, enjoy a cross and despised the shame. For the joy that lay before him. Jesus delighted in keeping God's commands, even when the command was to go and to die for the sins of the world. Jesus is the perfect example of how to live out Psalms 112, verse 1. Think about it with me in this sense. What are the commands of God to love God and love people? Well, Jesus gives us the perfect example of that too. 1 John 4, 19 says, We love because He first loved us. If we need an example of what it looks like to love God and love people, we do not have to look any further than Jesus. But Jesus doesn't just help us with a good example, he helps us in another way. Jesus is the fulfillment of this life. Even with Christ's perfect example, you and I are going to fall short. Even when we have the perfect example, we're going to fall short. And in those moments, Christ is able to step into our place. Even in those moments where we're struggling with our lives. Let's think about it like this. There are going to be days, there's going to be moments where you and I don't live with a healthy view of who God is. We don't live in a fear of who God is, and we don't remember the perspective that He is God, that He is all powerful, and we are finite human beings. And when we don't do that, that dishonors God. It's like those days are little black spots on our on our record of our lives. And there's going to be days and moments where we don't love God and love people. We just love ourselves. Those are like little black dots on our record. But when we have to give an account for our lives, when we have trusted in Jesus, rather than seeing those black dots, those those dark moments on our days and on our records, God will see a red dot, the blood of Jesus, that is pure and awesome and holy. 2 Corinthians 5.19 puts it like this. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses or sins against them. He goes on in verse 21. Amen? Isn't that good news? So even on the days when you and I fall on our face, when we're like, oh, I want to live this life for God, and then we mess it up. God's grace is sufficient not to just be an example, but to be the fulfillment. 1 John 2 puts it like this. The Apostle John is speaking to the church, and he says, My little children, I am writing these things so that you may not sin. So he's saying, hey guys, try your best. Live a life that honors God. But then he goes on and says, But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father. Jesus Christ, the righteous one, he himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not only for ours, but also those of the whole world. That word propitiation means that he is the entire payment, that he is the substitute, he is the gift that was given. So essentially what we're saying here this morning is that Jesus is the key to living a life that we're talking about this morning. Jesus is the key to fulfillment and to happiness. Unfortunately, we grasp at cheap substitutes for happiness. We anchor our happiness and our source of happiness to all sorts of things that are non-eternal, things that are temporary. We say, hey, if I just had this, if I put my happiness on this, and it's non-eternal, so when it falls away and our happiness disappears, we're like, where did my happiness go? Why am I not happy anymore? And it's because we're placing our hope and our expectation onto something that cannot carry the load that we are placing on it. I've subbed many things in my life for Jesus to try and find happiness. And sometimes they're good things. Sometimes it's things like my relationship with my wife or my kids and their behavior, their performance. Sometimes it's my bank account or my hobbies or my possessions or the travel or the experiences. You guys know what I'm talking about? That thing on your calendar that you're looking forward to. And you just go from thing on your calendar to thing on your calendar that you're looking forward to. I've done all of that. I remember I was actually in the middle of one of those issues in my life about 10 years ago. I was sitting in a hotel room with my dad and with one of our mutual friends. We were on an experience. We were out on a motorcycle trip. The three of us had gone motorcycle riding together, gone for, you know, a weekend away, riding our motorcycles. We had a great time. It was really good. It was over after a while, but it was a great time, right? And we were there on this trip and we had this conversation in the hotel room. And I don't know if my friend even remembers us having this conversation. I don't remember the specific words, but I'll give you the gist of what happened because it was life-shaping for me. We were having a conversation. I was out of college. I was trying to figure out what I was doing with my life. And I've been doing all sorts of things like motorcycle trips and snowboarding trips, work a little bit more, save up some money, do this, do that. You know, that was the rhythm of my life at that point. And he said to me, he said, Hey, what are you what are you doing with your life? What's coming up? What are you what's going on? What are you going to do? And as we had this conversation, I started to tell him about how I was, you know, thinking about going to North America to come over and work at the ski fields and do some more snowboarding and some travel. And I was telling him about all this stuff, and he's he stopped me and he said, How much of that stuff can you do before you're going to get bored with it? He's like, I've been down that road and there's a road, and there's only so much you can do of that stuff before it's going to be hollow and empty. And in that conversation, he pointed me back towards God and finding meaning and fulfillment and contentment with God. Essentially, what he was reminding me of is the fact that if our happiness is tied to that which is infinite, which is Jesus, our hope can be secure and can be eternal. Our joy, our purpose, our meaning. If we tie it to something that isn't going to fade away, if we tie it to Jesus, we have a source for life and for hope and for meaning and for joy that will never fade away. So, what's the application here this morning? I've got three things that I want to encourage you with this morning as we as we think about this in light of this whole conversation about Psalms 112. The first thing that I want to encourage you to do is to take a look at your life. Take a look at your life this morning. Take a look at your life this week as we get ready to end 2015 and jump into 2016. Don't just stick your head in the sand. Don't be like, it's all good. Yep, I got it. You know, I don't want to stop and think about it or hear this. Like, let yourself really evaluate in front of God and say, hey God, what's going on in my life? Allow that to happen. The second thing that I'd encourage you to do is to aspire to live the kind of life that we've been discussing this morning. Aspire to live out Psalms 112, verse 1 through 9. Try to be that type of person that we're talking about here this morning. Imagine if you and I took serious the verse one, the truth that we've been talking about this morning. Imagine if you and I said to ourselves and said to God, hey God, this year I'm gonna do my best to live with a healthy view of who you are. I'm gonna live in fear of who you are, as in I'm gonna live in awe of who you are, God. I'm gonna keep that perspective that you are great, that you are good, that you are awesome, and I and I desperately need you. I'm a small person and I'm in need of your health. Not only that, I'm gonna take delight in what you've commanded me to do this year. I'm gonna love God and love people as best as I can. I'm gonna make all my decisions this year about how I spend my time, my money, my energy about loving you and loving people. Imagine what our lives would look like if we really got a hold of that this morning. Wouldn't that be shaping? Wouldn't that be changing for us? And so I want to encourage you guys to aspire to live Psalms 112 lives. The third thing that I want to encourage you to do is to look to Jesus. Look to Jesus because there are days, there are weeks, there are months where we are going to struggle. And I just want to point that out this morning. That some of you this morning are probably far from happiness. This conversation about happiness is over here, and you're like on the opposite end of the universe right now, or that's how it may feel to you. And I just want to encourage you that God loves you in the midst of that hardship, in the midst of that difficulty, and I want you to know that he cares about you and that he loves you. In the midst of difficulty, in the midst of hardship, we know he loves we can love because he first loved us, even in those hard moments. Maybe you just need to look to Jesus for the first time. That would be a great way to start this year or end this year, would be to say, Hey God, I'm doing a horrible job of running my life. I need you, I need your help. Maybe for some of you like me, it's just being reminded and turning back to God and saying, God, I desperately need your help today and every day of this coming year. Would you help me? But let's look to Jesus because Jesus, like we've been talking about this morning, can be and should be the source of our meaning, our purpose, and ultimately our joy and happiness, our fulfillment. Let me pray for us this morning.