Welcome to Trinity Sermons. Here at Trinity Church,
Streetsville, we want to share with you biblically based messages that not only
teach but also inspire you in your faith journey as we learn together to love
Jesus, live like Jesus, and lead others to Jesus. We are thrilled to be starting a
brand new sermon series today and we are so glad that you are joining us for it.
This is episode one of our new series titled, What Makes You Happy? And Rob
Hirkmans will be exploring the passage from Matthew 22 chapters 35 to 40 and
specifically looking at what or more accurately who makes us happy. Now before
we begin, we'd like to invite you to follow our podcast, check us out on
social media, and visit our website at trinitiestreetsville.org. Thanks for
listening and we hope you enjoy. God bless.
Matthew chapter 22 verses 35 to 40. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him
with this question, Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law? Jesus
replied, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and
with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is
like it. Love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on
these two commandments. Well, as you've heard by now, we're starting a new
teaching series and the teaching series is called What Makes Us Happy? That could
be a question, that could be a statement, but let's imagine for a second, let's say
that I'm a researcher and I want to get to the bottom of this question to figure
out what makes us happy. How would I conduct my research? Well, I suppose one
of the things I could do is I could just go around and I could start asking
people what makes you happy. I could say what makes you happy? What makes you
happy? What makes you happy? Because after all, who knows what makes us happy
except us? Only I know what makes me happy. Only you know what makes you happy.
And so I would do my research. I would collect everything that people said. I
would file it. I would publish it. It would, you know, I'd do the talk show
circuit. I'd become a famous researcher who determined what makes us happy. But
what if I was wrong in the end? What if actually all my results were incorrect?
What if all that stuff that people told me makes them happy actually didn't make
them happy? And it wasn't that they were trying to lie to me. It was just they
actually didn't know the answer for themselves. They thought they knew
what made them happy and that's what they told me. They assumed they knew what
made them happy and that's what they told me. But what if what they actually
said didn't make them happy and actually doesn't make them happy? What if in fact
people don't really know the answer to the question what makes us happy? Or as
actually some real researchers who researched the topic of happiness put it,
people are terrible at knowing what's good for them. Now you might be totally
offended by that statement. How dare somebody say that I don't know what's
good for me and I don't know what makes me happy. But it is kind of true because
if you think about it, if we all want to be happy but many of us are not happy,
then could it be that we actually don't know what it is that makes us happy? Now
it's not your fault. It's not my fault when we're not happy because every time
you open up a magazine, every time you turn on the television, every time you
scroll through Instagram or you scroll through Facebook, there are people who
you've never met, who live in cities that you probably never visited and they are
creating commercials and they are creating advertisements and they are
trying to tell you what makes you happy. Now it's important to know these people
actually don't know what makes them happy any more than you know what makes
you happy. They are just trying to sell something but the point is we fall for
it again and again. We fall for it once, twice, and a hundred times. We find
ourselves scrolling through our phone and scrolling it down our screens and
watching the ads and and we start saying things like, well you know if only I had
I'd be happy or if only I've done I'd be happy. If only I wore then I'd be happy.
If only I drove then I'd be happy. If only I went, if only I had then maybe I
would be happy and we spend a lot of time and we spend a lot of money trying
to be happy and yet we still aren't happy sometimes. So maybe it's true, maybe
we actually don't know the thing that makes us happy. To find out what really
makes people happy you'd have to do a different kind of research project.
You couldn't just go around and say hey what makes you happy what makes you
happy because we know that you know people would tell us things and it
wouldn't necessarily be true. But what you'd have to do is you would have to
actually look at people's lives. You'd have to look at people's lives over a
long long period of time and you'd have to actually observe their the times in
their lives when they really experienced happiness. Imagine you could do a
research project like that. Imagine you do a research project that didn't just
last a day or a week but a project that lasted like 85 years long and imagine
that you didn't just talk to one or two or three people imagine you talk to
thousands and thousands of people about what made them happy and what if you
observe these people and you didn't just observe teenagers you didn't observe
young adults or adults or seniors but you you observe people from all ages of
life and what if you observe people who were poor and people who were rich and
people from all sorts of different ethnic backgrounds and what if you
didn't just study them in the moment but there was a way in which you could
study their lives as their lives unfolded over time. What if someone was
actually able to do kind of research like that. Maybe then you'd actually start
to learn what makes people happy. Well enter the world-famous Harvard study on
happiness. It is the longest scientific study on happiness. It is 84 85 years and
counting and for 85 years they have been tracking hundreds of individuals taking
thousands of measurements asking thousands of questions and the current
directors of the world-famous happiness study recently wrote a book called The
Good Life and I had a chance to read this book while I was on vacation this
summer and I was so excited I was like I cannot wait to see what they say is the
thing that makes people happy and and of course I started reading and it was
there right in the very first chapter and and when I got to it I was like well
duh I mean of course I already knew that I know that's true I think we obviously
obviously that's the thing that makes everybody happy I mean that's what they
found they found that there is one factor that again and again with
strength and consistency is constantly associated with happy people and when
you hear what it is you're gonna say the exact same thing you're gonna say oh I'm
not shocked because deep down we all knew this we all know this right the thing
that makes us happy it's not career achievements not you know necessarily
money or wealth or advancement or a healthy diet or any all those things
help those things help they say but there's one thing most of all that
really makes us happy and that is relationships relationships yes in fact
let's take a quote from the book they said if we had to take all 84 years of
the Harvard study and boil it down to a single principle for living it would be
this good relationships keep us healthier and happier period that means
if you were gonna make one choice for your life a single decision to best
ensure your own health and happiness science tells us that the best thing you
could do would be to cultivate warm relationships and it's not just a choice
you would make just once it's a choice that you would make again and again each
and every day and when we talk about the types of relationships that make people
happy it's not just your closest loved ones or your family members or your
friends but even our relationships with interactions with strangers actually
make us happy but we often don't think it will let me tell you about one of the
experiments that they they had in the book it was pretty fascinating they said
imagine this imagine that you were sitting down on a train and on this
train it is just filled with with strangers and you need to make a
decision about what's gonna make this the happiest commute for you today you
have two choices your one choice would be to keep to yourself and the other choice
would be to spark up a conversation with one of these random strangers on the
train now if I was to ask you that question just like the researchers asked
a bunch of people this question nearly all of us would say oh my goodness I
would just totally keep to myself or I've got some work to do I would rather
listen to a podcast listen to some music besides if I spark up a conversation
with a stranger they're probably gonna go on and on and tell me their whole
life story and it's gonna become really really awkward and so that they predict
it you predict I predict we all predict that what's gonna make us happier is if
we keep to ourselves and we don't get into something with a stranger on a
train well what they did is they actually did this study they took a
bunch of commuters and they asked them to predict and they predicted the exact
same things we predict that they would rather keep to themselves and start a
conversation with a stranger and then they split the group into two and they
told this group we want you to intentionally keep to yourself on this
train trip and they told this group we want you to intentionally enter into
conversation with a stranger on this train trip and when the results came
back it was exactly the opposite of what everybody had predicted for
themselves and about themselves people who had to get into a conversation with
a stranger consistently rated the enjoyment and pleasure of their commute
higher than usual even if they had work to do they found themselves to be you
know still as productive as ever and they enjoyed the trip more why is that
it's because relationships are the things that make us happy whether it's
with loved ones or with complete strangers but often we don't know it and
we don't act like it's true in other words happiness we're discovering is
more about who than what which totally makes sense because if happiness was
just about a what all you'd have to do is go out and get that what and you'd be
happy if you had a miserable day at work and you came home from work you could
just go pick up your what and hold on to it and you become happy again everybody
would be happy if happiness was a what you could just pick it up but happiness
is almost always a who and it is not a what I'm gonna give you some examples of
how I kind of feel like this played out in my own life from time to time but I
remember when I was in high school I don't think I think I'm remembering
correctly but the thing that mattered most to me was the who's not the what's
if I went to school and I could find a group of people that I felt like I
connected with and I had a community and these were my people these were my who's
that was more important than what I had or what I was wearing I needed to have
those who's that was more important to me sometimes when we go to visit my
parents they have this big wall full of photos my parents came from Holland they
came from England to Canada and it was a hard hard life for them they eked out a
living they didn't have much but I look at all these photos on the wall and
they're all smiling and they're all happy and why is that it's because
happiness is more about a who than it is a what or let's go a little further
some of you like me you've been to maybe a developing country and you've been to
those countries and you see people who do not have enough what they need more
stuff they need more resources they need more education they need more support
and and that's all true but when you come back one of the things you're often
struck with is man they still seemed happy how could that be it's because
even though they did not have very much what they still had lots of who and even
though they needed more what and they need more what they had enough who and
it's the who's that make us happy or here's another example have you ever
noticed that when somebody in your family is sad you have a really hard
time being happy yourself right I can't be happy if you're sad why is that
because my happiness is related to the other who's in my life and if you're
happy I can be happy but if you're sad I have a really hard time being sad
because happiness has more to do with who's than what's or perhaps the best
example maybe the one people always talk about is at the end of your life when
you're lying on your deathbed the thing that you will want to see the most is
not a thing it'll be a person it'll be a who not a what you will not say bring me
my portfolio I want to see it one last time you will not say to the nurse would
you please wheel me down to the parking lot it's out to my car I just want to
spend a few more moments with my car that's not what you'll say you'll say
can you bring me my kids bring me my grandkids bring me my my spouse bring me
my parents whatever the case may be happiness is about who it's not about
what and you'd have your own stories I think to verify that so you could answer
the question what makes us happy by saying this nothing makes us happy and
when I say nothing what I mean is no thing makes us happy no what makes us
happy it's a who not a what in fact I want to suggest to you today that there's
actually three who's three who's in particular that I find that happy people
seem to be in really good relationships with these three who's again and again
you come across happy people you say man they seem to have really good
relationships with these three who's in their life what are these three who's
here's the first one first of all happy people seem to to be really happy with
themselves the first who is you they have a piece about who they are if you've
ever met a happy person you'll have this sense that they know who they are and
they're not trying to be someone else they're not pretending they're not
projecting they're not promoting themselves they're just genuine they have
a relation a right relationship with themselves you could say right and often
in this word we're told you know go and be this person or go and act like that
person and when we go and we try to act like something we're not it actually
takes away our happiness creates turmoil within us but when you meet a happy
person it's like they say hey I am happy to be me right I'm cool with who I am I
am who I am and I'm okay with that they're in the right relationship with
themselves right but there's a second who that happy people seem to have
really good relationships with and that is with others happy people have good
relationships with other people they don't seem to be angry they don't seem
to be bitter all the time or ready to blow up even if they've been mistreated
they still seem happy sometimes you hear their story and you'll be like I can't
believe they did that to you I can't believe she said that to you you must be
so furious you must be so bitter you must be so resentful but then these
happy people say things like well you know what I just kind of moved on I just
kind of forgave them you know I don't want to deal with all that you know and
so I just moved on and that was that they're not consumed with with payback
they're not consumed with revenge happy people say it's okay and we're like it
is not okay that is not okay and they're like yeah you know it's okay it's okay
I'm ready to move on they have good relationships they've reconciled their
relationships with other people in their life so those are the first two's of the
first two who's of happiness we have right relationships with ourselves and
right relationships with other people but I would say that another thing you
sometimes not always I was not say always but you when you encounter people
who are happy oftentimes they also have another relationship that's in the right
place and that's their relationship with God they just have this peace with God
there's something about them they believe that there's more to this life
than this life and they believe that God loves them and that God has a purpose
for their life they believe that in the end somehow everything is going to work
out and that belief enables them to go through life go through difficult stuff
that would otherwise steal people's happiness but they're able to cruise on
through because they have this right relationship with God and so here are
the three who's of happiness our relationship with our relationship with
others and our relationship with God are the three things that make us happy and
anything that undermines these three relationships often steals our happiness
away from us right in fact if you think back to an especially unhappy time in
your life chances are it was because one of these relationships was undermined or
broken or or fell apart whatever happened I'm not sure what it was maybe it
was with God or with others or something that you just lost faith in yourself
anyways it chipped away at your happiness because the relationship was
broken so if I was to turn this into a bit of an equation you might call this
the happiness equation you could you could put it this way you could say that
happiness is the sum of right relationships with ourselves a right
relationship with others and right relationship with God but I think
actually this works better not so much as a sum but almost as a flowchart and
that is to say this when we have a right relationship with God that actually
leads us to have a renewed right relationship with ourselves and that
makes it possible for us to actually have right relationships with other
people when we get it right with God something happens inside of us changes
us and then we're able to love people forgive people and get it right with
others now I know if you go look in the Bible and you say oh Rob I don't see the
happiness equation anywhere in the Bible what are you talking about of course you
won't find it the happiness equations not in the Bible that's not what the
Bible calls it that's not what Jesus calls it but it seems to me that this is
exactly what Jesus was talking about today in our reading this morning Jesus
is offering us this recipe this recipe for satisfaction and peace and happiness
in our life and it has everything to do with these three who's I want to end by
just taking you through that story one more time it all started when a lawyer
asked Jesus hey Jesus you know what is the most important thing in life now
what is the most important law in life what is the most important commandment
in life it makes sense that lawyer is asking questions about commandments and
laws it was kind of his job and and there are in the Old Testament something
like 600 different laws so it's not necessarily the easiest question to
answer and so he says teacher which of these commandments is the greatest
commandment in the law and it's funny you might be saying like Rob I don't know
where you're going with this but when I think of commandments and when I think
of laws I think of things that keep me from happiness not not things that
actually cause me happiness laws don't give happiness but but Jesus replied
and he replied this way he said he said the greatest commandment is love and then
let's just pause there for a moment probably at this point the lawyer was
like no no Jesus you you probably didn't hear the question I was looking for a
commandment and Jesus says yeah yeah so the greatest commandment is this love
and he's like no no you see I'm looking for give me a couple thou shalt not or
thou shalt I'm looking for like some rules like some do's and don'ts what's
the greatest commandment Jesus like no I heard the question so here's the
greatest command greatest command is to love and he's like I want a commandment
this love that's a relationship word Jesus that's not a that's not a legal
word that's not a commandment word but see Jesus knew that God's laws have
everything to do with relationships and are given actually to make us happy
especially this one Jesus goes on to say this is the greatest
commandment love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul
and with all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself now look at this
just look there's the happiness equation that there are those three who's the
three important relationships love God love others and love yourself the most
important thing in life is to have a right relationship with God God loves
you can you love God back the second thing is to love others to love your
neighbor and the third thing is to actually to love yourself to live your
neighbor as you love yourself my friends this could be this what we're looking at
right now could be the only thing that we really need to learn in this life
loving God loving others loving yourself this is the key to peace
satisfaction and happiness in your life so if you were to say Jesus Jesus what's
most important he'd say love God love others love yourself Jesus well how do I
find the purpose of my life says love God love others love yourself Jesus you
were to distill and summarize all the commandments in the whole Bible and all
the old and new testament what would you boil it all down to love God love
others and love yourself and then we would say but Jesus if I were to love
God and to love others and love myself well then then I I'd be happy and Jesus
would say you got it and and then we'd probably say but if that's the case
Jesus then it really sounds like you want me to be happy and I think Jesus
would say I do want you to be happy after all why Jesus come wasn't it to
mend the broken relationships that exist between God others and within
ourselves isn't that what the cross was about our sin our selfishness shattered
and broke relationships all over the place but Jesus came to fix all that
Paul puts it this way he says all this comes from God who fixed the relationship
between us and him and then called us to fix our relationships with each other so
just let me get this straight if happiness depends on right
relationships with God and with others and with myself and if Jesus died to
heal the relationships between God and others and myself then Jesus must really
want me to be satisfied and happy in this life which for some of you is a bit
of a revolutionary idea because you have always assumed that actually God was in
the way of your happiness some of you left church for this reason you went to
church and you found church to be such a dry and dull and boring place and it was
so cold it was so lifeless and the people did not seem happy and and so you
almost had felt like you had to make a decision either I follow all this these
religious rules and rituals or I am gonna be a happy person but but the both
can't exist at the same time and you had to make a choice you thought God was
against happiness and so you you chose of course happiness over God you chose
happiness over over church like all of us would do because who wants to be
unhappy of course you left of course you left but what we've learned today
actually is God is not in the way of our happiness God is actually providing a
way for our happiness Jesus death restores our relationship with God and
then transforms our relationship with ourself and then enables us to live in
right relationships with other people and those are the very three things we
need to be happy so I'm going to end there this morning and I think that
leaves us with a lot to think about as we you know continue next week let me
just say I think there's four four things here today there's some surprising
news there's some good news or some bad news and there's some great news
surprising news we learned was this we don't always know how to be happy it's
it's strange but we spend time and money on things that we think will make us
happy but they don't but the good news is there is a way to be happy our
happiness comes from the who's in our lives not the what's in our lives and so
we can be happy especially if we pursue great relationships with ourselves and
with others and with God but here's the bad news relationships are hard and
often they break down over time our relationships with others our
relationship with God and if they're broken then how can we be happy and then
the great news Jesus came to heal all those broken relationships with God with
ourselves and with others which means that if you want to be happy and we all
do Jesus knows the way and he can lead us in that way because he made the way
so I hope you come back next week as we continue this series I think you'll be
happy if you do but for now
thank you so much for joining us today and we hope that you found the sermon
positive and inspiring and come back next week for our next sermon take care
today's sermon was taken from the September 17th 2023 service at Trinity
Church streetsville in Mississauga Ontario