The Pursuit of Happiness | What Makes Us Happy

Hello and welcome today to Trinity Sermons.

So glad you're with us here at Trinity Church, Streetsville, a church in Mississauga, Ontario,

where we want to love Jesus, to live like Jesus, and to lead others to Jesus.

This is episode two of our sermon series, What Makes Us Happy?

And we're excited to have Rob Hirkmans with us today to explore one of the world's oldest

songs, Psalm 1.

In today's message, Rob is going to be talking about ancient, timeless wisdom about true

happiness.

There will also be plenty of references to all of your old favourite songs, so don't

miss this talk.

Enjoy the sermon today, and God bless.

Our reading today is from Psalm number one.

God is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked, or stand in the way that sinners

take, or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and

who meditates on his law day and night.

That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season,

and whose leaf does not wither, whatever they do prospers, not so the wicked.

And they are like chaff that the wind blows away.

Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the

righteous.

For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Well good morning everyone, and welcome to church.

This morning we're going to dispense with the pleasantries and get right down to business,

because there's something that I want to talk to you about.

There is something that I have been noticing, and I wonder if you notice it too.

I think it's important we talk about it, because I think it's kind of a real thing.

So here's the deal, here's the easiest question ever.

How many of you like music?

Yes, everyone likes music.

Well then, if you're like me, have you noticed that it seems like more and more people are

choosing to listen to the old music, older songs, rather than listening to the new songs

these days?

I mean, every day, every week, there's new songs, there's new albums, there's new artists

that are coming out, and yet it seems to me that people seem to be gravitating still toward

all the old stuff.

I will tell you the moment when this kind of really crystallized for me and became clear.

Our daughter Petra, who is actually 14 years old, she created her first playlist on Spotify.

And so what was happening was we were on a trip in the car, some kind of a road trip,

and she said, Dad, would I be able to play my songs from my playlist?

And everyone said, sure, that sounds great.

And I suppose what we were expecting to hear at that point was maybe some Ed Sheeran or

maybe some Taylor Swift or maybe some Justin Bieber or Olivia Rodrigo or whatever.

We were all prepared to kind of hear that.

But then what we heard instead was American Pie by Dom Clank.

And then we heard Don't Stop Believing by Journey and Living on a Prayer by Bon Jovi.

And it just kept on going and going.

It was Motley Crue.

It was Elton John.

It was The Who, Kate Bush, The Police Starship Queen.

And these were some of the songs that I was listening to when I was her age.

And some of them are way older than that, too.

For example, last night when our kids were going to bed, they were cranking out a tune

pretty loud in the house, I might say.

And guess what that tune was?

Carly Simon, You're So Vain.

You're So Vain.

That song was released in 1972.

That was over 50 years ago.

And this is the music that they prefer to listen to.

Now I got to tell you, when she puts it on, everybody's bopping and rocking.

Even mom and dad are bopping and rocking.

By the way, if you want to subscribe to Petra's playlist, there it is.

It's called Favorite Oldies.

There's probably only a million playlists called Favorite Oldies on Spotify.

But this is the one with Mike Wheeler wearing the Ghostbusters costume from Stranger Things.

Stranger Things, by the way, was a TV show that featured all sorts of old music.

But that was a TV show that was geared for younger people.

So there you go again.

You can become one of the subscribers along with Petra and I.

You could be the third subscriber to her playlist.

And I thought, you know what, maybe my kid is just a little weird, a little strange.

And that, you know, it's OK, OK.

So she likes to listen to the old music, right?

But it's actually not true.

It's not just her.

There's a thing happening out there.

New data indicates that people are gravitating toward the older music.

This isn't just me being Grandpa Simpson up here pining for the music of my youth.

No, check out this recent article from the Atlantic.

Whoa, whoa, that just went through about five slides at once.

Can you just back up to the Atlantic?

This article shows that 70% of the music that people are listening to these days is what

they would classify as not current or it's like 18 months old or older, often much, much,

much older.

And so it's true that when you turn on the radio, you'll hear Lizzo or you'll hear Cardi

B or Drake.

And they get all the attention.

They get all the press.

Why is that?

It's because the algorithms favor them.

The publicists promote them.

The DJs hype them.

But evidence indicates it's not where you follow the money.

Follow the money and you will see that by far and by and large, all the money is found

in those old songs getting played over and over and over again.

That's what's driving revenue in just about every music service.

Alan Cross, who is a music columnist, he, sorry, this isn't working really well for me.

Could you just go to the next slide?

He writes that in other words, the data, no, that's not, I'm so sorry.

There we go.

The data appears to indicate that music fans are increasingly gravitating toward older

material because, well, because it's better than the stuff coming out today.

It's more interesting.

It's less predictable and it offers more melodic, structural and lyrical surprises.

That may also actually explain the re-emergence of vinyl.

Have you guys noticed that vinyl is making a bit of a comeback?

Over the last 20 years, sales of vinyl records have been increasing year after year and now

people would say, well, that's just because people like the sound.

They like the, it's a higher quality sound that comes off of a vinyl record.

That may be true or maybe there's something about these records that draws us back to

the old music and there's something about the old music that the new music just doesn't

do for us.

It says something or at least the way it says it resonates with us more.

It seems like the old songs just seem to say it better than the new songs.

Now you can fight through that in your life groups this week.

I didn't mean to start a war here, but you might now say, what does that have to do with

anything?

Well, we're in the midst of a teaching series.

It's called What Makes Us Happy and we're trying to deal with, answer that age old question

about happiness.

And just like in the music industry, when we try to answer this question, we have our

choice, choice between some of the new modern answers, the new music and what it says about

happiness or we can also listen to what some of the oldies, the old answers to the question

of the source of happiness have to say to us.

So my question is, where do you turn when you want to hear for what makes for human

happiness, what makes us happy?

Do you look at the old ideas or do you look at the new ideas?

Do you listen to the old songs and what they say or the new songs and what they say?

The modern idea about happiness tells us that happiness is something that we can kind of

create through our own ingenuity and through human reason and science and innovation.

The newest and best ideas that we come up with can solve so many of the problems in

the world and make life just happier for everyone.

And for 200 years, that has been the song that has been playing on repeat over and over

again.

Technology and science and progress and innovation will make us happier people.

And that song is correct to a point.

There are many advances over the last 200 years that have made life easier, made life

more equitable, made people healthier, made people just safer even in their lives.

So yes, today it's true.

We have more money.

We have more vacations.

We have better health care.

We have more longevity than our ancestors did.

But the question is, are we fundamentally happier than they were?

I think that would be a hard case to make.

In fact, there has been research done on human happiness.

And we can see that the World Happiness Report finds that people are in fact feeling worse,

worse than they did in the past.

In the past 50 years, 50 years, by the way, which had some of the greatest inventions

and some of the greatest innovations in all of human history, happiness on a whole still

has decreased, which means that the new music, the new ideas, the new opinions about what

makes for a happy life, they have not landed well and they're not working.

They haven't resulted in an increase in human happiness.

No, if you want to find the answer to human happiness, you've got to go back.

You've got to go back to the old songs and to the wisdom of the past.

Even the authors of this, remember the study that we talked about, The Good Life, it was

a study from Harvard on what makes for human happiness.

Even they acknowledge this.

They say the ancients beat us to it.

Right?

They, yes, we're living in a different time, but their world is still our world.

Their wisdom is our inheritance and we should take advantage of it.

To translate that into kind of another way of putting it, what they're saying is take

the old records off the shelf.

Sit and listen to them by yourself.

Today's music ain't got the same soul.

I like that old kind of rock and roll.

Right?

The ancient wisdom, the ancient wisdom on happiness that the Bible teaches is this.

It's that human happiness is not found through advances in technology or through advances

in psychology or advances in science or philosophy.

These are all wonderful advancements and they're great and they do make life better, but the

Bible teaches us that fundamentally the things that make you happy or unhappy are deeply

spiritual, and that that has remained unchanged for millennia.

So you want to learn about happiness?

You got to go back.

You got to go deep into the catalog.

You got to go way back and listen to the old songs.

And today we're going to do just that.

Today we are going to go and pull one of the oldest records, the oldest records off the

shelf ever.

And we're going to look at one of the oldest songs that was ever, ever written.

And that song is Psalm number one.

Psalm number one.

That song just happens to be all about what it takes to be happy.

Now you would be like, wait a second.

Psalms as a song.

What are you talking about?

You're getting your words mixed up.

But no, it's, it's actually a lot of people don't realize this.

The book of Psalms was meant to be put to music.

These words are for singing.

So when you pick up your Bible and basically all you got to do is open your Bible right

to the very middle.

You will find yourself smack dab in this album, this musical album with 150 tracks.

These are the oldest songs ever written.

Talk about oldies, right?

And if you were to put this record, if you were to dust this one off and you were to

put that one on your record player and you were to put the needle down, the very first

thing that you would hear are these words.

Happy is the one who dot dot dot.

Keep in mind, this is track one, Psalm one, the oldest song perhaps ever written, the

headliner for the entire album and the first word is happy, joyful, satisfied.

Happy is the one who, and the time that I got left this morning, I just want to say,

what is this old song trying to teach us about happiness that the new songs just aren't teaching?

And I think we can break it down into three things that that is this, that happiness is

essentially something you can have.

Happiness is something you can keep and happiness is something you can choose.

Let's go through that and let's start by dropping the needle on this one.

Happiness is something you can have.

Now when you first hear me say that you say, Rob, that doesn't sound all that revolutionary.

That's not like a real big idea, is it?

But it actually is pretty profound because when someone opens with these words, happy

is the one who, what it's actually saying is that happiness on the one hand is not a

guarantee.

It's not like everybody is automatically happy.

And on the other hand, it is not saying that happiness is something that's out of reach

and nobody can be happy.

No, it's saying there is a pathway.

There is a way to being happy.

Now I remember when I was a kid, I think I had a view of the world that everybody was

happy and that I was happy and that being happy was just kind of a natural part of life.

I was a happy-go-lucky kid.

Not every kid was, but generally when we're young, we have a very happy outlook on life.

We think that everyone's happy and everyone's going to be happy.

Then as we grow up and we go through life and we have a few hard knocks and we have

some tragedy and some hurts and those kinds of things happen, the very opposite starts

to happen.

Pretty soon we get cynical and we get jaded and we think, you know, happiness is actually

out of reach and I'm giving up on the whole happiness thing.

I would settle just for survival.

And so we go in life from thinking that happiness is natural and everyone has it to thinking

happiness is impossible and no one can attain to it.

I remember one of the bands that I used to listen to when I was growing up was a band

called REM.

Do you guys remember the band REM?

And I remember that in 1991 they released this one song.

It was called Shiny Happy People.

It was a fun, silly song.

It was all about shiny, happy people.

It was actually so popular that it nearly became the theme song for the TV show Friends.

It was like that close, but it ended up not being chosen.

But it was all about just a happy, silly, everyone's kind of happy, happy, happy song.

And the next year, I think it was in 1992, they came out with another album and the number

one song off that other album was Everybody Hurts.

So from one year to the next, we went from shiny, happy people to everybody hurts.

Wait, I thought everybody was shiny and happy.

Now you're saying that everybody is hurting?

There are statistics out there that say that newer music is sadder music.

But the new songs that we hear, far more of them are sad rather than happy.

And it could be because most of us just feel like that's the way life is.

Life is tough and life is hard.

And so we resonate more with the sad songs than with the happy songs.

But someone comes along and says something different.

This old song pushes back against both these ideas.

The lyrics, on the one hand, they don't pretend that everybody's life is happy and easy.

And on the other hand, the song is not all about hurt and pain.

Psalm 1 tells us there is a way for you to be happy.

There is a pathway to happiness.

Happiness is possible.

You don't need to be cynical.

You don't need to be naive.

You don't need to be jaded.

It is possible.

It is possible in this world for you to be a happy person fundamentally and consistently

happy.

That's just the first thing that Psalm 1 is telling us.

You can be happy.

Happiness is something that you can have.

But then it goes on and the second thing this ancient song is trying to tell us is not only

happiness is something you can have, it is something you can keep.

And this too is a fairly radical idea because all of us, of course, from time to time, we

experience moments of happiness, but then the trouble comes and then the problems arise

and our happiness evaporates and our joy is gone and we're miserable once again.

So where does Psalm 1 get off saying that happiness is something that you can keep and

doesn't need to go away and doesn't need to come and go as circumstances change?

Just thinking back to another song that I remember back in my childhood, a song that

you still hear on the radio today, ain't got no place to lay your head.

Bobby came and took your bed.

Don't worry, be happy.

Landlord says your rent is late.

He may have to litigate.

Don't worry, be happy.

Ain't got no cash, ain't got no style, ain't got no gal to make you smile.

Don't worry, be happy.

Wait a second, Bobby McFerrin, what are you talking about?

Where do you get off being so happy?

Look at all these horrible things that are happening to you.

How can you still be happy?

By the way, do you know Bobby McFerrin was an Anglican?

It's true.

He was.

He grew up in an Anglican church.

Maybe that's why.

But actually, the truth is Bobby McFerrin probably read Psalm number one.

And he read that happy people are like, they're like trees.

They're like trees that are planted by rivers of water.

Can we go to the next slide there?

Trees are planted by the rivers of water.

You see, most, most trees are subject to all the changes of the seasons.

In a time of drought, a tree is not always fruitful.

Its leaves can sometimes wither.

It doesn't always look beautiful.

There aren't always blossoms.

It doesn't always have green leaves.

But look, this tree in Psalm one is different, right?

It is planted by a riverbank and it has roots that go down deep and they access this constant

source of water.

Water that is there even when the heat and the drought come.

The point is this, you can't miss it.

If you seek happiness in external circumstances, you will never be able to keep your happiness.

You'll always be up and down because life is always taking us up and down.

So Psalm one says don't seek happiness externally.

Seek it internally.

Real happiness isn't found around you.

It's found within you and under you where your roots are and where they go.

Happiness is never about what happens to you, but what happens in you.

Now I don't want, again, this to sound too simple.

Don't get me wrong.

Psalm one is not saying that when bad things happen, just smile and laugh and whistle the

tune and don't let it get to you.

Pretend like nothing happened.

No, what it is saying is that when drought comes, when difficulty comes in your life,

when bad things happen and tragedy strikes and you're going through all that, you have

to dig down even deeper into God's supply of strength.

You have to rely even more on God's love and pull even harder from God's grace in your

life.

So Psalm one, it's already doing these pretty amazing things.

It's saying happiness is something you can have, but it's also, once you have it, it's

something you can keep because it's not circumstantial.

It's spiritual.

It doesn't come from preventing bad things from happening to you, but it comes from planting

yourself in God's goodness.

You can't control what's going to happen out there, right?

But you can draw on what God gives us in here.

And those are lessons you just don't learn in the new songs, the new ideas.

You got to turn to the old songs, to the ancient music of God and the scriptures to learn that

kind of stuff.

And that brings us to the third and final thing that Psalm one teaches us about happiness.

It's not just something we can have.

It's not just something we can keep, but it's something that we can choose.

Happy is the one who does not walk and step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners

take or sit in the company of mockers.

Those are three action words in that sentence, walking, standing, and sitting.

And they all represent choices that you and I can make each and every day, choices that

determine our happiness or our lack of happiness.

First, happy people are really careful about who they walk with.

The image of walking with someone is the idea that as we walk with people, we are talking

to them and we are listening to them and we're taking in their advice and we're listening

to what they say as we kind of contemplate the big decisions of life.

What is life all about?

As we walk with someone, we're listening to them, right?

And everybody's got an opinion about what life's all about.

Oprah Winfrey has an opinion.

Your next door neighbor has an opinion.

But happy people are really discerning about who they walk with and who they listen to.

We get to choose who we walk with.

Secondly, though, happy people are very careful about who they stand with.

Now, again, taking the imagery a little further, to stand with someone now means you're not

just walking with them and listening.

To stand with them means that now you are in some kind of agreement with them.

You're fist bumping with them.

You're saying, yes, I'm with you on this.

The biblical idea of standing with someone is that you are together agreeing upon a certain

way of life, a type of lifestyle that you are choosing.

And believe me, happy people are very careful about who they stand with and how they're

going to live their lives.

They don't just stand with anyone.

They don't just live their life according to anyone.

They stand with God and they live their life according to God's commands and according

to the teachings of Jesus.

Happy people are very careful about who they stand with.

It's a choice you can make.

The third choice we can make is who we sit with.

You know, pretty soon if you walk with someone long enough and then you stand with them long

enough, then now you're sitting down with them.

And that is a sign that really you are in total agreement with them.

And these are now your people.

It says that to sit in the company of mockers, happy people are very careful that they don't

find themselves sitting with a group of people who are constantly laughing at God or mocking

the faith.

If you want a recipe for unhappiness, then here's the recipe.

Make your best friends some of the cynical, mocking, jaded people that we spoke about

earlier who are constantly critical.

But if you want to be happy, be careful who you sit with.

Find people who love God.

Find people who serve God and sit with them.

In fact, if you want to be really happy, the Psalm goes on and says, happy is the one whose

delight is in the law of the Lord and meditates on that law day and night.

Now don't get it wrong.

The word law there does not just mean the part of the Bible where the rules are.

No.

Law means the whole story of the Bible, the whole message of the scriptures, from the

part where God created you out of love to the part where he redeems you out of Christ's

love to the part where he recreates heaven and earth out of love, the whole message.

Don't you see?

Happiness is always a choice.

It's a choice of who we walk with, who we stand with, who we sit with, and what we model

our life after, what we meditate our minds on.

It's all within our power to choose.

So just as we wrap up, Ziggy Marley.

Ziggy Marley once said, he said, old music used to mean something.

And there's none of that today.

But he was wrong, actually, because the old music, the ancient tune of God's song is still

playing today.

It's still there.

It's as relevant as ever.

It's an oldie, but it is a goodie.

And if we listen carefully, we can still hear it.

If we hear it, what is it telling us?

It's saying happiness is something you can have.

It's saying happiness is something you can keep.

And happiness is something that you can choose.

You can choose how to walk.

You can choose how to stand.

You can choose how to sit.

In fact, today, I want to invite you.

I want to invite you to choose to walk with us here at Trinity as we listen to God together.

Together, we're trying to tune out some of those competing voices and competing songs

and learn to listen for that song that God is singing to us and that God is singing over

us.

Yeah, I want to invite you to choose to stand with us today here at Trinity as we try to

learn a new way of life, a lifestyle, not based on what anyone says, but trying to live

our lives the way that Jesus teaches us.

And today, I want to invite you.

Join us at Trinity and sit with us as week by week and day by day, we delight in God's

Word and meditate on His law day and night.

That is a playlist that will make you happy.

And that is one that has stood the test of time.

And if we listen to what God is singing, what God is saying, it will be music to our ears.

So thanks be to God.

Amen.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

And we hope that this message brought you some happiness as we learned more about the

Bible's wisdom on the state of happiness.

And if you enjoyed the show today, please take a minute to rate and review our podcast

so that we can continue to spread the good news with others.

Today's sermon was taken from the September 24th, 2023 10am service at Trinity Church

Streetsville in Mississauga, Ontario.

Come back again next week and thanks again for listening.