Sermon Tone Analysis

THE COMPLETED STATE OF HAPPINESS

      The believer who passes the momentum tests accelerates his growth and enters the winner’s gate.

Many blessings belong to gate eight, all of which con­tribute to the /completed state of happiness /in which the believer shares the Happiness of God.

This gate is the culmination and intensification of all the other gates.

The inner strength of stabilized Spiritual maturity is the ultimate objective of God’s game plan for the royal family!

Throughout the First Advent, Jesus Christ resided in fellowship.

(Heb 4:15) In His Gethsemane discourse, the night before He was betrayed, Christ spoke concerning the Spiritual life that He would soon turn over to His royal family.

He stated that happiness is the ultimate goal of the Christian way of life!

Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love.

[Spiritual life] If you keep [Think with] My Commandments, [Thoughts] (Rom 6:17-18) you will abide in My love; [Spiritual life] just as I have kept My Father's Commandments and abide in His love.

These things [Thoughts] I have spoken to you so that My joy [Sharing the happiness of God] may be in you, and /that/ your joy may be made full.

[At Spiritual maturity] (John 15:9-11)/  /

     The Apostle John identifies Truth as the source of the believer’s happiness.

In fact, we write these things [Thoughts] in order that our state of happiness [Spiritual life] might be completed!

(1Jn 1:4)

     /In time before death we are to complete the Spiritual life!

/

     The state of happiness is the Spiritual life; but there are degrees of happi­ness, from minimum for the immature believer who occasionally resides in the system, to maximum for the faithful believer who per­severes in his intake of Truth to Spiritual maturity and beyond.

Each gate contributes to the happiness of the one functioning in the system.

There is no happiness for anyone outside God’s system!

All true happiness is based on Truth in our soul; the temporal happiness of the Spiritually mature believer who functions in all the gates is Amazing!

(Psa 84:10) God designed us; He created us.

He /“knows our frame”/ from eternity past.

(Psa 103:8-14) He Knows a great deal more than we do!

About everything!

And what makes us happy!

The completed Spiritual life is the envi­ronment for complete happiness!

*/The tragedy is that people assume they can find happiness through their own devices; outside God’s system./*

And people can and will find happiness in everything under the sun, (Eccles 1:8-9) so will a dog that has a good bone, a tree, a blanket, a dish, wags his tail, runs and jumps!

Meaningless!

(Prov 1:32; Eccles 11:9) This attitude is the common ingredient of all people without Truth.

Satan, who is utterly unhappy and frustrated in the angelic conflict, observed Jesus in the prototype Spiritual life.

Our Lord’s constant inner happiness, stability, poise and courage, which under varying circumstances had an entire spectrum of expressions but was never broken.

Even at the decline of His nation; (Luk 13:34) and the anticipation of His suffering on the Cross!

(Matt 26:39) Which brought out expressions of Christ’s tremendous capacity for life, which included His constant, stabilized happiness in the plan of God.

Christ’s happiness was stabilized by His Divine Thinking.

He understood the Doctrine of Divine decrees: /The decree of God is His eternal, holy, wise, and sovereign purpose, comprehending at once all things that ever were or will be, in their causes, conditions, successions and relationships, and determining their certain future./

/Which explains how all things fit into God’s overall Viewpoint of time and eternity!/

But Satan rejects all Truth.

Totally arrogant and desperate, Satan tried to destroy our Lord’s happiness.

But no antagonism, opposition, injustice and or violence could destroy the power of Christ’s /“completed state of happiness.”

/(John 14:27) Failing in his attack against Christ, the devil now concentrates his genius against the believer and unbeliever by counterfeiting the happiness that only the Spiritual life can produce.

(Luk 12:19-21) 

/       /

FALSE HAPPINESS IN RELIGION 

     Satan has no happiness to share.

He therefore creates a worldly temporary fleshy-happiness to lure people away from God’s plan.

As the ruler of the world, Satan has the power to provide emotional and external-prosperity. (Matt 4:8-9) He presents the attractiveness of wealth, fame, sex and power as if they were happiness in themselves, but Satan’s most subtle and effective deception is religion.

The ritual of going to church, giving money, “helping out” (Eccles 5:1; Matt 23:25-28) and not knowing the only way for Reality is, (1Jn 1:9; John 4:23) The Spiritual life!

Christians have the impression that they will be happy if they are performing certain “Spiritual” functions, avoiding certain “worldly” activities, or receiv­ing the approbation of others in the congregation or community.

Because pastors and other religious leaders often encourage this fallacy as a way of life for happi­ness, believers are tempted to fake happiness in order to vindicate their religious beliefs.

*/The New Covenant Spiritual life is not a ritual; it is the ONLY TRUE REALITY!/*

The Christian life is residence in the whole Spiritual life.

And making God's Thoughts and Plan more important than our own!

(2Co 5:15) Until this happens the Christian will never understand true happiness!

(Matt 16:23-26)

     God The Son laid down his life as perfect God; (Php 2:5-8) this is His WAY!

If Christ is being formed in us mentally and in Virtue we will Think the same way, One Mind — One accord.

(1Co 1:10; Rom 15:6) Religion is Satan’s ace trump.

The worldly-happiness of Christians out of fellowship is just as short-lived and ultimately destructive as the high from a drug.

Spirituality, however, is residence and function inside the Spiritual life.

Spirituality emphasizes not emotion but Spiritual Thought, Thinking Truth.

Emotion without true Divine Thinking is involvement in Satan’s system!

Many cults promote an aggressive, unrestrained “joy” as a means of enslaving and controlling their members.

Emotion is used as a tool for breaking down the common sense of new converts.

Often, joy is integrated with illegitimate forms of ecstatics connected with “speaking in tongues.”

and  is a satanic substitute for the genuine inner happiness of the Spiritually mature believer.

This is not to condemn legitimate expressions of emotion, nor to advocate a stern, facade of strict inflexibility.

We are exploring a word found in the Bible, and in order to discover the accurate meaning we must scrape away the barnacles of religion.

Gate eight of the Spiritual life is not devoid of emo­tion, but emotion is in response to an entire frame of reference of God's Thoughts.

Genuine happiness depends on the Word of Truth.

(Jer 15:16; Neh 8:9-10; Jer 23:9) 

 

HAPPINESS AS A BY-PRODUCT OF TRUTH 

     Although happiness is the ultimate objective of God’s game plan, happiness is strictly a by-product.

God’s plan calls for us to pursue Truth in gate four of the Spiritual life.

There is no shortcut to gate eight./

//The shortcut to happiness is the long road to misery!/ 

     /For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, [Human provisions] but righteousness [Staying in fellowship] and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

[Spiritual Maturity] For he who in this way serves Christ [By staying in fellowship] is acceptable to God and approved by men.

So then we pursue the things [Divine Thoughts] which make for peace [Spiritual Maturity] and the building up of one another.

/(Rom 14:17-19) 

/     “Edification //—// building up”/ refers to erecting a structure in the soul, the believer’s inner strength which is completed upon reaching gate eight.

All believers share the common objective of Spiritual maturity and under the royal family honor code are bound to avoid what would distract another believer from reaching the goal.

(Rom 14:13) Happiness comes to those who keep faithfully learning and Thinking with Truth.

/But seek first His kingdom [Divine Thoughts] and His righteousness, [Staying in fellowship] and all these things [Human provisions] will be added to you./ (Matt 6:33)

     /How blessed is the man whose strength is in You, In whose heart are the highways [Thoughts] to Zion! [The kingdom of God]/ (Psa 84:5)

     In contrast, those who seek happiness itself, whether in wealth, power, religion or any other system of old sin nature happiness; finds only frustration, disappointment and misery.

A frantic search for happiness merely intensifies the unhappiness that motivated the search in the first place, as illustrated by addic­tion to drugs.

The Greek verb in, (1Jn 1:4) which the King James Version renders /“may be full,”/ is the perfect passive subjunctive form of /pleröo.

Pleröo /has a number of related meanings: to fill up a deficiency, to fully possess, to fully influence, to fill up with a certain quality.

The Concept of /pleröo /is comple­tion: /“that our state of happiness might be completed.”/

The perfect tense of the verb indicates completed results from past action.

Prolonged residence and function inside the Spiritual life brings about the completed state of happiness!

Every gate of the system works at maximum capacity for the mature believer.

The passive voice of /pleröo /indicates that such happiness receives the action of the verb rather than produces the action.

John makes it clear that Truth brings us to this completed state of happiness.

Supported by the first three gates, gate four provides the Spiritual momentum that result in gate eight.

/Truth pre­cedes happiness.

/If we seek happiness apart from God’s plan, we will always be unhappy.

God’s game plan calls for us to seek Truth, since happiness comes as a natural consequence of learning and Thinking with the Mind of Christ.

(1Co 2:16) The subjunctive mood of /pleröo /means that the completion of our happiness is a potential, the fulfill­ment of which depends on our Decisions over a long period of time to keep residing and functioning in God’s power system.

John reiterates the importance of Bible teaching in the second Epistle, in which he repeats the same form of /pleröo./