Our scripture reading tonight is taken from the book of Psalms, Psalm 94. We will read the whole psalm tonight, Psalm 94. Let us give careful attention to God's own word. O Lord, God of vengeance, O God of vengeance, shine forth. Rise up, O judge of the earth. Repay to the proud what they deserve. How long, O Lord, shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked exalt? They pour out their arrogant words. All the evildoers boast. They crush your people, O Lord, and afflict your heritage. They kill the widow and the sojourner, and murder the fatherless. And they say, the Lord does not see, the God of Jacob does not perceive. Understand, O dullest of the people, fools, when will you be wise? He who planted the ear, does he not hear? He who formed the eye, does he not see? He who disciplines the nations, does he not rebuke? He who teaches man knowledge, the Lord, knows the thoughts of man, that they are but a breath. Blessed is the man whom you discipline, O Lord, and whom you teach out of your law, to give him rest from days of trouble until a pit is dug for the wicked. For the Lord will not forsake his people. He will not abandon his heritage, for justice will return to the righteous, and all the upright in heart will follow it. Who rises up for me against the wicked? Who stands up for me against evildoers? If the Lord had not been my help, my soul would soon have lived in the land of silence. But when I thought, my foot slips, your steadfast love, O Lord, held me up. When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul. Can wicked rulers be allied with you, those who frame injustice by statute? They band together against the life of the righteous and condemn the innocent to death, but the Lord has become my stronghold and my God the rock of my refuge. He will bring back upon them their iniquity and wipe them out for their wickedness. The Lord will wipe them out. So far the reading of God's word. Several things may strike you. One is that this may not immediately be obviously a psalm about how to be happy. And those of you who have known me a long time may be even more surprised that I would choose a title like that, How to Be Happy. I told Pastor Gordon, we don't have enough practical sermons here. So I'm here tonight to preach a very practical sermon, How to Be Happy. I must confess I had forgotten that the Trinity folks were going to be with us tonight. and I had thought that maybe Elder Den Boer was going to lead the song service and I was confident that if he did, he'd lead us in a rousing chorus of don't worry, be happy. Trying as he always does to match the music to the sermon. How can we be happy in an age like ours? You get discouraged. Sometimes I get discouraged and I think the answer is just to shut off the news. but we do get discouraged don't we we get discouraged by a variety of things i was very discouraged when i heard that prince had died i said to my wife it's discouraging to realize i don't know a single prince song all these people were saying what's your favorite prince song and i am so old i did not know a single prince song i said to my wife do you realize that means that I have been out of it since the 70s? And she said, oh, no, Bob, I've known you since the 60s, and you've been out of it since the 60s. I must confess I was distressed when I heard one of the reporters say, I'm so shocked that Prince died. I always thought of him as eternally young. And I thought, that's part of what's wrong with us as a people, isn't it? that we can actually delude ourselves into thinking that anyone is eternally young. It's a denial of reality, isn't it? It's a denial of the most basic facts of life. And there is much to be discouraged about if we stop to think about it. A couple of times a week ago, I heard a report on the local news about human trafficking in San Diego County. Now, I think that's a way of talking about the trafficking in women for sexual exploitation. And the reporter almost offhandedly said, in San Diego County, there are 12,000 people humanly trafficked. That basically means enslaved. Enslaved for prostitution. 12,000 people in San Diego County. Where's the moral outrage? What has happened to us as a people that this can be reported and we just then move on to the next little human interest story. We live in a world where outrageous things are happening. And it was outrage and frustration and deep distress that inspired the writing of this psalm. A psalm in which the psalmist pleads for the Lord to arise, for the Lord to take action, for the Lord to set things right because things were so wrong. And maybe initially we're a little shocked at the way in which this psalm begins. O Lord, O God of vengeance, O God of vengeance, shine forth. That's not the way the God of the scriptures is often portrayed in our time. But the psalmist realizes if there's not a God of justice, if there's not a God of righteousness, if there's not a God who will enforce righteousness at least at the last day, what real hope do we have? And so this psalm unfolds, And as Hebrew poems often do, the heart of the poem is right at the middle of it. And right at the middle of it, we find verse 12. Blessed is the man whom you discipline, O Lord, and whom you teach out of your law. This is the very heart of what this psalm gets to. This is the very center of the concern of the psalmist as he seeks for encouragement in the midst of discouragement. And he meditates on what it means to be blessed by the Lord. Now, I've told you before, but I don't know if you all remember, that there are two words for being blessed in Hebrew. One of them talks about the act of blessing, whereby the Lord comes and blesses his people. And the other is the state of being blessed. And that's the word that we have here. That's the same word as we find at the beginning of Psalm 1. And that word could be translated, has been translated, happy. So that's the trick I'm playing on you tonight. How are we to be happy? Well, we become happy by being blessed in the Lord, by being chastised by him, by being directed out of his word. That's where true happiness comes from. That's where true blessedness comes from. That's where it becomes possible to live in a world that seems to be falling apart. in a world that seems to be controlled by those who don't understand anything about the ways of God. And in a world where there isn't understanding, in a world where there isn't wisdom, we as the people of God in particular must be teachable before the Lord. I was recently reading Calvin's commentary on Zephaniah. Okay, it's weird. This is why I don't know any Prince songs. But in that commentary, Calvin wrote very strikingly, true religion begins with teachableness. When we submit to God and to his word, it is really to enter on the work of worshiping him aright. If we want true religion, we have to be teachable. If we want to be teachable, we have to listen to his word. And when we listen to his word, it will lead us to fellowship and worship with him that is right. And that's what this psalm is saying. The tragedy of the world in which we live is that so many people don't think right and therefore don't act right. That's the wicked as they are described in this psalm. If we're going to be happy, we have to understand the wicked. We have to understand our God. And we have to understand ourselves. And the psalmist begins then with the folly of the wicked. The folly of the wicked in the first place as he presents it here is their lawlessness. They are arrogant in their words and boastful in what they say. We should pause to think how really destructive arrogance is. I'm amazed as I listen to some of our political comment today on all sides. The presidential candidates who stand up and say, I'm going to do this, and I'm going to do that, and I'm going to do the next thing. As if they were running to be king. There's no reflection on the way in which our government is constitutionally established to be a measure of cooperation between the executive and the legislative branches. There's no pausing to reflect that even the President of the United States, for all his or her power, cannot control all that happens in the world. But arrogance assumes to itself a power and a purpose beyond anything that God has established or God will allow. But it's not just that they're arrogant. It's that they are destructive in their actions as well as in their words. Verse 5, they crush your people, O Lord, and afflict your heritage. There's an active effort to destroy God's people and their truth and their way of life. And that's something, too, that we are seeing in our day. The moral law of God is derided. Now we have to recognize that too often our Christian response is stupid. But that's not what the psalmist is primarily talking about tonight. There is an opposition to the moral law of God at work in our world. It's a fruit, it seems to me, speaking now as a historian rather than as a preacher. It's a fruit of decades. of opposition to the moral law of God expressed in schools in this country and in the media in this country and in entertainment in this country. God's moral truth has been held up to ridicule in the name of all sorts of freedoms claimed by people for themselves. And the effect of this has been a crushing of God's people in a variety of ways. But it's not just God's people who have suffered, is it, in this lawlessness? Verse 6 says, they kill the widow and the sojourner and murder the fatherless. We still live in a day of a million abortions a year in America. Thankfully, I can't quite get my mind around the number of million. But it's appalling, isn't it? The murder of the weakest and the most defenseless. That's the folly of the wicked in their lawlessness. Crushing. Destructive. And that's the behavior we see around us. It's death-dealing. In a culture of drugs, of sexual violence on college campuses, it amazes me that we hear these constant reports from the University of California systems about the problem of sexual violence on campus and what is the liberal solution. It's more education. These are the most educated people in the country. But there's a destructiveness here, a death dealing here, because they will not listen to the moral law of God. And the wicked are not only lawless, this psalm says, they're clueless. They don't get it. They don't understand. Verse 7, they say the Lord does not see. The God of Jacob does not perceive. Galvin said this is the great refuge of rascals To convince themselves and protect themselves with a conviction that God doesn't see or if he sees, he won't act because he doesn't care. And the psalmist addresses that cluelessness and says, understand, O dullest of people. That dullest is really understand, O most brutish of people. Oh, understand, O most animal-like of people. People who have all but betrayed the image of God in themselves in their animal actions. Do you really think God doesn't know? And then follows this beautiful reflection. Does he who planted the ear not hear? Does he who formed the eye not see? Does he who disciplines nations not act to rebuke? Does he who teaches not know? The psalmist displays the folly of those who would think that God doesn't know. That God can't act. And so he arrests us by the power of this poetic vision, this truthful vision that he lays before us as he says, understand the folly of the wicked, understand that it will not last, understand that it will not survive, that all of their plans are as but breath that passes away, verse 11. This is a recurring theme of the psalms, isn't it? One that we find again and again in that great psalm that we have so loved as a Reformed people through the centuries, Psalm 103. We find exactly a reflection on that truth about ourselves, that we are but a breath. 103 at verse 13. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him, for he knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust. As for man, his days are like grass. He flourishes like a flower of the field, for the wind passes over it and it is gone, and its place knows it no more. But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him. And that's where this psalm moves next, away from the folly of the wicked and to the fatherhood of God, to the care of God for his people. And the psalmist wants to encourage us. The psalmist wants to make us happy by displaying for us the truth about God. The truth about God is not that he doesn't know, he doesn't see, he doesn't hear, he doesn't act. The truth about God is he knows everything, and he acts and cares for his people. And that's what's developed then so beautifully in this passage. Verse 11, for the Lord will not forsake his people. He will not abandon his heritage. The wicked may afflict the heritage of God. That's what we read in verse 5. But God does not abandon his heritage. He does not forget his heritage. He does not forsake his heritage. He remains with his people. and that's so important because there are times when we feel abandoned. There are times when we wonder, where is God? What is he doing? Why has he done this? And the comfort that this psalm begins to work for God's people in the midst of discouragement, in the midst of the mess and injustice of life, is to begin to say, God doesn't forget. God doesn't abandon. God doesn't forsake. He stays with his people. Who will arise, verse 16, against the wicked? Who stands up for me against evildoers? If the Lord had not been my help, my soul would soon have lived in the land of silence. If the Lord had not been my help. Here's the wonderful promise. It's not just that he doesn't forget and doesn't forsake. It's not just negative about the Lord. It's positive. He acts. He helps. He comes. He delivers. You remember the great heritage of the Dutch Reformed churches is that every service begins with those words. Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. that great beginning of worship can be traced back to John Calvin's Geneva. The services in Geneva began with those words. But Calvin didn't originate them. He knew that in the ancient church, church services began with those words. And, of course, the ancient church took those words from the Psalter. Our help is in the name of the Lord. who made the heaven and the earth. Those aren't just filler words, in case the sermon runs short. They are the essential, foundational words. And you see how glorious they are. Our help is the one who made everything, and therefore is the one who can help in every circumstance. If the Lord had not been my help, my soul would soon have lived in the land of silence, in the land of death. In the land where, from an earthly perspective, there is no music to encourage the soul. And the psalmist goes on, when I thought my foot slips, your steadfast love held me up. He hears, he helps, he holds on to us. That's the promise here. And he holds on to us with his steadfast love, with his mercy, with that covenant love that never lets go of us. Here's, you see, at the heart of this psalm, this encouragement to draw us to God and to his mercy and to his faithfulness. He does not abandon us. No matter how powerful the wicked seem for a moment, They are a breath that passes away. But the steadfast love of the Lord endures forever. That's what this psalm is saying to us. Verse 19, when the cares of my heart are many. This is a verse worth memorizing. When the cares of my heart are many. I look around this congregation, and I see many who have had cares of the heart that were many. And what does the Lord promise? Your consolations, your comforts cheer my soul. The Lord hears us. The Lord holds on to us. The Lord helps us. and in the cares of the heart, the Lord cheers us up. That's how to be happy, to know who your God is, to know what he's doing for you, to know his steadfast love. And so by the end of this psalm, almost the end of the psalm in verse 22, the psalmist has come to a great confession of faith, to a great confidence that his, verse 22, but the Lord has become my stronghold and my God, the rock of my refuge. He may have felt besieged at the beginning of this psalm, but by the end he's confident that he has a safe place, that he has a refuge, that he has a fortress, That he has a fort or a castle to be protected in. And that protection is his God. And for us, we are more privileged, aren't we, than even the psalmist was. Because all of these things that the psalmist understood and believed and celebrated in this psalm are things that we understand even more fully because we see them in the face of Jesus Christ. He was the one forsaken that we might never be forsaken. He was the one abandoned that we might be helped. He was the one whose foot slipped into the grave that we might live forever. He was the one who was overwhelmed with trouble that his comforts might cheer our soul. He is for us the fortress and the refuge, the shelter in the time of trouble. And what a blessedness that is for us. What a comfort and encouragement that is for us. He will never leave us or forsake us. That's the promise. And one day he's coming again to make all things new. He's going to arise and shine as the God of vengeance to bring justice and righteousness and judgment into the world. Psalm begins with that word of shine forth, O God. Let the world see you shine like the sun. As the sun shines, illuminating the world with a visibility that cannot be denied or resisted, so one day God will shine forth with all of his justice and with all of his goodness. Now sometimes Christians wonder if they can pray some of these psalms. Is this right to pray for a God of just judgment to come forth? Is it right to pray the final verse of this psalm? He will bring back on them their iniquity and wipe them out for their wickedness. The Lord our God will wipe them out. Is that just Old Testament religion? Does it have anything to do with the New Testament? Well, once again, as is so often the case, John Calvin answers our questions. Calvin wrote, Whenever then God condemns us by his word, let us know that he will be propitious to us if touched with true repentance, we flee to his mercy. For to effect this is the design of all his reproofs and threatenings. And Calvin's exactly right about that. When you read the Psalter carefully, what you find is every time there is a word of condemnation, in the surrounding Psalms there is first a statement of appeal to repentance. God's first word to us is always a word of repentance. An invitation to come to him and to find mercy, peace, and all the blessings that this psalm talks about. That's his first appeal to us. And when we think about being happy people, when we think about the blessedness that is ours in Christ, when we think about how we have been instructed and disciplined by the word of God, we need to keep that in mind because I think, again, one of the temptations of the kind of distresses of the days in which we live is that we become angry people. A certain amount of moral indignation is a good thing. But our moral indignation must be for God's sake, not for our own. It must be for God's glory, not for our own power or influence or ability to influence the course of history. And in our moral indignation we must follow the pattern set down by God and by our Savior that our first appeal to sinners must be that they turn and find mercy in Christ. And only to those who will not come, only to those who harden themselves against the mercy of God How do these words of judgment and awful threat apply? So are you a happy people tonight? My wife will tell me I didn't smile enough in this sermon. But I'm happy. I mean happy in a kind of Calvinist way. That's always limited. But I'm happy to know that the wicked will not be in charge forever. I'm happy to know that God is in charge and does all things well. I am happy to know that in Jesus Christ I'm loved and cared for and protected. And I'm happy to know that Christ will gather every one of his elect to himself before that great day of judgment comes. And so I hope you're happy tonight. You ought to be. Think of those wonderful words of Psalm 40. They're here somewhere. Psalm 40, verse 4. I do that just to encourage Chris Gordon. Those wonderful words of Psalm 40, verse 4. Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust, who does not turn to the proud or to those who go astray after a lie. Blessed is the man, happy is the man, who makes the Lord his trust. Amen. Let us close in prayer, and I want to use a prayer of John Calvin in conclusion. Let us pray. grant almighty God that as almost the whole world breaks out into such excesses that there is no moderation no reason oh grant that we may learn not only to confine ourselves within those limits which you approve and command but also to delight and glory in the smallness of our portion in as much as the wealth and honors and pleasures of the world so fascinate the hearts and minds of all that they elevate themselves into heaven and carry on war as it were with you. Grant us that in our limited portion we may be in such a way humbled under your powerful hand as never to doubt but that you will be our deliverer even in our greatest miseries and that ascribing to you the power over life and death we may feel fully assured that whatever afflictions happen to us proceed from your just judgment so that we may be led to repentance and daily exercise ourselves in it until we shall at length come to that blessed rest which is laid up for us in heaven through Christ our Lord. Amen.