Psalm 37:4

Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Bible search results for happiness

Isaiah 52:7 How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”

Lamentations 3:17 my soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is;

These are the search results for happiness. The bible does not say very much about happiness. A search for just the word happy doesn’t reveal all that much, but here is one example.

Deuteronomy 24:5 “When a man is newly married, he shall not go out with the army or be liable for any other public duty. He shall be free at home one year to be happy with his wife whom he has taken.”

That  miscellaneous law allowed a man to be happy but it was not the law that made him happy. We cannot legislate happiness.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Declaration of Independence

This declaration does not guarantee happiness but only recognizes the individual rights to pursue it. The chase is on. What makes you happy?

Please do not answer that question. I don’t want to know. I am not a constitutionalist. Neither am I a moralist. Nor am I a legalist.

What once seemed to make me happy no longer pleases me. Those things were sinful and sin was never satisfied and sought to entrap me in an endless search for the trill that does not last and needs to to be fed constantly. This is what sin does, in it there is no lasting satisfaction.

Romans 14:22 (KJV) Hast thou faith? have it to thyself before God. Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth. (ESV) The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves.

Faith is the key to true happiness.

By the time we have read this far into the gospel of Luke we might have forgotten that this is a personal letter sent from Luke to his good friend Theophilus. His motive is to confirm for his dear friend those things his friend has been told.

Over the years this letter was elevated to the category of gospel because of so many truths contained within. It became a letter of confirmation for all of us. Here in chapter 19 we will discover some important truths which Luke addressed for us all.

Jesus and Zacchaeus is a tale of a sinner who did the right thing and was saved.

The Parable of the Ten Minas is a tale of a sinner that was afraid to commit and was lost.

The Triumphal Entry tells a tale of what Jesus did to fulfill the prophecies that spoke about Him and how He was received by those who rejoiced in His coming and those who resented His coming.

Jesus Weeps over Jerusalem is a tale of man’s vanity in building a monument to God that God never asked for and does not respect because it did not lead to peace for the people living there. Without the peace of God what man makes will never last.

Jesus Cleanses the Temple is a forerunner tale of how it is Jesus alone cleanses us.

It is important at this moment to admit that the titles of each section of Luke 19 were not a part of the letter written by Luke. They were added by the ESV revisionist to separate each tale as a way for us to focus on the importance of each tale separately.

Theophilus didn’t have those markers. That is not to say that he missed the point of each of those tales. That is not for us to judge. What is important is that Theophilus found it so moving that he had the letter copied and distributed among the churches of the day.

This is how the gospels get shared, when we find the words of them to be so compelling that we just have to share them with everyone we meet. How those gospels will be received is identified in the tale entitled “The Triumphal Entry” where some will rejoice and some will reject which is beyond our ability to control.

It is not our responsibility to predict results but our hope is to hear this; Luke 19:17 And he said to him, ‘Well done, good servant! Because you have been faithful in a very little, you shall have authority over ten cities.’

Please note the wording, “faithful in a very little”, not much or everything, but very little. This too applies to all of us.