- Well, good morning church, so good to see you here this morning, what a beautiful way to begin a new year. Together as God's people at the Lord's table, acknowledging our need for Him. You know many of you do by now that have been with us for any length of time. You know that each year we try to put a theme together for the church and we let that theme guide us for the year. So this year will be no different than that. We have a theme for 2025. And the theme is flourishing together, rooted in Christ. And what we're going to do is we're going to begin today what's going to at least be a three year journey for us as a church. And we're going to learn more together about what it means to flourish as a follower of Jesus in every season of life. Flourishing may look differently in one season of your life than another. And so just know it is possible to flourish in every season. We're also going to spend some time over these three years exploring what it means to be a flourishing church and how flourishing Christians and flourishing churches spill over into the community and have an impact in the community in which they are located. And so that's what we begin today. We have a long time ago isolated what we would call eight liturgical seasons as a church that are just the natural rhythm and flow of First Baptist Arlington. And usually what we do is we take some version of our theme and let it guide us during that particular season. We'll do that again this year. So today marks the beginning of winter for us. And it looks like the weather has finally figured that out as that seems to be the case. It's our theme for the winter of 2025 is going to be happiness is. And I'll explain that a little bit more here in a minute but we're going to learn about the biblical teaching about happiness. What does the Bible have to say about happiness? And the research that I've been doing now for a while I came across this particular writer, thinker, artist, her name is Stephanie Harrison and she is an expert in the science of happiness. Did y'all know there was a science of happiness? Well, there is and Stephanie is an expert at it and she's written a book entitled New Happy. In fact, that's the title of her work. You can look her up online, look at her website. She has all kinds of artwork and ideas. I'm just beginning to read through the book but I'm familiar enough with her to know her basic premise is this. Here's what she basically says. Everything that we've been taught by American culture about happiness is a lie. That's what she says. She says all the things that are forced upon us to help us understand what happiness is, just aren't true. She calls that the old happy and she's written a book about the new happiness. It's a really fascinating read but the point is in general, people wanna be happy. Most people would like to be happy. So we're going to explore what that means and we're going to do a study of the Beatitudes and we will get to that eventually. We're gonna use the Gospel of Matthew as our guide. In fact, our pastor's Bible study is going to start back on Wednesdays, January 15th and Matthew will be our text and we're going to walk through the Gospel of Matthew. We're looking forward to it. So with all that said, I wanted to launch the series today though with a kind of an explanation, if you will, of how we got to where we are and look at these next three years today. And so for this first year, our underlying text is found in 1 Corinthians two. So if you've got your copy of the New Testament, I've entitled the message today, the same as our theme for the year, flursing together rooted in Christ. And the text is in 1 Corinthians two where Paul is talking to the Corinthian church and he basically says to them when I came to Corinth, I didn't come with a lot of earthly wisdom. I didn't come trying to impress you with what I'm able to do or say. He said I came and preached Christ and him crucified. Then he goes on to say this and this is our text and here's what we're going to do each week during 2025. I'm going to give you a weekly Bible reading. So instead of a daily reading, we're going to send out a weekly reading and ask you to take some time during the week to reflect more deeply on a text together as a church. Now, you may be wondering, is it okay to read your Bible every day? Yes, it is. And you may have a daily reading plan that you have already subscribed to. I highly recommend it. But I'm going to be recommending and encouraging you to take one passage to slow down, every day reflect upon it and go a little deeper into the truths that we find in the scripture. And I'll help you do that as we go along. This very week, the reading is this text. So I'm going to walk you through it today and I'm going to leave it with you for the week and ask you to explore it more deeply. Does that make sense? Okay, so let's look at the text for today. First Corinthians two where Paul says, I didn't come to you with this wisdom of men trying to impress you, but look at verse six. He says we do however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are coming to nothing. No, we declare God's wisdom, a mystery that's been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it. For if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written, and here's an allusion to Isaiah, what no eye has seen, what no ear has heard and what no human mind has conceived, the things God has prepared for those who love him, these are the things of God revealed to us by his spirit. The spirit teaches, or searches all things rather, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person's thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way, no one knows the thoughts of God except the spirit of God. What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God so that we may understand what God has freely given us. There's the fulfillment of the new covenant, the presence of the spirit. This is what we speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in words taught by the spirit, explaining spiritual realities with spirit taught words. The person without the spirit does not accept the things that come from the spirit of God, but considers them foolishness and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the spirit. The person with the spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments for who's known the mind of the Lord, so as to instruct him. But we have the mind of Christ. So as we begin the journey, I wanna just invite you to a journey into the depths, if you will, of what it means to really know God and to follow him every day in just the every day of your life as you live your life, as a husband, as a wife, as a mom, a dad, a brother, a sister, an employee, an employer, someone who's retired, someone volunteering in your community, whoever you are, whatever you are, whatever it is you do, learning how to follow him more deeply. However, what I would tell you is, when you and I choose to explore the depths of what it really means to know God, not just skim the surface, but actually truly deeply seek to know him, there are some roadblocks in your way. There are some hindrances that keep us from doing that. And I just wanna address those real quickly because I wanna invite you to that, particularly over these next three years, but this year in particular, it's a journey into the depths of truly following God and knowing him personally. Calvin Miller, I don't know if y'all remember Calvin, he came and spoke for us years ago, he's dead now, he's a great pastor, theologian and poet, writer, and seminary professor and Calvin came and spoke, or Calvin, I love Calvin Miller, he's one of my favorite people. I was pastoring in Huntsville, Alabama, and Calvin's very creative. We're sitting on the platform during the service. And y'all remember the days when everybody was still on the platform, some of y'all have never seen that before, but there was a time when people used to sit up here and I was sitting up there with Calvin and he said, "Hey, is there a children sermon today?" And I said, "No, we have 'em sometimes, "we don't really have one today." He said, "Let's just have one. "We're in the service." And I said, "Well, I'm not prepared to do a children sermon." He said, "I'm not either." He said, "But it's just children. "Bring 'em up, or I'll do it." So, okay, so I get up and say, "What all the children like to come forward?" Dr. Miller would like to do a children sermon. So he sits down and I ask him, I say, "What are you gonna do?" He said, "I don't know, I'll just see "when they get up here." So they come up and sit down and he just says, "Boys and girls, "do y'all know how important you are to God? "How many of you know all the letters of the alphabet?" The little boys and little girls raise their hands. He said, "How important is the letter B?" Do y'all think the letter B is very important? What if we didn't have it? And then he told a story about a baby who was carried by his parents in a baby carriage that had a blue bumper on the baby carriage. And he told the whole story without using the letter B. Everywhere the letter B appeared, he just, it was silent. So think about that in your mind, how do you do that? The kids were mesmerized. He gets to the end of it. I looked out, I was watching all the parents and parents were kind of what Calvin called the listening lean. They're leaning in and he gets to the end and he said, "Isn't it an amazing how important the letter B, "just the letter B, think about how important you are." He came back up and sat next to me. I said, "I will never do another children sermon "to the rest of my ministry." I don't know how to do that stuff off the cuff. So that's Calvin Miller. Well, he's written a book called "Into the Depths of God." And I've had this book for years and it has really challenged me and I've gone back and explored it in my preparation for this year for us. Here's what Calvin says. He says, "You have some impediments "to actually exploring the depths of God. "Let me give them to you in my language." The first one is, here's a challenge you all, we all are going to have. If we're going to explore God more deeply, we have to manage our appetites. You see, God has designed all of us with appetites, with drives. They're actually healthy, they're valuable, they're necessary. But if we're overwhelmed by them, then that's a problem. Let me read you this quote from Calvin's book. He says, "This appetite is a life sign. "Healthy people get hungry. "Our appetites can at last define us. "Christians are to be people who hunger and thirst "for righteousness," Matthew 5, 6. In other words, Christians are to be defined as people who are hungry for God. They're hungry to please Christ. Martyrs are not necessarily those who are hungry to die. They are merely souls with an excessive appetite to please Christ. They would rather please him by having to die than disappoint him by selling out on key issues of obedience. Most of us don't hunger to this extent. We are perhaps a trifle hungry for Christ, but we more often pursue the ordinary mass-lovian values, shelter, food, safety, power, and sexual fulfillment. These are all perfectly normal human appetites, but they can become truly dangerous when we lose our mastery over them and allow them to take over our lives. So one of the challenges we all are going to face is dealing with our own appetites, our own desires, our own drives. Y'all are familiar, I think, with how the Inuit people hunt wolves. We've talked about it before, but I'll just remind you, the Inuit hunter, he will take a really sharp, large knife blade, and he will coat it with the blood of a rabbit. He will then coat the blood of the rabbit with ice, and he'll place the handle of the blade into the snow firmly, leaving the blade exposed. A wolf will catch the scent of the blood of the rabbit and will come and begin to lick through the ice to get to the blood of the rabbit. Eventually, the wolf will nick its tongue, and then there's fresh blood, and then the wolf will then truly begin licking its own blood. Are y'all with me? And you know what finally happens, right? That wolf will lose its life right there in the snow because it can't manage its own appetite. A nice little illustration before y'all head in the lunch, I thought I would give that to y'all. You're welcome, just have that image in your mind. But what I would tell you is, to me, it's a testimony to me, to the truth. Human beings are sinful, and if we're not careful, we will drown in our own lust. We'll just let our appetites run rampant. Rather than managing them, they'll overwhelm us. And when they do, we start trying to fulfill the needs that we know we all have in erroneous ways, and it can be very destructive. Second challenge we face is encountering emptiness. Here's what Calvin says about emptiness, Calvin Miller. He says emptiness is the central neurosis that sires so many smaller addictions. Emptiness, so many people in our society experience it. In fact, one of the reasons that Stephanie Harrison said she wrote this book and began to explore the new happy is she tells her story in this book. And she says I would graduate from college, got a really good job, had a nice place to live, incredibly successful. I think she was in New York City. She said I had it all, according to the American dream, and I was miserable, empty on the inside. Why? And she began to delve into the reasons for her sense of emptiness in the midst of what seemed to be incredibly successful on the surface. Well, earlier this year, I don't know if y'all saw this, but I just followed it 'cause I thought it was interesting. It was in Alton, Illinois. There was a park in Alton, Illinois, where there had two big soccer fields, and in the middle between those soccer fields in June, all of a sudden, the field just gave way. It was 100 foot wide sinkhole, 30 something feet deep. In fact, you can Google it and watch it. There was a light pole standing right in the middle of those two fields and it just disappears one morning. Somebody was videoing it and just this massive sinkhole. In other words, it just gave way. Everything looked good on the surface, green grass, always well, and then all of a sudden it just caved in. Well, you know what? There are plenty of people whose lives are that way. It looks good on the surface, and all of a sudden it just gives way. And what it reveals is a profound reality of emptiness on the inside. And there are many people who experienced that. Living lives in their own strength, pursuing their own earthly desires, sometimes fulfilling their own lusts, and then their life just gives way because they're so separated from their creator. Because when you choose to live your life on your own, you will experience a certain type of emptiness, a vacuum in the very heart of who you are as a person and your life can give way. The third challenge we face, third roadblock, is we have limited horizons. The reason for that is all around me and you and our society are people who live their lives as if this world is all there is. So everything they do is just focused on this world. And you and I cannot allow our horizons to be so limited because we're Christians. And we need an eternal perspective. We need to be able to see things as they really are because so many people in our world do not see things as they are. One of my favorite illustrations of that is when you read Stephen Covey's work, he tells that very famous story about when he was in some large metropolitan city on a Sunday morning and he boarded the subway and he said, one of the stops a dad got on with four children, the dad said at the end of the subway car and he said the four children just started running rampantly through the car. Just wreaking havoc. He said at first it was kind of cute. Four little kids, full of life, having fun. He said, but eventually they got irritated. He said, I got irritated and he said, I started noticing everybody and he said, we're all looking at each other like, what does this dad do? And he said, so finally he approached the dad himself and Covey said he went on to and said, sir, I don't mean to bother you, but I mean, you're just sitting down here at the end of the subway, your children are just running wild on this subway. Couldn't you not do something? And he said, the dad looked up and said, oh, I guess they are. He said, you know, we just left the hospital and my wife just died and I guess my kids don't know what to do. And he said, frankly, I don't really know what to do. Stephen Covey said, just like that, his perspective changed because he saw what was really going on. Well, you're a Christian. You and I are supposed to know what's really going on. That's our role in this culture. We're supposed to have the eternal perspective, the eyes that really see what's happening because God is at work in ways that our world will miss. This text says, people who don't have the spirit of God don't discern spiritual things, they just don't. All they have are natural eyes to see. So here's what I want us to think about as we launch this journey together. Here's what I just want to call it if I can. It's just the calling of God. And when I read this text and I reflect upon what I think the Lord will have for us, I would say this. I think Paul's message here is an invitation to deep. Paul says, the spirit of God searches the deep things of God. And so I want to invite you to a journey to explore more deeply than you ever had before, what it really means to know the Lord and follow Him in the everyday of your life. And it's a challenge. You know, Calvin Miller tells the story in this book, into the depths, he says, he and his wife went on a trip with their son. Their son invited them to go to the Great Barrier Reef. Their son's a scuba diver. And he wanted to go and he wanted them to go with him. He said, we went, but we're snorkelers. So our son's a scuba diver. He said, so while we were there, he went scuba diving, we went snorkeling. He said, no, we saw what snorkelers see. He said, but our son, he's scuba diver. He saw the Great Barrier Reef. He said, but when we talk about it, we talk about it like we actually saw it. Because we saw the glimpse of it. He said, because we don't have the discipline to learn how to scuba dive, we're just snorkelers. You know, when Cindy and I got married, Cindy was a licensed scuba diver. I'm not, I'm afraid of heights and depths. It turns out, you know, I'm good. I can snorkel a little bit, I'm fine. Calvin Miller says, here's what's wrong. So many churches are filled with snorkelers who talk like scuba divers. Can y'all just say ouch a little bit, right? Here's the thing, I wanna invite us to the depths. It requires discipline, overcoming some of these barriers. I get it, but we don't need any more shallow Christians. We have enough. We need deep Christians. People who really do authentically understand what this is all about. So y'all know that every year in July, whether I take some time off and pray about the future of our church, and I'm grateful for that time. So this past July as I was praying and researching, I just felt God calling me to this invitation to deep. What does it mean? And so as I was doing that, I began to reflect upon something that I remembered as I did a little research. When I was finishing up my term as regent at Baylor, I spent nine years on the board at Baylor. My last year or so, Baylor announced a new project in concert with Harvard University. And it's known as the Global Flourishing Study. And Baylor and Harvard, along with the Gallup Organization, have launched the Global Flourishing Study. They did that while I was finishing up my term as regent. And I started doing a little research in it. And I grew even more fascinated with it the more I learned. This project is the first of its kind between Baylor, Harvard, and Gallup. They have secured right at a $45 million grant from the Templeton Foundation. It's the largest grant of its kind for the study of sociological science in history. The plan is to study human flourishing in the lives of 240,000 people in 22 countries. And they are representative samples of almost half of the entire world's population. And the point of the study is to determine what does it really mean to flourish as a human being? The two men who are leading this study are dynamic Christians, Tyler Van Derweel and Byron Johnson. Got their photos, I'll show you. Tyler's on the left and Byron's on the right. I don't know Tyler, I do know Byron. Tyler is an epidemiologist and he is a professor of epidemiology at Harvard University. He's on the left. He is a dynamic, very committed Roman Catholic Christian. On the right is Byron Johnson. Byron's also a very dynamic committed Christian at Baylor. And he leads the Baylor Institute for the Studies of Religion. Tyler leads the human flourishing program at Harvard. He's an expert in public policy and public health. That's his areas of expertise and research. These two men have come together to launch this massive study along with the Gallup organization. And they are basically studying, what does it mean for a human being to flourish? And they're doing it from an academic perspective, researching as sociologists, if you will, in that realm. And they're going to be publishing their material on the Center for Open Science site. And their research papers will be published in Nature Journal. All of these are incredibly academically reputable entities. And basically, here's where they've landed. They've asked the question, what does it mean to flourish? Here's the answer, the scientific answer. When a human being is flourishing, when all aspects of a person's life are good, that's their working definition from a secular perspective. And they have isolated what they call domains. And they've said, we're going to evaluate, we're going to ask human beings to evaluate themselves and each one of these domains to see how well they're doing. It's a study of well-being. There's more to it than this, but this is the core of it. Here are the domains, let me give them to you. Happiness and life satisfaction is the first one. Second, mental and physical health. Third, meaning and purpose. Fourth, character and virtue. Fifth, close social relationships and sixth material and financial stability. They're going to study these 240,000 people over the next five years. And basically, they're self-assessing how well are you doing in the realm of happiness and life satisfaction? How would you rate yourself? How well are you doing in your mental and physical health? How well are you doing with understanding your meaning and purpose? How well connected is your life to your understanding of character and virtue? How healthy are you regarding close social relationships? And how well are you with regard to material and financial stability? And they're researching, flourishing from that perspective. Now, you might be asking the question, so why in the world would we care about what Harvard is doing? Harvard is a liberal institution that long left its Christian moorings. I know that's what some people have asked me. Well, Tyler Van der Wiel is a dynamic Christian who just happens to teach at Harvard. Praise God, we have a man like him there. Well, here's what's happened. In concert with Baylor, these researchers have decided they want our help. They would like for churches to be a part of this journey because Tyler and Byron both believe that you can't really study human flourishing without addressing spiritual dynamics of faith. And so they published this material, flourishing in the church. And they've asked church leaders to do some research alongside them to understand how Christians view flourishing. And so you know what Tyler Van der Wiel says? As a scientist in the research, what is flourishing? It's when all aspects of a person's life were good. But Tyler has just released a new book called The Theology of Health. You know what he says in that book? He says his understanding of human flourishing is living life as God intended. That's what they're asking us to research alongside them. What does it mean to live your life as God intended? And so that's what we're going to try to do is a church. We're going to look at the spiritual dynamics of all of this. And so we're going to address these domains. So for example, I'm going to spend some time this winter preaching on happiness from a biblical perspective, not from a cultural perspective. I already know what my culture says about happiness. And so take that and let's compare it with the Bible teachers about happiness. We're going to look at all the domains from a biblical perspective and connect them to this journey because these researchers have this academic community has invited churches to be a part of their journey. That's why we're going to do this. And it's all brand new. It's all, it's all wet cement. There's a whole lot that we don't know yet, okay? And so thank you for your willingness. But regardless what happens in that research, we're going to do our own journey. We're going to learn about flourishing together as the people of God. And we will share what we're learning, but really the point is for us to learn together. So we're going to launch it January 24th, 25th and 26th. It's our launch weekend. And I really want you to be a part of that. I'd love for you to come. All ages come. And we'd like for you to register. There's a place you can register on the church app or on our website. And we would love to know that you're coming. I have written a paper about flourishing, some 20, almost 20-something pages that I've given to the staff. And about my take on flourishing. So this study is new. It's groundbreaking. There's synergy between the scientific and the sociological research community. But guess what's not new? Flourishing. That's not new. God created a flourishing creation. He put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, which I'll not agree this was flourishing. God's desire is for us to flourish. And that's why I appreciate Tyler telling us in his book what he really knows about flourishing is living life as God intended. I would agree with that. And that's what I want us to explore together. Does that make sense? Are y'all with me? Okay, even if you're a little hesitant about it, come on and get in. You can just get in the shallow end at first. But we're gonna invite you into the deep end, okay? 'Cause that's where I want you to go. I get it. It can be a little challenging. I can remember when Josiah was little, we were in a swimming pool with him. I was holding him and I said, "Let's ease out to the deep end." He said, "No, no, no." And he said, "Oh, dad." He said, "It's over my head." I said, "It's all over your head, dude." I mean, we're already over your head. That's why you're holding on to me. I just want you to feel what floating feels like. Well, we're gonna go to the deep together, all right? Because I believe that's where God's inviting us. So the calling of God is the invitation from God to the deep. The Spirit searches the deep things of God. Now, how are we gonna do it? What does this text say about that? How do we explore the depths of who God is? Well, here's what I would tell you. We can't do it on our own. We just don't have the capacity to do it. We don't have the willingness to do it. We don't have the knowledge to do it. We don't have the wisdom to do it. In fact, this text says, "eyes haven't seen it, ears haven't heard it, and minds haven't conceived it." It's beyond us. It's in a whole 'nother dimension. So how does it happen? Well, God's made it available. You know how? Through the wisdom of God. That's what this text says. How do we do this? Well, Paul says, "Here's what's available to you, not the wisdom of this age, but no God's wisdom." It was a mystery at one time. That word mystery is kind of a code word in the New Testament. It means this, something that used to be hidden has now been revealed in Jesus. That's what the word means. And so this used to be hidden, but now it's been revealed because we can't come up with it on our own. Our wisdom is limited. God's wisdom is revealed in Christ. And what does Christ bring to us? He brings the restoration of God's glory. That's what this text says. God's glory is going to be on display with us in us. That was God's desire before time even began. For us to bear his image and reflect his glory, it's powerful, it's holistic redemption of the entire human being. That's what the gospel's about. That's the picture of flourishing, where God redeems everything about us. And we experience him on every level of our lives in the everyday of our lives. That's what we're after. Now, how do you get God's wisdom? Well, there's only one way to get God's wisdom, and that's through the Spirit of God. You've got to open up your life to the Spirit of God. That's what this text says. These things are revealed to us by His Spirit. The Holy Spirit searches the things, the deep things of God. Now, be honest with y'all, when I grew up in the church, as a kid in Birmingham, Alabama, we didn't talk about the Holy Spirit. In fact, we didn't even call Him the Holy Spirit. We caught Him the Holy Ghost, and you just needed to be careful. Don't mess with Him, 'cause if you do, you might start speaking in tongues and jumping pews and healing. And the next thing you know, you're going to start staying at church way longer than the lunch hour. You know, this thing is going to get out of hand if the Holy Ghost wants to take over. So we were like, okay, let's just let the chorismatics, as my pastor called them, the chorismatics can have the Holy Ghost. We got Jesus. Well, here's the thing. Actually, the Spirit of God is a full member of the Trinity, and we need His Spirit. And so we have to open up our lives to the Spirit of God. And here's the good news. Jeremiah said, one day God said this, I'm going to put my law within you in your heart. Well, guess what? Jesus made that available. The Spirit of God now dwells in us. And because of that, we can have wisdom and power. And we can start exploring the depths of who God really is. We just have to open ourselves up to Him every day and give Him the opportunity to guide us as we surrender to Him. And guess what it leads to? Something that just almost sounds impossible, right? Here's what it leads to. Look at this last phrase in chapter two of first Corinthians. But we can have the mind of Christ. See that, that's where this is headed. In other words, the perspective, the insight, the wisdom that God offers in Christ can be available to us. The discipline of this life, managing our appetites, having a true understanding of what God is doing, experiencing God fully, dispelling the emptiness in us. That's all available to us. Would y'all not agree with me? Who is the single most flourishing human being who's ever lived? Jesus, Jesus flourished in every respect, fully living out His purpose. So let's you and I draw near to Him. So here's the invitation, 2025. Let's dedicate this year together to the Lord. Let's commit ourselves to this journey to the depths. Let's commit ourselves to growing deeper, being more truly rooted in Christ. Like I said, the academic community not invent flourishing. A Psalm one person is a flourishing person. And so let's you and I grow deeper, truly rooted in Christ. And let's let Him shape our desires, help us to manage our appetites. Let's let Him oversee our behaviors. And matter of fact, let's just let Him shape our lives in 2025 and let's do it together. May it be so. Let's pray together. Well Father, we're grateful for the gospel, for this good news. We thank you Lord that this new covenant is a reality now and that we truly can know you and experience you. We can even have the mind of Christ. And so that's my prayer today Lord for us, that we would experience this coming year, just the richness, the beauty of being deeply connected to you. Lord that it would just be pervasive in our lives, that we'd find the pathways in the spiritual depth that would bear fruit in our lives and for your kingdom's sake. And I lift up these people to you and I pray Lord that that'll take place in the lives of our folks as we walk into this new year. Pray that in Jesus name, amen.
