Are You Happy?
A note on the audio: This lesson's audio is a sermon recording in Korean. The notes below are in English, but pressing play will play Korean speech.
Opening Question
Q. Are you truly happy?
1. The Source of Humanity Is God. Scripture Calls This the Image of God
Genesis 1:1
God is the Creator. The source of human life is God. Life itself came from God.
Genesis 1:27
What does it mean that God created us in his own image? Read the following passage and see what you can infer.
Genesis 5:3
To bear someone's image means to be their child. To say humanity was made in the image of God means we were made as God's children — that we are glorious beings within the universe.
2. What Happened to Humanity, Made in the Image of God?
We left God, our own source. This is the root of every problem. To help us understand our relationship with God more clearly, Jesus told the story of the prodigal son.
Luke 15:11-24
Reflection Questions
Q. What did it mean for the younger son to ask his father for his inheritance?
Humanity was made to be happiest and safest living within God. To live within God means to follow God's word. But like this son, people have tried, by their own will, to break free from God — because they want to be their own master and live as they please.
Here we can understand what Scripture identifies as the root of sin. Scripture speaks of a first cause that gives rise to sin. This is the root of sin. This root is the act of pushing God out of one's heart and making oneself its master. When we push God out and make ourselves the master, do things go well? They do not.
Reflection Questions
Q. What happened to the younger son after he left his father's house? Read verses 13-16 and answer.
Luke 15:13-16
At first it was enjoyable. But Scripture tells us he squandered everything in reckless living. Then a great famine came upon his life. Suffering closed in. In the same way, a life apart from God meets famine.
First, Spiritual Hunger
At the center of a person is the spirit. That spirit is the breath of God.
Genesis 2:7
The human body was formed from the dust of the earth. But when God breathed his own breath into that body as spirit, a person bearing the image of God came into being. Because the body came from the earth, it lives on the strength of food that comes from the earth. But because the spirit came from God, it can only live by feeding on the word and grace that come from God alone.
Here we can find the source of the deep "emptiness" people feel. However much of the world's things a person pours into their soul, that deep soul is never filled. That is why a person can gain the world's power and wealth, achieve every wish, and still never find true satisfaction — because the deep center of a person's soul can only be filled by meeting God.
Second, We Cannot Enjoy True Peace
Matthew 11:28
Jesus spoke these words as he looked at the people around him. He knew how heavy a burden people carry, and how weary and hard their lives are. Human beings were originally created to live in peace with God as their Father. But once we push God out and make ourselves the master of our own lives, we discover we cannot control this life by our own strength. We do not know what will happen a minute from now. We cannot fully control even the health of our own bodies. The winds of trouble never stop blowing through life. Being our own master in the middle of all that means carrying the heavy burden of fear, anxiety, and worry.
Reflection Questions
Q. Are you in God? Have you experienced the hunger of the soul? What are your fears and anxieties?
3. Having Faith Means Restoring a Broken Relationship with God
Let's read the parable of the prodigal son again.
Luke 15:17-24
Reflection Questions
Q. What did the prodigal son think in the midst of his suffering? Read verse 17 and answer.
Luke 15:17
The prodigal son remembered his father. "My father's arms were the warmest place. My father's house had more than enough." That's right. The true home of our lives is the embrace of God our Father. That is where we came from. When we face the many seasons of famine in life, we need to remember the Father.
Reflection Questions
Q. What did the son do? Read verses 18-19 and answer.
Luke 15:18-19
He went to his father with a repentant heart. Repentance is a U-turn. It is turning back to God from a life that had turned away from God and toward oneself.
Reflection Questions
Q. In what manner was the father waiting for his son? Read verse 20 and answer.
Luke 15:20
This passage shows us that the father kept watching the road his son had left by, waiting outside the door. The moment he saw his son coming home from far away, a beggar, he ran to him. And he embraced him with boundless love and wept.
Reflection Questions
Q. How did the father treat his returning son? Read verses 22-24 and answer.
Luke 15:22-24
The father took off his son's ragged, filthy clothes and dressed him in the finest robe. This means restoring the honored status of a child. He put a ring on his son's hand. This means being brought back into a covenant relationship — a relationship in which he would receive back all of his father's inheritance and recover everything he had lost. He put sandals on his son's feet. This is comfort, covering feet that had been wounded from living in this world. In the same way, when we return to God, we find boundless love and comfort waiting for us. And they killed the fattened calf and held a feast. This means the restoration of joy, and the promise of receiving heaven's abundant grace. True faith is joy. It is also receiving and enjoying the abundant grace of heaven. Only then does deep peace and contentment arise in the heart.
4. How Can We Receive This Saving Grace?
First, we must repent of the life we lived as our own master. When we hear the word "sin," we usually think first of moral wrongs. But there is a spiritual sin, a root sin. It is the sin of pushing God out of the center of our hearts. Even someone who has attended church their whole life is no different from the prodigal son if God was never truly at the center of their heart. We must repent of this root sin of the heart.
And we must believe in Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord. "Jesus" means "Savior." The Savior God sent to save me from sin is Jesus Christ himself. God sent his Son into the world to save me; his Son bore my sin in my place, died on the cross, and rose again. To believe this is to believe in him as Savior. We must also now receive Jesus as our Lord. We cannot live this life by our own strength alone. Only Jesus, as our Master, can lead us.
Once we have received Jesus as Savior and Lord in this way, Jesus is now our Master. Now we must resolve to live with Jesus as our Master, according to his will. To do this, we should attend church, worship God, learn his word, and live as his children.
Reflection Questions
Q. Is God the master of your life right now? If not, do you want to repent and believe in the Jesus God sent, so that you may receive this saving grace? (Yes/No)
If you answered yes, please pray the following prayer with all your heart.
(Read this meditatively, twenty times.)
Loving God, until now I have pushed you out and lived as my own master, insisting on my own way. And so my heart has known no true peace, but has lived in fear, anxiety, worry, discouragement, and despair. I have also served idols other than you and lived according to the desires of the flesh. I believe that Jesus died for my sins and rose again as my Savior. I now repent of having made myself the master of my life, and I receive Jesus as my King and Savior. Wash my sins in the blood of Jesus and fill me with the Holy Spirit. And help me from now on to live in obedience to your will. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.