The Happiest Place on Earth

Introduction

It is good to be with you again. I have been here, I think two or three other times. I can’t remember the exact number. And I remember the first time I did this teen weekend was about five years ago. And uh most of the people that were there aren’t here anymore. And uh I guess that’s because Greg has run all of them off. Uh no, uh obviously they have grown up, and it is exciting, by the way, that uh I have a son who is a freshman at Florida College, and I go to visit him, and for instance, I see the Steel Daughters, and I remember the time we had here together, and look forward to the days where I’ll be able to see some of the kids that spent this weekend with at other places, and we’ll we’ll remember about uh how we made fun of Greg and those kind of things together.

But uh it is indeed good to be with you. Thank you to the elders for having me to be a part of this, and it is good. It’s uh I joke about Greg, he’s one of my favorites, the clients are just good friends of mine, and it’s always good to be with them. Well, what we’ve done this weekend is we’ve taken popular advertising slogans because I’m kind of an advertising and marketing nerd. I think it’s a fascinating study of the things that corporations and companies do to lure people and the way it attracts us, and not just the graphic design, but the jingles and the things that are said, and even tested the kids, and it’s amazing how many things. You can give them just a small portion of a logo, for instance, and they know exactly by the color and a few markings of what the greater logo is.

And it impacts us so much. And there’s some spiritual applications that could be made, and often it’s just the sentiment behind that, like the one we’re gonna look at together this morning. And it’s one that’s kind of related to this area a little distantly, but it is uh a slogan of Disneyland over in California. I don’t know if you realize it or not, but their official slogan is that it is the happiest place on earth. Now, if you didn’t know, the one here in Orlando is the most magical place on earth. I think it’s just because it’s larger, but the happiest place on earth is apparently in California. And the idea behind that is simple. You go to Disneyland, you may have all kinds of trouble in your life, but when you go to Disneyland, you can forget all your worries, all your stress, all your anxiety.

There is no problems at Disneyland, except for long lines, overpriced food, and rides that aren’t really good for adults. But outside of that, it is the happiest place on earth. And you can go there and forget all of your worries. And while the Disney World may be called the most magical place on earth, I can tell from my hotel there’s a lot of people here that are doing the same thing. They have come here to escape from reality. From all over the world, they come. And they spend thousands of dollars in Orlando to escape the world and to find happiness and magic and release and relief from all the pressures of work and home life and the things around the world. And I have to tell you that that’s a nice thought.

But what I think the happiest place on earth ought to be is the church I assemble with every week. And maybe you’ve not thought about that. Before we go any further, I want to give you a warning. I am not going to promote this idea that churches, in order to become the happiest place on earth, ought to have concession stands and amusement park rides and shows and entertainment. Although some have tried that. And that hasn’t produced happiness, by the way. And what I want us to look at this morning is what churches can do to find real joy. There’s a brother in Memphis who’s a real encouragement to me. He would often meet me at the back of the building after the invitation song, and he would pull me into a room, and we would go pray together.

He was just a sincere spiritual man. I miss him greatly. We moved to Birmingham about a year ago. But he said to me in a phone conversation one time, he said, you know, brother, he said he was just hoping that someday churches would look more like heaven. You ever thought about that? How churches should look like heaven? I don’t know what you think about heaven, but I think of heaven as a place of joy and happiness. In fact, happiness and joy that can’t be experienced on earth. But I tell you what, what we ought to be able to give in our churches is the closest thing to that. Now, before we talk about how to accomplish that, or what I think is the most important thing we can do to accomplish that, I want to begin this morning by just focusing on a couple of things that shouldn’t be found in the church that can destroy our happiness, things that get in the way.

1. The Church Should Be a Place With No Sorrow

For instance, uh, you may not realize this, but the church should be a place where there is no sorrow. Now, I before you correct me, hang with me for a minute. I know Romans 12 and verse 15 says they are to rejoice with those who weep and weep with those, rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. And we sit there and we go, well, look, there’s weeping in the church. And 1 Corinthians 12 and 26, if one member suffers, all suffer together. There’s suffering in the church. And there is. But what’s the source of suffering in those passages? Have you ever thought about that? What’s the source of suffering? What do you cry over? Loss of a loved one. Marital problems. Maybe problems with your kids.

Maybe you’ve lost your job. Financial hardship. Sometimes. Sometimes those things outside of the church bring us sorrow and we weep with those who weep. And I will admit, sometimes we have problems in church that make us weep. But you know what those things are when there are problems in the church that make us weep? There usually are mistakes, aren’t they? It’s usually because we have fussed and fought, we have been selfish, we can’t get along, and it causes conflict. And we’ll talk about conflict in a minute. But at the end of the day, all of those things are external to the church. They’re what we bring to the church. But what should the church be? It’s a great debate about what Revelation 20 and 21 are really talking about.

Whether it’s heaven or whether it’s the church. Maybe Revelation 20 and 21. It’s got these pictures of the golden streets and the pearly gates and the foundations of stone and all of those great pictures that people want to say, well, that’s what heaven’s going to be like. And somebody goes, well, no, no, no, no. It’s written to these people and it’s what they find in the church. And I’ve got to tell you, regardless of that, for our application today, the same is true. Because if we want to make churches look more like heaven and it’s about heaven, well, then we should apply that passage. And if it’s about the church, then that passage applies. So I want you to notice what Revelation 21 and verse 4 says.

You shouldn’t use your Bibles this morning. Make sure what I’m telling you is true. Don’t just listen to me and believe me. But Revelation 21 and verse 4, there, it says, He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. And death shall be mourned no more. Neither be shall there be mourning nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. We read that and we think because it says there’s no pain and there’s no suffering and there’s no tears. Well, that cannot be on earth, therefore it has to be heaven. What’s interesting about that is the passage in Isaiah 25 and verse 8. Because Isaiah 25 and verse 8, everybody agrees is a prophecy about the church, not heaven. And notice what it says He will swallow up death forever.

The Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces and the reproach of his people, he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. See, the point is, you can debate Revelation 21. You might try to say that’s no tears in heaven. We sing a song based on that thought, don’t we? And while I think that’s true, I also think there’s this idea, obviously from Isaiah 25, that in the church we should find a place where our tears are taken away from us. How is it possible for us as a church to do that? This thought here of our tears being taken away is not a thought that we never mourn or that we will never have sorrow, but it is this thought, I believe.

That because of the fellowship we have with one another, we don’t suffer in our tears like other people suffer. There are people that wipe our tears away. And I’ve got to tell you, one of the very real things that you have to understand is when it says God will wipe away their tears, that providentially, part of that is us. We help wipe the tears away from each other. We weep with those who weep. We give comfort that can only be found from God’s people. In times of trouble, in times of sorrow, you cannot find comfort anywhere else like you can find among God’s people. And if that’s not the case, it should be.

2. No Conflict in the Church: We Are One

Where you can come in and your burdens can be shared and carried, enlightened. We do that for each other. The second thing that shouldn’t be found in the church is conflict. Now, I want you to make sure you understand. I’m saying there shouldn’t be conflict. I understand that sadly, there is often a lot of conflict. In fact, one of the saddest things about us is we seem to find a way to divide almost about almost everything. I just thought about a list of ways we divide. Maybe you’ve not thought about this, but here’s the way among, and I’m going to narrow this down for you so you know. I mean, I’m not talking about the religious world at large. I’m talking about our brethren, the ones that we would describe as sound brethren.

That we’re still divided. We got the one assembly folks on Sunday versus the two assembly folks on Sunday. I mean, and I know where I’m at, we only meet once, and y’all only meet once. I’m sure nobody else has ever said anything to you about not meeting twice, have they? Never happens. Sure does. And then there’s the kind of related to church that offers the Lord’s Supper only once versus the church that offers it twice. And then there’s the church that is known as the maybe this isn’t the case in Florida, but it is in places I live, where you have the public school church and the homeschool church. I mean, have you ever got to be a spectator in one of those education choice fights on Facebook between brethren about which is better?

And then you’ve got the small church versus the large church. Because when you’re a small church, what you do in order to compete with the large church is you talk about how much better it is to be small. By the way, that is the weirdest evangelism plan ever. We want people to come join us with the idea that we don’t ever want to grow. Because it’s better to be small. But we argue about that. And we divide over that. We talk about which one’s better. The country church versus the city church. The church that uses this songbook versus that songbook. Yes, that has been a division before. Look, I just moved to Alabama. There’s a county with about 80 non-institutional churches in the county. You want a test case of being able to split and divide over everything.

That’s where it is. And there’s a whole host of issues. And my thing is, can we just stop? Isn’t it time we just stop all of that? And I’m talking to the adults now. I know it’s teen weekend, but to the adults, because it has to start with us. Can we just stop dividing over everything? Can we realize that there’s a lot of things that there’s more than one way to do it and still be right? You realize that you can send your kids to school or you can homeschool them, and they can both go to heaven. That is a reality. And you can meet once on Sunday or you can meet five times on Sunday and still serve the Lord and be acceptable to Him.

The church should be a place where we don’t fight over those kind of things. In fact, we are a part of a group where Jesus literally gave his life as a sacrifice. And part of that that we often overlook, because the greatest part of that was that through him we find remission of our sins, we find forgiveness, we find redemption, we are saved. But do you realize another part of the purpose of Jesus’ sacrifice was to be able to bring people from all areas of life, from all backgrounds and cultures, and bring them together in one flesh in one body that has no conflict. Ephesians chapter 2. Turn over there. Ephesians chapter 2. Ephesians 2, verse 13 through 16. It says, but now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one, has broken down the flesh, the abiding wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God and one body through the Christ’s cross, thereby killing the hostility.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. There is this idea in Scripture that there is no cultural, no social conflict between us as brethren. We are one. And what you find in the church is should be one of the few places that regardless of where you are from and how much you have and the color of your skin and your gender and your education, you come and you are all equal. You don’t look down on each other. You ever notice in our culture, when you think about how we don’t do those kind of things, we don’t remove those barriers. You ever gone to a restaurant and there’s not an empty table? And there may be a table that you could sit at that only has one person.

How many of you go sit with that stranger? We don’t do that. In fact, the only place you do that in America, oddly enough, is Starbucks. And it’s only at one table. There’s one table that you’ve got ten seats and a bunch of chargers. And it’s awkward because you sit at a table with people, but you do not talk. Because in our culture, we’re divided and we’re separated, and we never get over those things. And if I don’t know you, I start with a general distrust of you. I start with a set of barriers and walls. I cannot let you in. The church is where the walls are lowered and there are no barriers, and we remove all of those cultural things and all the conflicts that separate us everywhere else, and we are one.

3. Personal Conflict: Go Fix It

I gotta tell you, if we can understand that, if we could actually practice that, because I know we don’t always practice it, but if we could actually practice that, it would go a long way towards making us the happiest place on earth, wouldn’t it? Because that robs us of our joy. And the other area of conflict we need to talk about real quickly is personal conflict, because sometimes, sometimes the conflict isn’t those social cultural things. Sometimes it’s conflict that you and I create with each other.

When you’re the new preacher, you move somewhere, about the first six months is spent with everybody trying to catch you up on all the reasons they don’t like each other. I mean, and they slide it in. Nobody comes in and says, hey, I just need to talk to you about why I hate five people here. But they say things like, well, you know, Job’s a good guy, but now three years ago, he borrowed a screwdriver for me, and he never brought it back. And I’ve never forgiven him for that. And I can tell you, people that do that kind of stuff, first off, a lot of times I go, wait, I don’t want to hear all that stuff. Like, I don’t want to hear about those things.

You need to go fix that. We’re not talking about it. In fact, that’s what the scriptures say. I don’t know if you realize it in Matthew 5, there in the Sermon on the Mount, when it talks about bringing your offering to God, it says there in verses 23, 24, if you are offering your gift at the altar and remember your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before you offered that at the altar and go reconcile to your brother then coming off your gift. You know how important it is there for you to fix that with your brother in Christ? God says, do not worship me till you fix that. And then Matthew 18 is a more kind of detailed plan where Jesus, we’re not going to read that, but where Jesus goes off and says to us, hey, look, if you’ve got a problem with somebody, they have harmed you, you go to them and them alone, and if they don’t repent, then you take two or three witnesses, and if they don’t repent, then you go before the church.

Can I tell you we don’t practice that? Here’s what we practice in our churches today. Greg upsets me. It doesn’t even have to be a sin, by the way. But Greg upsets me. And rather than going and talking to Greg about how he upset me and fixing that, you know what I do? I talk to everybody but Greg. And I go to the elders about it and I say, you know what? Greg did this, you only need to fix it. Can I tell you that’s sinful? It’s sinful for two reasons. Number one, it’s not what Jesus said to do. And number two, not only did you not do what Jesus said to do, you actually gossiped, which is a sin about your conflict. I am on my fourth work.

Only been there a year, which means they still love me. Give it time. It’s going to change. But the honeymoon period is great. But in all four works that I’ve been at, this has been a problem every place. So let me tell you a little secret about that. Here’s what God said when you have problems between brethren. Fix it. And you fix it. You go to them by yourself and you fix it. And you try to fix it alone. And you might say, well, no, I don’t want to do that. I don’t like conflict. Then if you don’t like conflict and you’re not willing to fix it, drop it. Because if it’s not important enough to you to resolve it, then it’s not important enough for you to remember.

The church is not supposed to be a place where we show up for worship carrying our baggage from the last five years of every wrong they’ve done to us, and we will sit there and we will regrudgingly worship them and partake of the feast and listen to sermons, but not resolve our personal issues. And understand something. I’ve not been asked to say that. It’s something, though, that I am convicted that needs to be said in every church. Because we do this all the time. And it robs us of our joy. Takes away our happiness. It keeps us from being the happiest place on earth. And it should be. You know how weird it is to be in Orlando and go to the Continental Breakfast in a tie.

4. When We Come Together, We Find Joy and Encouragement

You ever thought about that? Everybody’s looking at you and like, who is that guy? I hope that tie is waterproof because Splash Mountain’s going to get him wet. Because most people, they’re not thinking about church this morning. What are they thinking about? Going to the happiest place on earth. I got up this morning to go to the happiest place on earth too. That’s what the church should be. And I tell you, the world’s going to provide enough sorrow and discouragement, isn’t it? You ever thought about that? Like when. Look, I know I don’t know the real world because I’m a preacher, and I only work three hours a week. I get it. But I do know what you guys go through because I have a wife who teaches school.

And every day I send her out into the world, and she comes home and tells me how tough it is. And she’s like, What did you do? I sat in my office and read the Bible all day and prayed to God, and it was great. You had to deal with kids and adults that aren’t nice. I won. Those people make fun of preachers. We won. But you guys, you go out in the world. You have to deal with all that. And it’s difficult. People lie. And work people are backstabbing you to get ahead. It’s depressing. And even things you don’t think about normally. This morning, as I was up early studying and drinking my coffee, about every 10 minutes I heard a siren. You know what a siren represents?

Pain. And suffering. Emergency service vehicles don’t turn sirens on unless something’s wrong. Somebody’s going to the hospital, somebody has died, somebody’s been in an auto accident, somebody is going to jail. It’s about pain. And in contrast, when we come together, we find joy and encouragement. In fact, turn to Hebrews 10 24 and 25. Hebrews 10 24 and 25 is a passage that we have proof texted. And here’s how we say it. Well, you know Hebrews 10 25 says you have to go to church. And I’m going to tell you, that is not what Hebrews 10 25 says. Hebrews 10 25 does not read this way. Thou shalt attend the assemblies. It’s not what it says. Look at verse 24 starting. Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works.

Not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near. What is that passage really saying? Hey, are you tired? Are you weary? Are you discouraged? Are you tired of how the world treats you? Go to church, and you’ll be uplifted and encouraged and edified. That’s what it says. It says that the reason why I don’t neglect the assemblies is because here I find hope and strength and motivation to keep pushing forward and to keep serving God because I know the reward is worth it. You see, what it’s saying here is you don’t come to church because you have to. But you come to the assemblies because you find in there a refuge from the darkness of this world you cannot find everywhere, anywhere else.

5. Joy Comes From Each Other

You find happiness and joy that is extraordinary, that doesn’t exist anywhere else. Which leads me to this idea and point that I want you to understand about happiness before our time is up. And that is this.

Again I say rejoice. And we say, find joy in the Lord. That’s where the joy comes from. And yes, it is true. Joy comes from the Lord. I mean, in John chapter 16 and verse 20, he talks about there in verses 20 through 24, and I’m not going to read that, but how that you will have sorrow, but your sorrow will be turned to joy, and that joy will never be taken from you. And it’s specifically to the disciples about what’s about to happen, that they will be sorrowful about what happens to Jesus, but then they will realize the joy that that gives, and that sorrow will be taken and turned into joy that can be never removed from them. And so, yes, there’s a part of your joy that comes from salvation.

There’s a part of your joy that comes from your relationship with God. But there is also a part of joy that comes from each other. Turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 12. 1 Corinthians chapter 12. And it’s in this passage on spiritual gifts, but I want you to notice what is said here in verses 12 through 26. And I know it’s a lengthy reading, but it’s an important reading. It says, therefore, just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one spirit we’re all baptized into one body. Jews, Greeks, slave free, all made to be drink of one spirit. You see that? We’re one. That’s that same idea we talked about earlier, how he removed all the conflict and divisions.

He brings us to one. Keep reading. For the body does not consist of one member but many. If the foot should say, because I’m not a hand, I don’t belong to the body, that would not make it less part of a body. If the ear should say because I’m not an eye, I do not belong to the body, that would not make any less part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where it would be a sense of hearing. If the whole body were an ear, where it would be that it’s a smell. But as it is, God arranged the members in the audio, each one of them as he chooses. If we were all single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.

And so, again, here we are. We’re from different backgrounds, we have different abilities, we have different talents, different things we bring to the body, but we become one flesh.

Keep reading. The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you. Nor the heads of the feet, I have no need of you. On the contrary, the parts of the body seem to be weaker and indispensable. And on those parts of the body that will think, well, it’s honorable. We bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our presentable parts do not require. But God so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that liked it, that there may be no division in the body. The members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together. If one member is honored, all rejoice together. We read that in the beginning about suffering.

Well, there are tears. Yes, but that suffering is removed. Why? Because we come together as one body, and we realize that regardless of what you do and who you are and where you’re from and how long you’ve been a Christian or how short you’ve been a Christian, we are all one body, and we are all just as important as the other. And we offer the same care to each other. And in this parts analogy of the body, what that really means is this there’s no appendix in the church.

It’s this thing that you can live without. Like you can’t live without really, I mean, you can, but nobody wants to live without your hand. Or your eye, or your ear, or your feet. It may happen, but you don’t choose to do that. But that appendix hasn’t happened as that. We’ll kick that out just immediately. In fact, I wish they’d go ahead and take it out so I don’t have to have the pain of it someday if I’m alive. Can you live without it? There’s no appendix in the church. We need every part. And as I thought about that, and how we all come together and we all care for one another. And as a psalmist says, what that creates in us is we find the light in all the saints, that we are each other’s source of delight and joy.

6. Every Joint: The Relationships That Hold Us Together

There’s one more thing I want you to think about. And that’s found in Ephesians 4, and then we’ll be done. Why do you turn over there? Young people know this, so they can’t answer this out loud. But you look at me, and I know what you think, by the way, is that guy must have been an awesome football player. Everybody my size is an awesome football player. At least in high school. We live in our glory years. And I gotta tell you, Friday Night Lights, some of the greatest parts of my high school days. I loved it. Nothing like it. The grass, the smell, the lights, my uniform, the crowd, and my tuba. I didn’t get to play football. My mom was scared I would be hurt.

So I wasn’t allowed to. My oldest is a freshman at Florida College. He is my only son. And when we when we had a son, we found out he was going to be a boy. We decided we would we would name him after a great football player, the greatest that’s ever lived. Peyton Manning. No Florida jokes about not beating Florida. I want to hear that. Still the greatest player ever made. And so Peyton grew up as a football player, and he played football because I wasn’t going to hold him back. And he played for ten years. They were ten great years. He was injured for 11 of those ten years.

And his last injury was a torn labrum that he got in the very first game of his senior year. He played for the remainder of the season. His shoulder popped out of socket four times and he kept playing. Because football players do. And he kept playing and working through life. And then finally, last December, in between his two semesters of college, he had that shoulder fixed.

Now, why is that important? Because before I read this passage, I want you to think about this. In my son’s shoulder, he had all of the parts that mattered. He had all the bones, he had the muscles, he had all the joints, he had everything except for the joint that held it all together. It was stretched and it was damaged. It had to be corrected. All the parts are there. Only the joint is damaged. Now read Ephesians 4 15 and 16. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him which is the head into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so it builds itself up in love.

What’s the joint? In every other passage, Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, you know what we want members in the body are described as? Parts. Hands, feet, ears, eyes, body parts, not joints, parts. You know what a joint is? A joint is where parts come together and join together. You know what a joint is? A joint is what holds the two body parts together. See, I think what Ephesians 4 16 is talking about what every joint supplies is not each member, but rather how the members work together.

You know what those joints are?

They’re relationships. Like my son’s body. You can have all the parts. But if you don’t have the relationships to join the parts together, it doesn’t work. And I promise you, there’s no happiness. My son’s body, every time he used that shoulder, screamed in pain. And there got to be a point where he couldn’t even lift his arm above his shoulder without his body yelling, I am unhappy. All of which means this.

Conclusion

How we treat each other, how we get along, how we handle conflict, how we comfort each other. We’re going to talk about evangelism when we come back. The world is looking for the happiest place on earth. They will spend thousands of dollars to fly across the globe to go to Disney World to find happiness for a few days. You can give that to the people in your life for free. Real happiness. A family that loves them, that wipes away their tears, that when there is a problem resolves it and resolves it quickly, that seeks peace. Wants to help each other go to heaven. And by the way, that’s exactly what Jesus said is how the world would know whether we’re his disciples. By relationships. We think it’s by the name on the side, or by the doctrine that we preach.

Or the things that we practice in worship. And it doesn’t, by the way, this verse doesn’t mean those things aren’t important. What it means, though, is that what the world is looking for is a family that knows how to treat each other and love each other that creates the happiest place on earth. By this the world will know that you’re my disciples. If you love one another.