HAPPINESS ON GOD'S TERMS

Understanding the true nature and purpose of God's commandments and moral law.

By Bill Burkett

There are seven Biblical absolutes that must be in place for any man to achieve true and lasting happiness. God reveals in His Word the way to the happiness He gives. To have faith in these absolutes is the mark of the true Christian. To depart from these principles is to "kick against the pricks." If you want your Christian life to have more peace and power, and more of God, observe the SEVEN STEPS TO HAPPINESS on God's terms. Here is the law of happiness in seven steps:

1. GOD - First man must acknowledge the supreme authority of God as creator and King of the universe.

2. GOVERNMENT - When man submits himself to God he will further discover that God is the sovereign king of an eternal Kingdom (government) that is centralized in the city of God. God is a Sovereign reigning over a divine government. Heaven is/owns the highest and most perfect government in existence. Wherever God reigns you will have a most perfect form of government.

3. LAW - The Kingdom of God is a government. Democracy is a government by the people, but theocracy is a government under the sovereign rule of God. All Governments consists of laws which reflect the nature of the King who reigns sovereign over that domain. The essence of government is law.

Most liberal preachers have shown contempt for God's commandments through their ignorance of the Biblical doctrines of Grace and Faith. Salvation means I have passed from the LAW of sin and death into the spiritual realm under the LAW of life in Christ Jesus.

Becoming a Christian does not mean we have been released from law. It means we have been released from the law of sin and death and have come under the laws of the Kingdom of God which we now love with the new nature Christ has given us.

God's laws are not grievous:

"For this is the love of God that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous." -1 John 5:3

God's laws are expressions of His love and omniscience toward those who declare by repentance that they will cease from sin and come lovingly under His government. The laws of the Kingdom simply define the order of things as the God of perfect love and perfect justice deems them to be.

To rebel against the laws or the commandments of God and live according to one's own preferences is rebellion! To love God is to love God's laws as carefully as Christ yielded Himself to God's laws when He was crucified. God's laws are essential to the

order of all things both in heaven and in Earth. All of God's laws are based on His love for man and the good of man.

"Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven." -Matthew 6:10

Now the question is, how does the law of God do us any good? Answer: As we obey.

Jesus came to blot out *all* past sin and give us of His Spirit within providing us with the needed power to overcome the sinful flesh and its deeds. That is, He gives us grace and power to overcome the rebellious flesh nature:

"But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name." -John 1:12

"Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; (26) To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus." -Romans 3:25-26

"To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in youy, the hope of glory." - Colossians 1:27

"For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men,

teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world." -Titus 2:11-12

In fact, He gives us a new nature that loves and understands the laws of the kingdom:

"Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. (18) and all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation." -2 Corinthians 5:17-18

LAW IS A PATTERN FOR ORDER BUT ORDER IS ONLY ACHIEVED AS LAW IS OBEYED. So, between the law in writing and the order it can produce is the most important plateau to reach of the seven principles of happiness - *OBEDIENCE.*

4. OBEDIENCE - Obedience is the catalyst that proves our commitment to the Kingdom of God. Without OBEDIENCE to the gospel there is no salvation. The whole purpose of His suffering was to transform us and make us vessels of holiness! This cannot be accomplished by the natural man - you must be born of God's Spirit, and when you are, you will become compatible with the moral laws of the Kingdom and love the law of God; you will have a desire to be holy and hate the fruits of darkness (rebellion):

(1) Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him.

(2) This we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments.

(3) For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous.

(4) For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.

If you do not have that love for the divine order, you are a rebel and need to make a complete surrender of the flesh on the altars of repentance.

"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service." -Romans 12:1.

The flesh barrier must be crashed before obedience that pleases God can be achieved. This is what the power of Christ given to me enables me to do, to have dominion (or self-control) over the impulses of the sinful flesh nature. Law may reveal an orderly arrangement but it is only words and logic until it is actually executed. Where there is obedience to the laws of God, there is only one outcome - ORDER - and where there is ORDER, there is peace.

LAW IS A SYSTEM OF ORDER THAT PRODUCES PEACEFUL ARRANGEMENT PRESERVING THE WELFARE AND HAPPINESS OF MAN. But a written law not obeyed will not produce order. Human governments are burdened down with thousands of laws in an attempt to bring order to society. As man becomes less and less governed from within by his own discipline and personal standards of morality, the more lawless he becomes and the more laws must be enacted from without to control his behavior. But governments cannot legislate sin with external laws! The man himself must be transformed morally from within, governed from within - that is what commitment to Jesus Christ does, it creates a moral creature disciplined by God's laws from within the heart:

"For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people." -Hebrews 8:10

For this reason the modern and false teaching that teaches a faith in Christ that cancels the importance of obedience to commandments *is a false gospel.* The major mistake of this false gospel and those men who embrace it is that they do not know the difference between CEREMONIAL LAW, which has indeed been abolished by Christ and the apostles, AND the MORAL LAW which is still very much the very foundation of all divine character. To destroy that MORAL LAW would be an attempt to destroy the very nature of God!

"Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." -Romans 13:8-10

It is this very point that separates the true gospel from the false; separates the apostles' teaching from the apostates' teaching; separates the holiness church from the Charismatics - the attitude toward the law of God and His moral commandments.

A Christian cannot read the New Testament and believe that Christians are not under the same moral responsibilities under Grace as in any other dispensation. The difference is that now, by faith in the cross, we have Christ living within with His resurrection power and spirit of holiness empowering us to live within and above the requirements of God's commandments.

5. ORDER - Order, the peaceful arrangement whereby harmony is

achieved. There is only chaos where there is no obedience to the

laws of God. But where God's laws are imposed, the harmonies of

ORDER results to the benefit and happiness of all.

6. PEACE: The absence of confusion and chaos. Obedience produces order and orderly behavior replaces all chaos. We have removed the last obstacle to achieving happiness. We have destroyed chaos until we have caused all conflict to cease. Conflict and chaos are first cousins. We have moved within close range of happiness when we have come out of chaos and entered a life of perfect order which only loving obedience to God's Kingdom laws can produce. ORDER must precede PEACE and the state of PEACE must exist before HAPPINESS is possible.

7. HAPPINESS: We will never know the first thing about God as a true and loving friend until we come to the full realization that He wants man to be happy. He has given us the laws and principles that will produce happiness when we believe in them and put them into practice. Many people blame God for the wars and diseases that ravage the human race. These are all the doings of man!

"From whence come wars and fightings among you? Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?" -James 4:1

Man creates his own problems and then blames them on God or the Devil. It is in our hands to have a perfect world tomorrow but we keep it from happening by not obeying the laws of God. If everyone in the world would suddenly obey the Ten Commandments, tomorrow we would all be living in paradise!

When God created man, He first created an ideal environment for man to live and be happy and fulfilled in. Sin (rebellion against God's order and government) destroyed that original happiness. Jesus has come to redeem man from sin and destroy sin! How does He actually accomplish that? By indwelling each of us who put our trust in Him and allow Him to restore us back to loving and willing obedience to the order of God's government.

The true evidence of a person being a child of God is his love for the order of things as God reveals that order in His Word. To not respect that order and regard the moral teaching of Scripture is the sign of the apostate who works against God while remaining in the church and claiming to be a child of God.

"For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ." -Jude 1:4

"Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." -Matthew 4:7

As Peter said: "...if ye do these things, ye shall never fall." -2 Peter 1:10

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