We are not made for earthly happiness

I have been thinking much in the past couple of weeks about Ephesians 4:17-19, which is the passage for this week’s sermon:

So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.

While meditating on this exhortation, I came across the following section from Jonathan Edwards’ sermon, “The Nakedness of Job” this morning:

…we are not made for an earthly happiness. God certainly never made man for that sort of happiness which he cannot hold; he was never made for that happiness which, almost as soon as enjoyed, flies from us and leaves us disappointed. If this was the highest happiness we are made for — that happiness that would be unavoidably accompanied with those disappointments and frustrations that do more than counterbalance it — if we were made for this happiness, it would be our greatest wisdom to set our hearts upon it, for it is our wisdom to set our hearts upon that that we are made for; but as the case now stands, the more we set our hearts on those things, the more trouble and vexation, and the less satisfaction, do we find in them.

The temptations that the world offers suggest that we were made for earthly measures of “happiness.”  It is not so.  It is a lie.  A trap.  A danger to our souls.

“It is our wisdom to set our hears upon that that we are made for…”  We are made for God.  To know Him.  To enjoy Him.  To live for Him.  Fly to Him, and happiness will never fly from you.