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What makes you most happy? You got it in your mind? Good. Now, let me ask you some questions about this source of greatest happiness: Is it deep or superficial? Is it permanent or temporary? Is it holy or sinful? Is it helpful or harmful?  Is it free or expensive? Is it available or often unavailable? Is it shared others or selfish?

I’m going to guess that your greatest happiness mainly ticked the second of all these alternatives. It’s superficial, temporary, sinful, harmful, expensive, unavailable, and selfish. How would you like a happiness that ticks all the other boxes? A happiness that is deep, permanent, holy, helpful, free, available, and shared with others? We find it in Psalm 32 where David tells us that the greatest happiness is forgiveness through confession.

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God’s goodness is bigger and better than people’s badness.

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We’re living through a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic. Disease hunts us and sickness stalks us. Many have already fallen to this foe. Even if we haven’t lost our health, we’ve all lost something. We’ve lost school, graduations, businesses, money, church, friendship, vacations, and so on. It’s a fear-filled time and a tear-filled time.

But, sickness need not be only a curse and a loss. With God’s blessing, it can also be a time of blessing and gain by being a time of prayer and praise. In Psalm 30, David shows us the blessings of sickness by using sickness to pray and praise.

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We love to hear God’s voice, don’t we? We hear his voice in our consciences, we hear God’s voice in and through creation and providence, and we hear God’s voice loudest and clearest in his Word. We love to hear God’s voice more than any other voice. That’s why it pains us so much when others just totally ignore it. In Psalm 29, David agonizes over this and helps us turn our pain into praise. He says, amplify God’s voice to unavoidable decibels.

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At times it doesn’t look like God is listening to us. We pray and pray and pray but it feels like all our words are landing on deaf ears. God isn’t listening, so we stop speaking. We go into ‘silent stare’ mode.

How can we fix this? Believe God is listening to increase our speaking. Or to put it more simply: God’s open ears increase our prayers. That’s what we learn in Psalm 28.

Sermon Notes on Daniel 2:1-30.