July 3. Good news. God is happy. The gospel of the glory of the blessed God,

1 Timothy 1 11. This is a beautiful phrase in 1 Timothy, buried beneath the two familiar

surface of Bible buzzwords. But after you dig it up, it sounds like this. The good news of the

glory of the happy God. The word blessed is not the one that means praised, but the one that

means happy. A great part of God's glory is His happiness. It was inconceivable to the apostle

Paul that God should be denied infinite joy and still be all glorious. To be infinitely glorious

was to be infinitely happy. He used the phrase the glory of the happy God because

it is a glorious thing for God to be happy the way He is. God's glory consists much in the fact

that He is happy beyond our wildest imagination. As the great 18th century preacher Jonathan Edward

said, part of God's fullness which He communicates is His happiness. This happiness consists in

enjoying and rejoicing in Himself so does also the creature's happiness. And this is a key part

of the gospel, Paul says, the gospel of the glory of the happy God. It is good news that God is

gloriously happy. No one would want to spend eternity with a gloomy unhappy God. If God is

unhappy, then the goal of the gospel to be with God forever is not a happy goal. And that means

it would be no gospel at all. But in fact, Jesus invites us to spend eternity with a happy God

when He says, enter into the joy of your master, Matthew 25, 23. Jesus said in John 15 11,

these things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you and your joy may be full.

Jesus spoke and lived and died so that His joy, God's joy, might be in us and our joy might

be full. Therefore, the gospel is the gospel of the glory of the happy God.