Fundamental Christian Attitudes: Contentment

Selected Scriptures

It's our privilege this morning to continue in this series and I looked in the Lord's day bulletin and saw that this is part 16 and 17, I never intended it to be this long and I guess I don't intend to stop now, so we'll keep going on this study of the anatomy of the church. It's so wonderful to have the clear teaching of the Word of God with regard to the life of the church and what the church should be and we've been so blessed in this study, as have many others. I was out at a large bookstore yesterday, I needed to go out there and sign some books and do some things and ran in to some pastors there who were thanking me for this series because they're getting on a weekly tape subscription and I think they want me to keep it up, as they're giving it to their people and encouraging their people along these same lines.

We're grateful that the Word of God is so clear about what the church is to be. And, of course, we've been talking about the anatomy of the church in very specific terms, as opposed to general terms. We talked about the specific characteristics of the church which are foundational or structural, give it its form. Kind of the skeleton, the hard form of the church that gives it its rigidity, the non-negotiables. And then we've been talking about the internal systems of the body, of the anatomy of the church, those...those spiritual attitudes that carry the life of the church. It's along that line that we want to continue in our discussion this morning.

But before we talk about the next in the long list that we could have of spiritual attitudes, just by way of sort of general comments, I want to talk a little bit about the reason why I think it's so important to reaffirm the character of the church. We live in a time today when there is a somewhat indifferent attitude toward the centrality of the church. And by that I mean that there are so many people who are...who are not really committed to the church. They're committed to Christ. They're committed to spiritual truth in one way or another. And I was thinking of that as I was sitting in this huge bookstore yesterday and looking at everything from knick-knacks, sort of Christian stuff that you put on your shelf, the kind you have to dust and wipe off, that kind of stuff...Christian pictures, poems, T-shirts, belts, socks, you name it, Christian records and tapes and CDs and then books and just paraphernalia ad infinitum. And the place was packed like the local supermarket as people were going up and down the aisles and collecting all their stuff.

It struck me that there is very much of a consumer mentality in the church and it leads to some interesting perceptions, and I just drew some of those together just by way of setting a context for the importance of our study. It seems to me that today we have a lack of commitment on the parts of people...on the part of people to the church as such. And I'll tell you what I mean by that. We have a consumeristic view of the church. It's sort of the mood of the mob in this particular time in which we live in our culture. People have about the same commitment to the church they do to the mall. If there's something there that interests them, they'll go there. They might even make a financial exchange, you know, they might give a little money for services rendered, if the services seem to fit their need. People have seemingly no more commitment to the church than they do to the mall. They look and say, "Well is there something there that I can get?" It's kind of a marketplace mentality, there's really no responsibility, there's no accountability that I have to the local church, but I'm willing to go there if they offer me something."

And second thing that I would notice as a contributor to a lack of real commitment to the church which, of course, leads to a lack of understanding of the church is not only the consumeristic mentality but the privatization of spirituality...the privatization of spirituality. We live in a time which basically rejects authority as such in favor of personal rights. We don't want to submit ourselves to an authority, we want to make sure that we have the personal right to do and be and believe and act in any way that we want. That's kind of in our culture. Personal rights dominate our culture. And personal rights contribute to a privatization of spirituality. By that what I mean is I'm the person who will define for me what my spiritual life is going to be. I'll pick and choose, I'll assemble my own Christianity and with a proliferation of tapes and books and radio programs and Christian TV and all of this, there's no end to the options. You can formulate any kind of Christianity you want. You can pick and choose from fifteen different views of Christianity and assemble your own...it's kind of a Burger King mentality, have it your way kind of thing. And you have the individualization, the privatization of spirituality and Christianity and it all sort of eclectically is pulled together at the whim of any individual. And the idea is that my personal relationship with Jesus Christ and my personal spiritual life transcends any compelling corporate life that a church might oppress upon me or hold me to.

I think also in this time in which we live there is a sad but true contributor to the lack of interest in the church and that is disillusionment with church leadership. Christianity is full of people who have been deeply hurt and wounded by church leaders and that contributes to their distance from the church and contributes to their indifference to submitting themselves under the authority of teachers and leaders. They're reluctant to do that because they have been exposed in the past to false pastors and false teachers and false leaders who were either unholy in their conduct or unholy in their teaching, or both. And some of you fall into that category. You've kept your distance, you're here but you're not integrated into the life of the church, and maybe it's because you've been exposed to preachers who secretly brought in heresy, they always do it secretly, and they tell you they're teaching you the Bible or they have something that God has given them to say...but they are basically unbiblical and you were exposed to that. And you've come to understand that and your trust level has been severely hampered by it. Maybe you even have been exploited by certain leaders for personal gain while they were asking you to make sacrifices, they were getting wealthy at your expense. It is also possible that you have been under leadership that indulged sexual appetites and as the New Testament says "Had eyes full of adultery" and destroyed your trust by having been engaged in sexual sin which came to light. And that continues to be a sad, sad tale.

You have been exposed to leaders who didn't know much about the Bible and who cheated you because they didn't feed you the way you should have been fed. They contributed to your spiritual weakness, rather than your spiritual growth. You may have been exposed to teachers who were authoritarian or pastors who wanted to dominate your life. You may have sat under people who had some oratorical ability but said nothing of value. And so you've sort of interpreted the church in the light of these things. You may have been in a congregation of people where there were a number of hypocrites, where there was little that God seemed to be doing, where there was a lack of power. And all of these things contribute to a sad kind of distance that people have from the church.

I also want to add a fourth and that leads me in to what I want to say to you this morning, I think another thing that contributes to people's indifference toward the church is some kind of expectation for perfection that is really unrealistic. The expectation that the church should be everything that the Bible says all the time without any failures leads people to a certain kind of disillusionment. People leave a perfectly wonderful church, a marvelous church, a good, healthy, whole, sound ministry because of some perceived weakness or some real weakness, or some real weakness, or some perceived failure or real failure or some disappointment that came along and they wander away. I hear about people and it's always amazing to me who think about, "Well, we'll leave Grace Church and we'll go out and all four of us will start our own perfection because we found a failure there."

Sad to think about that but that's not an uncommon thing. I often wonder what people like that would have done in New Testament times when there was one church per city and that was it. So many people in so many places in the world would give anything and everything to have a good church, a noble church, a place where the Word of God was faithfully upheld. And yet some people will foolishly disregard that and the value of it in favor of something far less. You find a church committed to the true teaching of salvation, you find a church that believes in the inerrancy of Scripture, you find a church that interprets Genesis 1 to 11 historically and literally, you find a church where Jesus Christ is presented as the only way to heaven and that He is both Savior and Lord, you find a church that believes in the virgin birth of Christ, His substitutionary death on the cross, His bodily resurrection and bodily return to set up His Kingdom, you find a church that is committed to male leadership according to the scriptures, that believes in a literal hell, a church that exercises church discipline, proclaims sound doctrine, loves people, evangelizes the lost and disciples the saved and when you find it, thank God you found it. And pour your life into that place and don't have unrealistic expectations of perfection and worst of all, don't believe you're worthy of perfection.

It's sad to me that people don't get involved in the church, the only institution the Lord ever built. I grieve over this consumer mentality that views the church as selling something. And if you want to buy it, you go and buy it but if it really doesn't interest you, you'll go some other place or no place. I grieve over the privatization of spirituality where we have people assembling their own spiritual lives in some kind of an eclectic fashion, controlled only by their own personal desires. I grieve over the continued disaffection of the church toward leadership because of the terrible tragedy of sin among church leaders. I grieve over that. I also grieve over people establishing unrealistic expectations for what a church should be and expecting perfection, and when they don't find it, having a half-hearted or less than that commitment to the church.

This is the church, folks, and our Lord Jesus is the head of it and He is building it and it is His body and He has called us to be a part of it. And if you're not a part of it, you're disobedient. You are forsaking the assembling of yourselves together though you're commanded not to do that. You're to be together with God's people because you must stimulate one another to love and good works. And you are to be reminded that the church gathers for the breaking of bread and for prayer and for fellowship and the apostles' doctrine. And in that environment the power of God operates. You are to be reminded also that if you are indifferent to the church to any degree, it raises the question of whether you're a Christian or not because Christians are known according to 1 John 3:14 because they love the brethren and love of the brethren results in the longing to be with those of like precious faith. And Christians are also known because they hear the Word and do it...Jesus said...and they love to submit themselves to the authority of the Word of God and obey it.

It's a very dangerous thing to isolate yourself from God's people and it's very indicative of the heart if you're not faithful. Proverbs 18:1, "He who separates himself seeks his own desire." It's very clear. When someone is unfaithful to the assembly of the saints, unfaithful to the worship of God and fellowship and the breaking of bread and the hearing of the apostles' doctrine, it is because they have other personal desires that are far less noble than those that mark out the devoted Christian. I'm calling you to faithfulness to the church. I'm calling you to the attitude of the psalmist who in Psalm 122 said, "I was glad when they said to me let's go to the Lord's house." There ought to be a gladness to be a part of God's people, a part of His church.

We're talking about the church and what the church is to be. And the attitude that I want to present to you this morning, another of those spiritual attitudes, those spiritual attitudes on the inside of the church in which its life flows is the attitude of contentment...contentment. We have talked about the spiritual attitudes: faith, love, humility, unity, compassion, forgiveness, joy, thanks. And we've talked about how essential to the life of the church those spiritual attitudes are because they carry the church's life. They're the internal organs in the body of Christ through which the life flows and generates ministry. And one of those essential attitudes is the attitude of contentment...contentment.

What a rich word. It means to be satisfied...to be satisfied. And as I said in the little introduction I gave, there's so many Christians who are dissatisfied...dissatisfied. Now that is being fed today. That is being fed in a rampant level. We hear all about those ministries that are directed at felt needs. And I was reading a book this week and it's a relatively new book that has a telling tale, really, it's a research project on the whole Seeker-Friendly Church which is built around needs. And with the help of the people who have started that movement being interviewed at great length over a two and a half year period they affirm that the whole driving issue in their ministry is to bring people to self-fulfillment, to recognize that people are not fulfilled, they're not satisfied and they need to be fulfilled and satisfied.

Well that may sound okay at the start but when you structure a ministry that is designed to approach people on the basis of a lack of satisfaction and build everything around that and by that woo them to Christ, you have still sold everybody self- satisfaction as a buyable goal. And then when you've got those people to Christ they are still going to be consumed with whether or not they are satisfied. You've promised them Jesus, we'll satisfy you. And I don't know about you but there are lots of things in life even in Christ that aren't from the human comfort level very satisfying. As one writer says, "In endeavoring to identify with this unchurch person and identify all his needs and pick out his need for satisfaction, in endeavoring to move him from the world to the church, you have just moved the church into the world because you've redefined his greatest need as personal satisfaction. Now you've got a church full of people who have been taught that the compelling issue is personal satisfaction defined in human terms." What a tragic situation to have to deal with.

And so, in our culture we are constantly being sold dissatisfaction, that's how the whole advertising world works, to make you discontent and dissatisfied and to make personal satisfaction the most compelling issue in your life. The truth of the matter is, it really doesn't matter at all. Nothing in this world that's going to burn up, nothing in this passing world really should be tied to our contentment, or our satisfaction, nothing. And we're going to talk about that this morning.

Contentment is a biblical word. Paul said in 1 Timothy 6:6, "Godliness with contentment is great gain." And then in verse 8 Paul said, "Having food and clothing, be content." The writer of Hebrews in chapter 13 verse 5 said, "Be content with what you have, for He said, I will never leave you or forsake you." So the Bible talks a lot about contentment and basically commands us to be content. It's another one of those essential spiritual attitudes in the life of the church. The church needs to be content. You need to be content. You're commanded to be so.

Well as I thought about that marvelous attitude, that wonderful attitude that should pervade our lives, I asked myself...where in the Scripture would I go to find the greatest illustration of that? And I found it easily, the first place I turned, Philippians chapter 4, turn to it with me. Philippians chapter 4. Now as the Apostle Paul writes this epistle to the Philippians you need to know a little about his circumstances.

At the time he is writing he is a prisoner. He is a prisoner. He is in the city of Rome, the great metropolis of the Roman Empire. And because of his preaching of the gospel which has stirred up so much trouble among the Jews and the Gentiles, he has been made a prisoner. It is a somewhat modified imprisonment because he has some kind of private quarters that he is in rather than being thrown into the dungeon with everybody else. Apparently there is some kind of a private environment in which he is chained to a Roman soldier. Now we do know that he was incarcerated in the filthy prison, probably the Mamertine Prison which is still visible if you go to Rome. But in this particular occasion it seems as though he is imprisoned in a private environment in which he is in very sparse conditions chained to a Roman soldier...he is in isolation from his friends, from people. He cannot go and come as he chooses, he cannot preach and minister. He has lost all freedom and he has lost privacy, continually chained to a Roman soldier. He has only the basic issues of life, a bare minimum of food and drink and clothing. He is afflicted with the difficulty of being a captive. And in some ways, being chained to a person would be worse than being in a prison cell or even in a cell full of prisoners. He has only the very basic issues of life. In some ways this is the worst possible human condition. Only a few friends occasionally are able to find him and commune with him. He is in this condition waiting for a trial before Nero, a trial which could end in his execution. He knows that. He has been deprived of every human comfort. He is a lonely man, as it were, humanly speaking. Every movement of his hand as he writes causes the clanking of the chain to which he is linked to the soldier. It is in that environment that we read Philippians 4:11.

"Not that I speak from want, for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am."

What a blessed lesson to learn and he had learned it. You don't get that without learning. There's a process to learn contentment. Here he is in this horrible condition, isolation, no privacy, chained, imprisoned and he says, "I have learned to be content." Here is the description of a contented man. And this is the kind of man you need to learn from because this is a man with nothing, absolutely nothing.

First of all, I want to point out that he knew nothing of a victim mentality. He knew absolutely nothing of a victim mentality. He has nothing to say about the difficulty of his imprisonment. He has nothing to say about the unfair judicial process to which he has been exposed. He has nothing to say about the undeserved hatred from the Jews, or the undeserved hostility from the Gentiles. He has nothing to say about himself being mistreated, maltreated, abused, etc. He knows nothing about being a victim.

Boy, in our society it's a far cry from the mentality of today, isn't it? Where everybody is a victim of everything. It's just incredible how in a hurry we are to identify ourselves as victims.

The word "content" here, very interesting word, it means basically to have enough. A simple word, to have enough, to be sufficient. In fact, Lightfoot, the great Greek commentator says, "It refers to someone who doesn't need any aid." It refers to somebody who doesn't need anything. And when you look at Paul and you say...Well there's a man who doesn't need anything...by today's definition that would be ridiculous. He has nothing but doesn't need anything. Now that's content, that is absolute contentment. To have nothing and need nothing...I have learned, he says, I have learned to be content.

Down in verse 12 he says it again toward the end of the verse. "I have learned the secret...I have learned the secret." Again he uses this verb "to learn." In the Greek it's a verb to be initiated into. It was used, for example, of the initiation into the secrets of the mystery religions...it's, for your Greek students, mueo. Some of you follow me in your little Greek New Testament...mueo. It means to be initiated into the inner secrets of some religion. In fact, they used to say in ancient times that a person was an initiate, that is to say they were learning the inside secrets of their religion. Paul says I've learned the secret, I've been initiated, I have learned how to be content. That is a secret that eludes most people. And frankly, folks, and this is one of the hardships you must bear in our culture, the more stuff you have the harder it is to learn this lesson. It's a lot easier for people who don't have anything. It's a lot easier for people in India to learn to be content than it is for us because we define life so much in terms of what we have...we're so used to these things. Paul says I've learned.

Now the question that comes in my mind is how do you learn this? How can you be so content? How can you get to the place in your life where you can say I have nothing and I need nothing? How can you get there? How can I learn that lesson? How can I get initiated into contentment? How can I stop riding that mood roller coaster up and down dependent upon on how things go? How can I get over the hump of having been mistreated by my spouse, or my family, or my parents, or my friends, or my boss, or my teacher, or my professor who gave me a low grade? How can I get above feeling like a victim, like I'm not getting what's fair and what's right? And I'm being this...how can I rise above that and say...Hey, I have nothing and I don't need anything? I am sufficient, content, I don't have any needs. How can I get on that kind of plane and just stay there and not rise up and down, dependent upon how things are going in my world?

Well we're going to find out in this passage. There are five--five principles that you must learn if you would be content...five principles. They are the secrets of contentment. And when you learn them you will move to contentment.

Number one, trust in God's providence...trust in God's providence. Now this is only alluded to here, but I think in a wonderful way...trust in God's providence, have confidence in God's providence. Let me just say a word about providence. Providence is a term that has been used by theologians for years to describe the fact that God works everything to His own will. That's what it means. It means that God takes the millions of contingencies that occur in the universe and out of them all orchestrates His own will perfectly. And as I've told you in the past in talking about providence, providence to me is a greater miracle than a miracle. If God just stopped the normal process of things and injected a miracle, He could do anything He wanted, and you could understand that. He has great power. He created things so He can stop the normal processes of the natural operation of the way the world goes and just inject a miracle. But what He does in providence is let all those contingencies take place, millions of people making millions of choices, doing millions of things and demons and all of the host of Satan working their whole system, and then you've got all of the physical factors in a physical universe, all of the complexity of those millions upon millions of contingencies and God with them all perfectly blended together creates His own purposes and brings them all to pass. That is beyond imagination to me. You put a few components in my life and I get confused and I can't get where I'm going if there are too many components, it gets too complicated.

I've often thought that intelligence...and this is purely a non-professional definition...intelligence to me as it increases is the ability to handle greater and greater complexity, okay