How to be Content

Alright, so grace and peace to you all in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Returning again to the little epistle of Jude. Now for the eighth time, and our interest today will be in verses 16 to 19. Our subject today is something many of us often struggle with, and that's how to be content. I want to explore for the scriptures about the subject of contentment.

This will be set in the context of Jude's continuing description of the false brethren within the church. These are unbelievers who have crept into the church, deceiving the church, and perhaps themselves, into thinking that they are indeed believers. when in fact they deny the Lord and are enslaved to sin. These, we're told, are not content. They're grumblers and malcontents, as we hear in verse 16.

So what I want to consider today is why is this the case? What leads people to grumble against the Lord and lack contentment? And then as a flip side to that, we'll be able to see some ways that we can find true spiritual contentment. I speak not as one with a great deal of personal expertise in the matter of contentment, but I speak as a fellow student of the Word who would very much like to know myself. So let's turn to the Lord in prayer before we begin.

We'll certainly need His Spirit and His grace in this, and then we'll read the text. So let's pray. Our Father, our Father in heaven, you are good and your steadfast love endures forever. And yet, Lord, how often we fail to rest in your love and appreciate your great goodness toward us. Too often, Lord, we grumble, we struggle with contentment, we seek peace in places that we'll never find it.

We neglect, Lord, so often to turn to you. Forgive us, Lord, for all these things. I ask that you would today speak to us through your word. Our souls so desperately need to hear from you. We need your rebuke and your correction.

We need your comfort and your peace. And as we consider the subject of contentment, Lord, teach us heavenly wisdom. Teach us truth from your holy word. Open your word to us so that we will see clearly what you want to reveal to us and open our hearts wide to receive these truths with faith and joy. Show us, Lord, where real contentment can be found and give us the grace, Lord, to find it.

Be with us, Lord. In the name of Jesus, I pray these things. Amen. As usual, I will read the whole book. It's nice and short, from the English Standard Version, so please read along if you'd like.

This is the Epistle of Jude. Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ, may mercy, peace and love be multiplied to you. Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain people have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were designated for this condemnation. ungodly people, who prefer the grace of our God into sensuality, and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe, and the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, they left their proper dwelling, and he has kept but left their proper dwelling, he is kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day. Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. Yet in like manner, these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones. But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, The Lord rebuke you. But these people blaspheme all they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively.

Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain, and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain, to Balaam's error, and perished in Korah's rebellion. These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves, waterless clouds swept along by winds, fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted, wild waves of the sea casting up the foam of their own shame, wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever. It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones to execute judgment on all, and to convict all the ungodly, of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him. This is verse 16.

We begin with these verses. These are grumblers, mouth-contents, following their own sinful desires. They are loud-mouthed boasters, showing favoritism to gain advantage. But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you, in the last time there will be scoffers following their own ungodly passions.

It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit. But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. And have mercy on those who doubt. Save others by snatching them out of the fire. To others, show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.

Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, the only God, our Saviour, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority before all time and now and forever. Amen. So we want to consider today the subject of grumbling and contentment. It's probably safe to say that all of us at certain times struggle with finding and maintaining a state of contentment. Seems there's always something to complain about.

There's always something bothering us, troubling us, or upsetting us. Sometimes it's something truly devastating. People we love die. We're betrayed by someone we trusted. We're struck perhaps with a debilitating disease or injury.

Perhaps we're afflicted with a depression so deep and dark we despair of ever finding peace or happiness again. But then sometimes it's just the small things that, for whatever reason, get under our skin. We stub our toes, we get stuck in traffic, the rain ruins our plans, and then there's some fool on the train playing music way too loudly. I really hate that. But whether the reasons are big or small, we so often find ourselves grumpy and irritable.

We grumble, we complain, we hate life, we're not content, we feel like life should be better. And yet, however much we might feel justified in the moment, we need to understand that grumbling is a sin. Because to grumble about your circumstances is to grumble against the gracious providence of the Lord. It is He, the One who reigns in the heavens, who works all things according to the counsel of His will. It is He who has promised every believer that all things work together for your good.

The will of the Lord is meticulous. He is concerned about every detail of his creation. There is nothing that escapes his notice. There is nothing that falls outside of his ordering and decree. And in all things, the will of the Lord is good and right and glorious and full of grace and kindness.

This is what we're complaining about when we grumble. We don't often think about it in this way, but what we're effectively saying God, you failed. You made a mistake. I don't care about the counsel of your will. I don't like it.

Understand that to grumble is to question the wisdom and kindness and justice of God. It's to reject his gifts and to demand from him more than he has seen fit to give. It's rebellion. It's sin. That's exactly the charge that Jude brings against the false brethren in the church in verse 16.

Jude is launching into another list of sins that characterize these false brethren, and he calls them grumblers and malcontents. These are significant faults, and that's what we're going to explore today as we seek some biblical insight into how to be content. What I want to do first is to look at these false brethren and discern how not to be content. We're going to look at their pride and how they're ruled by their passions and fundamentally distrust God. All these things lead to a state of discontentment and grumbling.

And then by turning these around, we'll then be able to see what's required for real contentment. What if... We're humble and rule not by our passions but by Christ himself. What if we're so well acquainted with the goodness of God that we trust him implicitly? We're going to see that such things lead to a heart of true spiritual contentment.

Let's first of all examine our text. Look again at verses 16 through 19 of St. Jude's epistle. These are grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires, their loud-mouthed boasters showing favouritism to gain advantage. But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ.

They said to you, in the last time there will be scoffers following their own ungodly passions. It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit. Our focus today will be on the first two elements of this list, but we're going to touch on the others. These are grumblers, Jude says. Other translations say murmurers.

The idea is complaining in a disgruntled or resentful way. Grumbling is the verbal expression of dissatisfaction with your state of affairs. The next term Jude uses is malcontents. This is referring to that state of the heart, that dissatisfaction that produces rumbling. Malcontent is not a very common word in modern English, but you'll recognize the prefix mal- from words like maladjusted or malicious.

Malcontent effectively means badly content. Other translations have discontented. The point is that false brethren are not at all content. They're dissatisfied. They're restless.

They're unhappy. Gene follows this up with several other ideas that on first glance seem to be unrelated, but let's have a look because in giving us some insight into how these people live, we might find some clues as to why they are so discontent. We read next that they're following their own sinful desires. So these people are ruled by their lusts, their God is their belly, and they're led through life constantly chasing after whatever the flesh desires. We then read that these people are loud-mouthed boasters, so they have a very high opinion of themselves.

They're proud, they're pompous, and they make that very clear with the words that they use. They then show favoritism for advantage. They're greedy, and they're ready to show partiality if they think that's what's required to get them what they want. They show no sense of integrity in their dealings with the church. Jude then reminds us of the predictions of the apostles.

In the last time, there will be scoffers following their own ungodly passions. So not only are these people slaves to their passions, but this leads them to scoffing. I should clarify that the word passions here means something like emotions, or especially desires or lusts. In modern English, we often use the word passion to mean something like someone's favorite hobbies. You might say, my passion is photography.

But that's not really what Jude's talking about. To have passions in this context is just to have strong desires or longings. In the New Testament, this word doesn't always refer to something bad, there are good and righteous longings that you might have, but in this case these are ungodly passions. This leads these false brethren to mock and ridicule the truth. 2 Peter In 2 Peter, the same idea is explained just a little further.

And it seems that their scoffing is particularly directed toward the idea of the second coming and the final judgment. They say, where is the promise of his coming? This explains why Jude has been so focused on emphasizing the certainty of the coming judgment throughout his letter. These people are so proud and so blinded by their passions that they think the apostolic teaching is beneath them. They think they know better and they dare to scoff at the messengers of God.

And even that's not all, because according to Jude, these people cause divisions, no doubt in part because they're disputing the teachings of the apostles. They're also worldly, and if it wasn't plain already, devoid of the spirit. So that's quite a list of disastrous tendencies. Is it any wonder that these people struggle with contentment? In fact, I think some of these descriptions go a long way to explaining exactly why these people such brumblers.

So let's take a closer look and we'll learn from these false brethren how not to be content. What I want to consider first is pride. We see the pride of the false brethren manifest in their boasting and scoffing and divisiveness. We see elsewhere in Jude's letter their pride in verse 8, for example, how they reject authority and they're so radically self-confident that they blaspheme glorious ones. Even in verse 15, they speak harsh things against the Lord himself.

These are symptoms of an astonishing galactic scale pride. Pride ultimately seeks to dethrone God and make you the center of all things. When you think that highly of yourself, you're not going to have much concern to spare for God or for your neighbor. Your world is entirely self-centered. It becomes all about you and what you want and what you can gain for yourself.

Life becomes about exalting yourself, pleasing yourself, and this is absolutely poison for contentment because life actually isn't about you. No matter how much you try to make it about yourself, you will fail. because God is sovereign. He works all things according to the counsel of his will, not yours, and his will is to glorify himself. And thus, when you are seeking to glorify yourself above God, all reality conspires against you.

Think about this. Your very being was made with a purpose. It was created for a very different purpose than exalting yourself. Human nature is so designed that we can only find our true and fullest fulfillment when we are glorifying God and enjoying Him. As Augustine famously wrote in his confessions, thou madest us for thyself and our heart is restless until it repose in thee.

So when you are driven by pride, living for yourself, you're fighting against your very nature because you were made for God. It's a symptom of our fallen depravity that we seek fulfillment anywhere but God. What you're seeking is intrinsically broken, disordered, it's wrong. and unnecessarily and inevitably will fail. Indeed, God will see to it that you fail.

God opposes the proud. But if you are seeking to glorify yourself, you have condemned yourself to a life of disappointment and dissatisfaction. You'll never be content as long as you are proud. Another way not to be content is to be ruled by your passions. This is related to what we've just been saying about pride, because it's a proud heart that insists on following its every inclination and satisfying its every desire.

With pride comes a sense of entitlement. Pride says, I deserve this, I'm owed this. A proud heart can't imagine saying no to itself or denying itself because it has made itself its own god. And thus, such a proud heart slavishly follows fleshly desires and sinful passions. It's incapable of being satisfied with what God requires, and this leads to discontentment and grumbling.

The chief biblical example, of course, of grumbling, is Israel in the wilderness. This is such a perfect illustration of the absurdity of grumbling because it comes in the context of such powerful grace. These are people who have been rescued out of harsh slavery in Egypt, that God has miraculously intervened on their behalf. He's defeated the most powerful civilization on the planet, claimed them as his own, and has been providing for their needs, taking them through the Red Sea. You couldn't possibly ask for more.

If any nation on earth could be content, surely it would be this blessed chosen nation. But of course, they're not content. They grumble constantly. What I want to point out is how so often the grumbling is over simple bodily desires. I want you to come over to Exodus chapter 16 for an example.

We're going to start in Exodus 16 with verse two. This is not long after the people have been rescued from Egypt, come for the Red Sea, and this is what we're going to see, Exodus 16, and we'll start in verse two. It says this, and the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. And the people of Israel said to them, Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full. For you have brought us into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger."

So they're yearning after the food they had in Egypt. They haven't learned to trust the Lord, despite the utterly awe-inspiring salvation they've just experienced. They have no concern spiritual things. I have no concern but to fill their bellies. Their minds are set on things of the flesh, and if the Lord hasn't immediately satisfied their every desire, they complain.

They'd rather they were dead. It's absurd, but it shows where their priorities lie. Of course, the Lord does provide exactly what they need, with bread from heaven. But the grumbling, predictably, continues. Later on I read this in Numbers chapter 11.

You can turn there as well if you like. Numbers chapter 11. The people are no longer satisfied with the bread the Lord has been providing graciously, mercifully, miraculously. Once again, their God is their bellies. Let's go to Numbers chapter 11 and read from verse four.

Now the rebel that was among them had a strong craving, and the people of Israel also wept again and said, oh that we had meat to eat. We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at. So you can see the result of a heart utterly enslaved to sinful passions. The result is grumbling and discontentment.

You can never have enough, you'll always want more, and the more you have, the more you want. It's not enough that the Lord has bountifully blessed you. Describing the same sort of people that Jude does. Peter writes this, they have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. Insatiable is the right word.

They cannot be satiated. They're never satisfied. Every sin just feeds the desire for more sin. So when you're following your passions, you cannot find contentment. So what is the ultimate source of this pride, this slavery to ungodly desires that causes so much discontentment?

what Jude tells us. These are worldly people, devoid of the Spirit. This, I think we can safely say, is the heart of the matter. These are people of the world. They're not indwelt by the Holy Spirit.

They may profess to know God, and they might indeed know of Him, but they don't know Him trustingly and savingly. We'll explore this more shortly when we look at the positive case for how to be content. But contentment is ultimately a spiritual gift. It comes from having peace with God and practically experienced as a fruit of the Spirit, whereas things like enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions and divisions, all things that are signs of discontentment, these are all works of the flesh. Indeed, it is only in knowing Christ by the Holy Spirit that we can be delivered from slavery to those sinful passions that drive so much discontentment and grumbling.

We're reading Galatians 5 verse 24, and those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with his passions and desires. Those who are devoid of the Spirit, by contrast, are devoid of faith. They don't trust the Lord, and hence they rob themselves of the only possible source of ultimate contentment. Consider Israel in the wilderness again. These were people who knew of Yahweh, this God who had sent the plagues and brought them out of Egypt through the Red Sea.

They could not have been an atheist among them. But we know that believing that God exists is not the same as believing in God. This was a problem that many of the Israelites had. They did not trust this God who had saved them. They were suspicious of him.

Remember what we read not long ago in Exodus 16. You have brought us into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly of hunger, rather than trusting that God would provide for them and fulfill his promises to them. Though they have ample proof that he is indeed more than willing and capable of doing so, they accuse Aaron and Moses of lying to them and bringing them out just to kill them. Moses clarifies that your grumbling is not against us, but against the Lord. But they keep doing it.

The Book of Numbers catalogues time and time again when the people complain against the Lord. At one point, they even decide to return to Egypt. This is after hearing the bad report of the land that they were supposed to enter. They accused the Lord saying, why is the Lord bringing us into this land to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become a prey.

Would it not be better for us to return to Egypt? The Lord responds saying, how long will this people despise me? How long will they not believe in me in spite of all the signs that I've done among them? So contrary to all reason, these people refuse to trust the Lord. This is the origin of the grumbling and discontentment.

Remember, the Lord is sovereign. He is in control of everything. If you can't trust Him, nothing is trustworthy. There can be no peace, no security. When you despise the Lord, there is nowhere left to rest your soul.

That is an awful state to be in. So if you want to know how not to be content, Living in pride, following sinful desires and distrusting the Lord is the place to start. This should be confronting to us as Christians when we grumble and find ourselves struggling with contentment. Because these things, even in us, have the same root. Even when we've been gifted genuine supernatural faith, we can sometimes struggle to really trust the Lord with every aspect of our lives.

We can struggle still with sinful desires and fall to temptation, following our ungodly desires into places that we should never go. We can still very much be puffed up with pride and selfish entitlement, and for all these reasons fail to find contentment, just like false brethren. When we do these things, we're acting like unbelievers. We may not be devoid of the Spirit, but in the moment that we're grumbling, we're acting as though we are. I want to urge us all to consider this seriously.

It's not good, it's not right. As long as we continue to grumble, we're hurting our Christian witness and hindering our fellowship with the Lord. So let's consider, how can we be content? What we're after is not just a worldly contentment, where we just happen to find ourselves temporarily satisfied with our world around us? No, we want something much deeper and more permanent than that.

Because worldly contentment can change in an instant, because it depends so much on our own unstable souls and the chaotic world around us. The best contentment the world can offer will one day fail us. What we should want, rather, is to be content in the Lord. We want to be at peace with God and in fellowship with God. We want to be enjoying his presence such that we are, in the deepest parts of our souls, invulnerable to all the turbulence of this life, having God himself as the solid rock and foundation of our peace.

We saw earlier, there are few greater barriers to true spiritual contentment than pride. It stands to reason, then, that the opposite, that is real spiritual humility, would tend to foster contentment. When I talk about humility, I mean something a lot deeper than just not acting arrogantly around people. We can all play about being humble if we could be bothered to try. We don't even bother that much, unfortunately.

Rather, what we're talking about is a real inward humility that has to begin with a right understanding of your place before God and before others. Humility requires that we consider seriously, who are we really? Well, according to scripture, you're a creature made of dust, a sinner deserving of hellfire. Your master is the Lord, and you owe everything to him. He owes nothing to you.

So humility first requires that you don't think too highly of yourself. You don't exalt yourself above your station. It requires a serious, sober-minded realism. That means you have to refuse those very tempting delusions that tell you that you're very special and that everything in the world is here for you. The truth is you're very small and God is infinitely great.

Humility means getting a proper perspective on your life. Now all of that is very difficult. Every part of our sinful nature rebels against it. But that, I'm afraid to say, is only the very beginning of the kind of humility that we're required to show as Christians. Because true spiritual humility requires lowering yourself even below what simple justice might demand.

Our example for this, of course, is our Lord Jesus. I refer you to Philippians chapter 2. Let's turn there. Philippians chapter 2. The Apostle Paul here is exhorting the Philippian church to humility.

This is how he describes it, verses 3 and 4 of chapter 2. I'll give you a moment to get there. Philippians chapter 2, let's look at verses 3 and 4. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. that each of you look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

Simple realism or simple justice might lead you to count others as significant as yourself. But real humility requires going even lower for the sake of others. The reality might be that in the church you are amongst your equals, but humility means that in your heart and in your mind and in your deeds, treat them as superiors. Paul commends this to us by pointing us to the greatest possible example of this kind of humility. You read on in verse 5, Philippians chapter 2, started verse 5.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant. Being born in the likeness of men, being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. So Christ is our example of humility. This is such a deep text.

Let's consider it just briefly. He was in the form of God, it says. The word form most literally refers to something's external shape, but classically this word can also refer to something's inward nature or essence. Something's form is what a thing is, its being. That's how Paul is using the word here.

To say that Christ was in the form of God means he is divine. He is God, eternally equal with the Father and the Spirit. And yet, rather than grasping or seizing this equality with God that he has by nature, He took the form of a servant, that is, human form, human nature. He empties himself, not by losing his divinity, not by ceasing his divine operation in any way, that would be impossible of course, God can't cease to be God, but he empties himself by personally taking on human nature and living as a man. This is astonishing condescension, worthy of a lifetime of reflection.

Just think, the infinite, omnipotent creator takes on the finitude and weakness of a created nature. But it's even more astounding than that, because he doesn't even come as an exalted and glorified man, as would be his right. He could have come even as a man with such glory and splendor that none could see him and fail to bow down in worship. But he who is rich, for our sake, became poor. He came to serve, he came to suffer, even to die the shameful, humiliating death of crucifixion.

So this is real humility, setting aside what could be rightfully yours to serve others. It's having a meek, lowly heart that doesn't make demands, but is ready to sacrificially put aside its own best interests, pursue the interests of others. This is radical, I know. May the Lord help us, because this is what he calls us to do. Consider then how cultivating such a humble disposition of the heart would tend to foster contentment.

Our hearts would be free of that awful sense of entitlement that drives so much of our dissatisfaction with life. how could we be entitled when we understand that our every breath is a gift from God for an undeserving sinner? Rather than grumbling over what we think we lack, we would instead be grateful for any good thing that he gives us because he didn't owe us any of it. And how could we be so terribly troubled if something in life appears to go against us? If we're so much more focused their service to others, to God and his church, and so much less focused on ourselves and our own rights.

This mind of humility is supposed to be ours in Christ Jesus. As we are remade into his image by the Holy Spirit, we should be growing into this humility and putting our pride to death. This will have a very tangible impact on our experience of contentment, even as, perhaps, we still image him very imperfectly. Any progress in humility will be felt in contentment. So this is something that we should very earnestly be praying for and seeking his grace for.

Something else that will greatly impact our spiritual contentment is whether we are ruled by our sinful desires. We've seen how Jude's false brethren slavishly follow sinful desires and ungodly passions. This makes contentment impossible because sin is insatiable. Sin will often promise you satisfaction, but that's a lie. You'll never find peace, you'll never find contentment by sinning because it is never satisfied.

You can never sin enough, it only creates a deeper hunger. If you want to find true contentment, we'll need to follow something else, or better, someone else. I propose that we abandon our sinful passions to follow Christ, and it is he who can lead us into true contentment. The Apostle Paul says some extraordinary things about contentment. This is a contentment that comes from following Christ.

Let's look at what he says in Philippians again. Let's turn back to Philippians. This time we want to go to chapter 4. Philippians chapter 4. Let's look at verse 10 of Philippians chapter 4.

Here the apostle is rejoicing that the Philippians have once again sent him aid. But he makes a very important clarification. He's not pleased so much about how the aid satisfies his own needs, but what it means for the spiritual condition of the Philippians themselves. This is what he says, starting in verse 10 of chapter 4, the epistles of the Philippians. I rejoiced in the Lord greatly, that now at length you have revived your concern for me.

You were indeed concerned for me, but you had no opportunity. Not that I'm speaking of being in need, but I've learned, in whatever situation I am, to be content. I know how to be brought low. I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I've learned the secret of facing hunger, plenty of hunger, abundance, and need.

I can do all things through him who strengthens me. So let's first marvel at Paul's remarkable humility, which we've just seen is essential to contentment. He's not concerned about himself and his own needs. His heart is entirely directed outward, looking to the needs of the churches with a sacrificial Christ-like love, such that he can rejoice in their giving with perfect selflessness. And he tells us of his remarkable contentment.

He has learned, regardless of his situation, to be content He's learned the secret to contentment. So what is it? Wouldn't we like to know? Well, this is what he says. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

His secret, of course, is the Lord Jesus, who strengthens him in every situation so that he can be content. This might be very obvious to us as Christians. Of course, Christ is going to be the answer. But it bears repeating because too often we fall into the trap of seeking contentment within ourselves. Paul isn't content because he's discovered some weird breathing trick.

He's not content because he's got a perfect meditation strategy, or that he eats the right foods, or that he's attained some perfect state of enlightenment. No, it's not because of anything in Paul at all. strength is all from Christ. Paul can face all circumstances only because he does all things through Christ. You can see a little more on this if we go back and read from verse 4 of the same chapter.

So that's Philippians verse 4 from chapter 4. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication and thanksgiving, that your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Paul here urges the Philippians to rejoice and not be anxious. That's of course closely connected with the experience of contentment. But how is this possible?

How are they supposed to do this? Well he promises that they'll be guarded by the peace of God, which is found again in Christ Jesus. We are to experience the supernatural peace and contentment of God in Christ. If we are truly to be content, it must be His work within us, His gift to us. It has to come from union and fellowship with Him, which we have by faith.

It's important to distinguish here, I think, from our subjective experience of peace and the objective reality that we have of peace with God. When I say the reality of peace with God, I'm talking about the peace that we have through justification. If we are in Christ, we are justified. God is at peace with us because he accepts us as righteous and no longer condemns us. And we are at peace with God because we no longer hate him and live in rebellion against him, but now love him and serve him.

There is reconciliation and therefore real objective peace. This is what we read about in Romans 5 verse 1. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. For the believer, this peace is real whether you always feel it or not. So this is different from our experience of the peace of God.

Ideally, one should flow from the other. We experience the peace of God precisely because we have peace with God. But we all know that our feelings often don't match reality. The experience of peace is something that we have to grow into through the Holy Spirit. Thus, peace is described as a fruit of the Spirit, as I mentioned before.

It is a result of His ongoing work in our lives, as He makes us more like Christ. Growing in peace and contentment should be seen as part of our ongoing sanctification. This helps us to understand why not all of us who belong to Christ always experience this contentment, Our growth in Christ-likeness can be hindered in a variety of ways, whether because we're doing things that we shouldn't, or we're failing to do things that we should. It's worth noting that we are to be active participants when it comes to experiencing peace. Do not be anxious, we're told, as a command.

We're told to rejoice. We're to be active in pursuing every kind of holiness, and contentment is concluded in that. Even for Paul, his contentment is not something that struck him immediately and suddenly at his conversion. He says, looking again at Philippians four, verse 11, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. This is something that we have to learn from the spirit of God.

We have to be his diligent students in the school of contentment. In verse nine of Philippians chapter four, Paul is urging us to exactly that. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you. The God of peace is with us, perhaps in the sense of a peaceful presence that we're aware of, when we're doing what's spiritually healthy for us. That is, when we put in practice what we learn and receive and hear from the word of God.

God, by his presence, gives us his peace. So when we're conscious, it's when we're conscious of the peace of God, that the God of peace is with us and we can experience true peace even when our external circumstances are far from peaceful. And that's worth remarking on because the peace of God is not determined by your circumstances. It's not determined by your emotional state of being. Biblical contentment needs to be clarified, I think.

Because contentment is not to be a state of emotional numbness, such that we're never impacted by the world around us. As Christians, we're not called to a state of complete detachment. Our example in this is the Apostle Paul and, of course, our Lord Jesus. Paul tells us that he has learned to be content in everything. This doesn't mean that he's not often deeply moved or troubled.

As we see in Acts and his letters, Paul is a passionate man. Writing to the Galatians, for example, he's famously outraged that they've been turning to a different gospel. O foolish Galatians, he says, who has bewitched you? And hear the passion in what he says here. I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.

I wish I could be present with you now and change my tone, for I am perplexed about you." So this is a man who feels deeply. He experiences real distress and real concern, and yet he remains content. This might be difficult to understand, but we see something similar when we look at the earthly life of our Lord. The Lord Jesus lived perfect fellowship with his father, having perfect peace and contentment that we are supposed to imitate.

Indeed, it's his own peace that he shares with his people. He says this in John chapter 14, peace I leave with you, my peace I give you, not as the world gives do I give you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. And yet, he was a man of sorrows. He experienced unique sorrow, of course, as bearer of the sins of the world.

But his whole life was filled with ordinary human sorrow, such that he can be an example for us and a sympathetic high priest. He suffered hunger and weakness, temptation. He wept at the tomb of Lazarus. He wept over the city of Jerusalem. His soul was troubled.

So what the Lord and the apostle both show us is that Christian contentment is not about always feeling cheerful. and never being emotionally perturbed. Contentment is much more about being firmly rooted and anchored in the deepest parts of your soul in God. It's about having an ultimate sense of security, permanent rest that can't be shaken, even while you may suffer genuine distress. It means that you're protected from ultimate despair.

You never truly lose heart. It's like a tree, firmly rooted. It sways and bends in the storm, but never breaks. It's like a ship at sea that's securely anchored. It might be tossed about by the waves, but remains in place.

To that is how we should understand contentment, when we're content in the Lord. But let's return to our question. How can we be content? What we've seen so far is that to attain this contentment, we need to be humble rather than prideful. We need to be following Christ rather than following our sinful desires.

One further point I want to make is that contentment needs to be built upon trust in God. This is the opposite of what we saw in Jude's false brethren, who were devoid of the Spirit and thus devoid of faith. Like rebellious Israel in the wilderness, who were devoid of the Spirit, They don't trust the Lord. This leads them to constant grumbling. But what if we do trust the Lord?

How different life would be. Remember who our Lord is. The Lord holds the whole universe in his hands. He sovereignly ordains everything that comes to pass. Just think of what it means to trust Him.

Not only can He arrange all things for your good, but He actually does. The Sovereign Lord, the Maker of the heavens and the earth, has set His love upon you, called you into the kingdom of His Son, and is intent to bless you with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. This is an extraordinary thing, and it forms an extraordinary foundation for extraordinary joy and peace and contentment. You can trust your God. Jesus appeals to trust in God when he teaches us not to be anxious.

Come to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter six. Let's turn there to Matthew chapter six. We want to look at this passage starting in verse 25. Matthew chapter 6 and verse 25, passage about being anxious. This is what the Lord says.

Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you'll eat or what you'll drink, or about your body, about what you'll put on. It's not life more than food. in the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.

Are you not of more value than they? And which of you, by being anxious, can add one single hour to the span of his life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin, and yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore, do not be anxious, saying, what shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or what shall we wear? For the Gentiles seek after all those things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Consider carefully what the Lord is saying here.

There is no cause for anxiety because God will provide for your needs. You can trust him. This means that you can put spiritual things first. That's precisely what the Israel in the wilderness refused to do. When they felt a lack of food or water, they're immediately anxious.

They doubt God and accuse him. But if they trusted him and they were seeking him first of all, then they would have humbly brought their need to him in prayer and waited patiently for the Lord to fulfill his promises. We have every reason to expect that he will. Just look at how he feeds the birds and clothes the grass he fields. God provides.

The Father knows what we need and will give us what we need. I know some people really struggle with this teaching. Is it not possible to find examples of Christians who have died of hunger? Or gone naked for lack of clothes? Aren't there cases where God doesn't, to all appearances, provide what is clearly needed?

Perhaps you can think of examples in your own life where it seemed your needs were not provided for. There are probably several things we could say to this, but let me just say this. God knows what you need better than you do. His intentions for your life are far better than yours. When God withholds something that you think you need, consider that perhaps lacking that thing in that moment was what you needed most.

When I say that we can trust God to provide for us, I'm not saying that we can trust God to give us exactly what we want. We can't trust God to do that, because he won't. If you think that's what's required for contentment, you will never find contentment. Because you see, God is far better than that. We can trust him to give us what he wants to give.

And that's always good. That's always best. Now usually, what's best does include food and clothing and so much else. His care for us is abundant and gracious. But don't forget that God has greater priorities than your flesh.

Spiritual things come first, even if that means, sometimes, even dying of hunger. If that is the death that he has appointed for us, whereby we are to glorify him. So you see that the trust we're called to as Christians is to be a radical kind of trust. You have to be able to trust in the providence of the Lord without knowing what he's doing. You have to be able to trust that his plan is good without ever being told the plan.

It has to be based on a firm spirit-wrought conviction of his goodness and the truth of his promises. This is the trust the Apostle Paul shows When he says he's learned to be content in plenty and hunger, abundance and need, he's content because he trusts what the Lord is doing. He knows his Lord. He trusts him implicitly, even when that means undergoing suffering and distress. Paul is convinced his suffering is worth it.

God is using it for his glory, for the advance of the gospel. Paul has a higher perspective that allows him to look at all his sufferings, trials regard them all as nothing more than a light momentary affliction. So trust in God must be at the heart of all true Christian contentment. So do you want to be content? We've discussed now what not to do and also what to do.

False Brethren, June warns us about, stand as a powerful negative example. They are grumblers and malcontents. They have not tasted of true spiritual contentment. And I think we're able to identify at least a few reasons that might explain why. First, they're proud what a terrible disease pride is for the soul.

They have a terribly high opinion of themselves. They think and act as though the whole world revolves around them. This is a disaster for contentment, simply because pride is a delusion. It doesn't match reality and so they'll always be disappointed. The reality is that each of us were made to glorify God, and God is indeed glorifying himself.

Any attempt to glorify yourself instead will in the end be utterly thwarted. Instead, we saw the path to contentment involves humility, where we're humble, we submit to the reality of who we are before God, we acknowledge that we're sinners, we owe everything to God, we reject entitlement, Knowing that we don't deserve anything from God's hand but wrath, and following the example of Christ, we should be willing to set aside what might be ours for the sake of others. Having a heart of humility leads to contentment because it's focused on giving rather than receiving. It submits to the will of God rather than fighting it. It seeks God's glory rather than its own, and therefore always has reason to rejoice.

We also saw The false brethren follow sinful desires. They do so because they're proud and entitled, but they follow their desires straight into discontentment, because sin is never satisfied. Instead, we ought to follow Christ. He is the only true source for spiritual contentment. The Apostle Paul is content in every situation.

he does all things through Christ who strengthens him. Contentment is something that we learn through walking with Christ in the Spirit. It's part of our sanctification. It flows from growing deeper in our understanding of our salvation. It is his gift to us.

as he gives to us his own peace. Finally, false brethren are such grumblers and malcontents because they refuse to trust in God. They deny Christ. They are devoid of the Spirit. They refuse to trust him.

But trust is the foundation of all true contentment. The Lord will provide what we need, not what we think we need, but what we truly need to live and eventually die for his glory. If you can trust him for that, humbly following him wherever he leads you, then you will have contentment. Let's pray that he'll help us in this thing. Father, we've heard many things today.

Let us not now be hypocrites, knowing the truth but failing to live in that truth. But let us put into practice what we've heard from your word. May we abandon our pride, humble ourselves even as our Lord Christ humbled himself. May we be delivered from slavery to our sinful passions, no longer following our sinful flesh wherever it leads us, but following our Lord Jesus with renewed hearts, knowing he can lead us into peace, give us the strength to face whatever trials he's appointed for us. Let us trust you, Lord, really trust you.

Let us trust in your good and gracious providence, knowing that you work all things according to our good, that we might glorify you Lord, let us be content in you, satisfied in Christ, filled with your spirit. Let us rest securely in your grace. Thank you, Lord. In the name of Jesus, I pray. Amen.