Christ Church (Moscow, ID)

In the midst of great civil unrest and tumult in England in the 1600s, Jeremiah Burroughs preached a sermon series on Christian Contentment, which is now published as The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment. When your nation is melting down, when the world has gone mad, or even when your family or business are facing challenges, what do Christians need? One of the most important skills you need is Christian contentment. Christian contentment is not apathy or stoicism; it is the Christian virtue that puts you in the very best possible position to do your duty and maximize the good you can do in the world.THE TEXT“… for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ which strentheneth me” (Phil. 4:11-13).SUMMARY OF THE TEXTWhile our text includes one of the most famous Christian calendar verses, we should note that it is not a random “you can do it” verse. It comes in this particular context, where Paul is describing how he has learned contentment in every circumstance (Phil. 4:11). In particular, this strength that Christ gives grows directly out of learning contentment in little and in much, whether full or going hungry, whether abounding or suffering (Phil. 4:12). The word for “content” literally means “self-sufficient” or “self-defense.” The root verb can mean to raise a barrier or to ward off or avail, and the prefix simply means “for oneself.” Clearly Paul does not mean this in a humanistic or egocentric way, as Christ is the one doing the strengthening. But the Christian faith does not teach that we sit around while God works in us. As Paul said earlier in Philippians, we work out our salvation with fear and trembling because God is at work in us to will and to do according to His good pleasure (Phil. 2:12-13). And what is one of the most fundamental motions of that work? Contentment.CONTENTMENT AS READINESS FOR CONQUESTWe may define contentment as a steady, quiet, and submissive heart that delights in God’s fatherly disposal of every circumstance. We know from many places in Scripture that the godly also plead with God, wrestle with God, and lay their petitions before Him (e.g. Psalms, Phil. 4:6). But all our pleas, laments, and petitions must be matched with an earnest and joyful “but Thy will be done.” If Christ prayed those words in the garden before His arrest (Mt. 26:42), how much more must we? And the thing to note is the fact Jesus was praying this on the verge of His great mission. It was His willingness to submit to God’s plan that put Him in position to do His duty and accomplish the maximum good for the world. Fussing, complaining, moping, fretting, cursing, anger, and bitterness only complicate the mission, and render you less prepared for what comes next. Rather than facing the problem, you are part of the problem.“Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me” (Heb. 13:5-6, cf. Ps. 118:6). First, notice that this exhortation comes right on the heels of exhortations to hospitality and sexual purity (Heb. 13:1-4). These are common places for people to give in to temptations to discontentment: houses, food, clothing, furniture, decorations, marriage, physical appearance, sex, etc. God created us to be fruitful, multiply, and take dominion of the world, and this means receiving what God has given and then making it better. But you cannot make it better if you do not receive what has actually been given with joy and gratitude. You have to see the “good” before you can make it “very good.” Bitterness and fussing puts you in the best possible position to miss things, confuse things, and harm things. Think this way about your spouse and kids and parents, and work out from there.CONTENT LIKE JOSHUA & DAVIDThere are two Old Testament passages quoted Hebrews 13:5-6. The first is from Joshua 1:5 on the verge of the conquest of Canaan, when God assures Joshua that He will be with him as He was with Moses. Hebrews was written in the context of significant upheaval, and there was great temptation among Christians to go back to Judaism as a way to try to hide, blend in, or cope with all the turmoil. But going back to Judaism was the way of destruction; it was like going back to Egypt. The Christians in the first century (and every century) are called to press on toward the goal of discipling the nations. Every generation fights from the ground we have been given, but the key is Jesus will never leave us or forsake us (cf. Mt. 28:20). And if Christ is with us, then we can face all things through Him who strengthens us (Phil. 4:13).The other texted quoted in Hebrews 13 is from Psalm 118, which is a triumphant war song, and it was the particular psalm quoted and sung by the people who welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. “The Lord is on my side; I will not fear: what can man do unto me?” This is the heart of Christian contentment. It is a rock-solid trust in the living God. The psalmist goes on: “It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes. All nations compassed me about: but in the name of the Lord will I destroy them… The Lord is my strength and song, and is become my salvation… The right hand of the Lord is exalted: the right hand of the Lord does valiantly… The stone which the builders rejected is become the head stone of the corner. This is the Lord’s doing and it is marvelous in our eyes. The is the day which the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it…”CONCLUSIONSHave all the nations surrounded us with mindless mandates and psychotic lockdowns and sexual confusion and baby bloodlust and economic insanity and global conspiracies? The Lord is on our side; we will not fear: what can man do to us? All nations surround us, but in the name of the Lord we will destroy them. The Lord is our strength and song, and He is our salvation.Paul says that contentment is something he learned. It was something he trained for, practiced, and perfected. But this was not just some stoic virtue, it was training for battle, training for conquest. “Godliness with contentment is great gain” (1 Tim. 6:6). And this is because our contentment is Christ. When we work out our salvation, all that we are working out is Christ, and He is what God is working in us. He is our peace, our shield and tower – the One who strengthens us for every moment. Fear and frustration distort your vision because all you can see is the enemy, but contentment steels your heart for battle because Christ is our contentment.

One of the reasons we have trouble dealing realistically with evil in this world is that we have drawn mental cartoons of the evil beforehand. When someone says “tyranny,” we think of goose-stepping armies, missile parades, and funny looking helmets. But then, when something genuinely bad happens in our own lives, and we see it with our own eyes, because it doesn’t match the cartoon we treat it as an anomaly, a one-off occurrence... a thing we don’t have a category for. But we need to have a category for something this common.I am a child of the Cold War, and my first glimpse of an actual communist country taught me this lesson. The lesson should be “don’t fight the caricature—fight the real thing.” In the early seventies the submarine I was on was pulling into Guantanamo Bay, and when I came topside I was astonished and taken aback because this commie land was emerald green. Bright green. But all my childhood images of communist countries resembled something like a grainy black and white newspaper photo of Budapest in the rain.

IntroductionAs we consider our moment in history, it is important that we not lose sight of the way God has always dealt with His people over the course of history: through covenant. Covenant is the name of the relationship God has determined to have with His people and ultimately the whole world. But because of who God is, the dominant theme is death and resurrection – which means that God will always keep His promises. We keep covenant in history by believing that.The Text: Gal. 3:16-24Summary of the TextPaul has been explaining covenant history to the Galatians who have been “bewitched” into going backwards, covenantally speaking (Gal. 3:1, 2:18). Specifically, they have succumbed to the Judaizing heresy that wanted to accept Christ as Messiah but continue under the Old Covenant, making distinctions between Jews and Gentiles, circumcised and uncircumcised (Gal. 2:12). Paul’s argument is that God does not forget or annul any of His promises (Gal. 3:16-18). What God was doing in the time of the law has to be understood in terms of what God began to do with Abraham. The law is not opposed to the promises of God, but it was a schoolmaster to bring us to maturity in Christ (Gal. 3:19-24).The Covenant SchoolhousePaul uses the term “law” somewhat interchangeably with the Mosaic law and the Old Covenant. Clearly he’s talking about Moses in Gal. 3:17, but as he goes on, he seems to be talking about the entire Old Covenant leading up to Christ (Gal. 4:21-22), the era of “tutors and governors” (Gal. 4:2). This image underlines the fact that God’s covenants do not expire and become obsolete and therefore maturity means understanding how they were preparation for growing up into our inheritance in Christ (Gal. 4:7).The first covenant was made with Adam, and it is called the Covenant of Creation (or sometimes the Covenant of Life or Covenant of Works). While Genesis 2 doesn’t use the word “covenant” all the elements are there, and Hosea says, “But they like men/Adam have transgressed the covenant…” (6:7). A covenant is an agreement between two or more persons, sovereignly administered, with attendant blessings and curses. We can add to this basic definition the common practice of giving covenant signs and seals. In the Covenant of Creation with Adam, the agreement was that Adam would live forever under God’s blessing as he was perfectly obedient to the commands of God, but if he ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, he would surely die. The Tree of Life functioned as the sign and seal of the covenant.The Covenant of GraceThe Covenant of Grace is what we call the overarching covenant that God made with Christ after Adam sinned. The promise is that the seed of the woman will one day crush the seed of the serpent (Gen. 3:15), and the requirement is that Adam believe. The sign of God’s covenant promise is the skins God clothed them with (Gen. 3:21). Within this one, overarching Covenant of Grace are the Old and New Covenants, and within the Old Covenant are a number of covenant renewals that function as those schoolmasters and tutors: covenants with Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and Ezra. In each covenant era, the previous covenant is not annulled, but each one functions as a teacher to bring us to Christ. Think of it as one overarching story, or like a math course where the lessons are cumulative.What God taught us in the Noahic Covenant is still true: the death penalty is still applicable for murder, and God will never destroy the world again with a flood. But God came and expanded that covenant to include particular promises to Abraham and his seed for the blessing of all the nations of the earth. Likewise, God remembered that covenant with Abraham and brought Israel out of Egypt and gave them the law and the tabernacle. And then God gave them kings and the temple, and after exile, He renewed covenant once again under the leadership of Ezra, teaching His people how to be faithful in an era of pagan empires. All of these covenants are talking about Christ. He is the seed of the woman, the ark of the gospel, the seed of Abraham/the heir of the world, the Word made flesh who “tabernacled” among us, the Son of David, the true Temple, and our teacher (cf. Lk. 24:27).Covenant & SalvationTwo additional points emerge from reading the Bible this way: First, faith has always been the way of salvation. The Old Covenant saints were saved by believing God’s promises to send the Seed who would crush the head of the serpent, and in the New Covenant we are saved by believing that Jesus is the Seed that has crushed the serpent on the cross. Second, the New Covenant is not made out of stainless steel. It is a new and better covenant, the final covenant, that is far more potent and glorious (Jer. 31) that will fill the whole world, and our election is absolutely sure (e.g. Rom. 8:35), but the Bible teaches that we stand in this certainty by faith alone. New Covenant members can fall away just like in old Israel (1 Cor. 10, Jn. 15, Heb. 10).Conclusion: The Faith that Overcomes the WorldFundamentally, saving faith is faith in the God of resurrection: “He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; and being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able to perform” (Rom. 4:19-21). The same faith was on display when God commanded him to sacrifice Isaac (Heb. 11:19). This was the faith that overcame the world through obedient deliverance and suffering (Heb. 11:34-37). It is the same with covenant history: God takes His people (and the world) into graves and out again.

And He was saying to them, “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world."

The solution to the enchantment of "the inner ring" is a robust sense of membership, which is exactly what is offered to us in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We have now come to the conclusion of the first cycle of Micah’s prophecy. Here we find a brief word of consolation, which, given what has come before, stands out in sharp relief.

Maturity in ministry means recognizing some of the common pitfalls in evaluating what Christ is calling us to do. The Spirit that knits us together into the body of Christ knows what He is doing, and we can rest in Him. His way of remaking the world is the best way.

This world is a vast orchard, filled with all variety of fruit bearing trees. But it’s an orchard whose tenants are an unruly and greedy lot. The trees are laden with abundant blessings. The inhabitants, however, continue to harvest the fruits well before they’re ripe.

The suffering of God’s people is not always correlated to their unfaithfulness toward Him. The afflictions we experience do not necessarily tell us that we are sinning in some way.

We have been indoctrinated by our culture in two great lies when it comes to creativity and the arts. The first lie is that there is no standard — beauty is purely in the eye of the beholder. The second lie is the flip side of the first one — you can create anything. But both lies deny God.