Fighting for Contentment

This week has been wild with VBS.

In fact, that has been the theme of this year’s VBS: Life is wild, but God is good.

Our kids learned that when life is unfair or scary, when life changes or is sad, and even when things are good, God is always good.

That is hard for us to believe some days, isn’t it?

We all want to live the good life, to be happy and have everything we think we want, but something always gets in the way.

What does the good life look like to you? What would have to happen for you to be able to say, “I am happy.”

For most of us, the good life is always at least one step away.

We may not want to express it this clearly, but we live as though our lives are ruled by the statement, “I would be happy if...”

We just had a little more in the bank or in my retirement accounts.

If I could just get that job or our house was just a little bigger or my car a little nicer.

If I was just a little skinnier or a little stronger or if my health would improve.

If the kids would behave better or if they would come back for a visit more often.

If I could just find a spouse or if we just had sex more frequently or if we communicated better.

Can I remind you of something? If you live your life to try to be happy, you are going to be constantly disappointed.

There is no situation in this life that will ever leave you completely happy for the rest of your life.

Relationships will disappoint you, money will run out, things will break, and your health will fail.

Sounds depressing, doesn’t it? Our world has so oriented us to chasing our version of happiness that we can’t imagine that life would be worth living if I am not happy all the time.

However, the picture we find in this morning is dramatically different than what the world says.

Why? Because there is more to your existence than what we find in this life.

Peggy Noonan, a former presidential speech writer and a columnist for Wall Street Journal, summarized this well in an article she wrote all the way back in 1992:

“Our ancestors believed in two worlds, and understood this to be the solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short one. We are the first generations of man that actually expected to find happiness here on earth, and our search for it has caused such unhappiness. The reason: If you do not believe in another, higher world, if you believe only in the flat material world around you, if you believe that this is your only chance at happiness—if that is what you believe, then you are not disappointed when the world does not give you a good measure of its riches, you are despairing.” (Peggy Noonan) [1]

It hasn’t gotten better in the last 27 years, has it? We still live like this life is all there is, so if this life seems to be treating me wrongly, then I have no hope.

However, what we find today, is that the secret to the good life is to fight, not for that one more thing, but to fight for contentment.

That’s what we are going to find in our section of 1 Timothy this morning, so turn over to .

Read it with me...

As we have seen in other parts of this book, the false teachers in Paul’s day were touting the same lies that many do in our day. They put the focus of following Jesus on what it could do for us in this life, turning it into a selfish, short-sighted caricature of what it really is.

By obsessing over the small details, their teaching leads to fights and all kinds of problems because their focus is just on what I can get out of Jesus in this life.

Like most in our world today, they lived like this life is all there is.

We saw back in Chapter 4 that their focus was on what happened in this life—what you ate and whether or not you are married.

Now, we see that fleshed out even further and find that their primary motivation was trying to follow Jesus for material gain.

Despite what they taught, and despite what we find in blogs, magazines, commercials, and even from the mouths of some preachers, following Jesus is not about material gain.

Yes, God does give good gifts to his children, but he doesn’t always make life easy.

So, then, what is the point?

We find it there in verse 6—Godliness with contentment is great gain.

The key to the good life is to fight to cultivate godliness and contentment.

For us to understand this, we need to take a look at these two terms further.

First, let’s examine the idea of:

1) Godliness: a right attitude toward God displayed through right actions.

We have seen this term used several times already in 1 Timothy, but let’s refresh our memory on it.

Just like we said a minute ago, this is picking up the theme we saw in chapter 4. There, we saw that we are called to train ourselves in godliness, which is the outworking of our right attitude toward’s God.

This word isn’t used a lot in the New Testament, and most of the uses are here in 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus.

Most often, the Bible’s focus is not on our outward actions but on our inward heart attitude.

However, the idea of godliness covers both.

It just makes sense, doesn’t it? If I have a right attitude towards something, I will behave the right way towards it.

You have seen stories in the news of people owning exotic animals like chimpanzees and lions, only to forget that they are dealing with a wild animal. One day, they turn on their owner and the situation ends tragically.

They let their guard down, and someone gets hurt badly.

Why? Because they didn’t have the right attitude towards the animal, so they didn’t act like they should have.

That is getting us closer to the idea of godliness. It isn’t that he is a wild lion, ready to rip us to pieces the moment we turn our back.

“Our ancestors believed in two worlds, and understood this to be the solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short one. We are the first generations of man that actually expected to find happiness here on earth, and our search for it has caused such unhappiness. The reason: If you do not believe in another, higher world, if you believe only in the flat material world around you, if you believe that this is your only chance at happiness—if that is what you believe, then you are not disappointed when the world does not give you a good measure of its riches, you are despairing.” (Peggy Noonan) [1]

However, we need to have the right attitude towards him.

We saw that back in chapter 1:

1 Timothy 1:15–17 CSB

This saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”—and I am the worst of them. But I received mercy for this reason, so that in me, the worst of them, Christ Jesus might demonstrate his extraordinary patience as an example to those who would believe in him for eternal life. Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

1 Timothy 1:15 CSB

This saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”—and I am the worst of them.

Our attitude is that we were sinners who had turned from doing life God’s way and turned to doing it our way. We rejected him, and we didn’t deserve him to come after us.

However, because he loved us, he pursues us, offering us a new relationship with him based off Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection.

When we surrender to him, we are turning from living life our way to turning to him as the King over our lives and all creation.

That change in attitude has to change the way we behave.

If we have been shown grace and mercy by God, then we should be gracious and merciful to other people when we are wronged.

If we are trusting God with our eternal life, then we should be able to trust him with the daily challenges of life.

It will change the way I speak and the way I use my money and time.

Godliness, then, is that whole picture, where my attitude and actions are in line.

Don’t make the mistake, though, that the false teachers were making.

They acted as though doing the right thing was enough to be right with God.

They weren’t obeying out of a desire to honor God as their Savior, having been brought from spiritual death to spiritual life.

Their obedience, as we have seen, was out of a desire to have more money!

That is why Paul would describe them differently in the next letter he wrote to Timothy. He said that many people would be:

2 Timothy 3:4–5 CSB

traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the form of godliness but denying its power. Avoid these people.

2 Timothy 3:5 CSB

holding to the form of godliness but denying its power. Avoid these people.

From the outside, their behavior may have matched what you would expect of a believer, but in reality, it was all just an act.

By the way, now is a great time for you to stop and think about your own life.

You are here on a Sunday morning. You probably sang along as best you could with the worship today, and you may have put something in the offering plate.

You might have come here every night this week for VBS, but in all seriousness, you are just an empty husk.

You aren’t practicing true godliness, even though it looks like it.

Stop and think: have you genuinely placed your trust in Jesus and him alone for eternal life, or are you trying to just be as good as you can and hope you make it?

That kind of godliness can’t save you. It is powerless to raise your heart from being dead before God and make it alive.

Right now, where you are, why don’t you cry out for his mercy to change your heart from the dead shell it is into something vibrant for him?

That’s the first aspect of the good life: you are growing in godliness.

You aren’t obeying so others will see how great you are, but your life has been changed, and you look different because of what Jesus has done.

You know he is in charge, and you act like it.

With your heart and actions squared away, that enables you to then start adding in the second word we are defining:

2) Contentment: an unshakeable awareness that I have enough.

Going back to our text, let’s look again at this idea of contentedness.

Read verses 6-10 with me.

Contentedness is the unshakeable awareness that, whatever I have, it is enough.

Some commentators define it as self-sufficiency, which it is to a degree.

However, in our world, that makes it sound like to be content is to be self-reliant—you don’t need anything from anyone. You got this.

Self-sufficiency in that sense is completely antithetical to the message of the gospel.

After all, didn’t we say that we couldn’t save ourselves? Isn’t that the whole point?

Haven’t we also seen throughout this entire book that we need each other, that we need to come alongside each other and support each other and fight back to back against the darkness that tries to deny Jesus as Lord?

Self-sufficiency can be summed up in this statement from Pastor J.D. Greear in his book, Gospel: Rediscovering the Power that Made Christianity Great:

“Your presence and approval are all I need for everlasting joy.”

(J.D. Greear)

That is the statement of a contented heart: God, all I need for true, lasting joy is your presence, which you promise, and your approval, which you have given me through Christ.

Everything else is just the icing on the cake.

Isn’t that what Paul says here in verses 7-8?

All three of our kids recently celebrated their birthdays. I had the privilege of being in the room when each of them was born.

You know what? They were born with nothing in their hands!

In the same way, none of the things we often work so hard for will follow us out of this life.

Take care of your car, but remember that it will be gone one day.

If God leads, buy a house and enjoy it, but remember that you will leave it behind when you die.

Why do we waste our lives running after things that won’t matter in, at most, 70 years, when we were created for eternity?

That’s why Jesus says,

Matthew 6:19–21 CSB

“Don’t store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves don’t break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

A contented heart recognizes that everything I have will one day be gone, except for those things that God allows me to do in service for him.

When I honor him with my life, when I live a godly life from a heart made right by his grace, I am storing up treasure in heaven.

Most of us in this room probably believe that there is a heaven and we have trusted in Jesus, so we are going there.

Do the priorities of our week reflect that?

If we develop the contentment that God calls us to, then it changes the way we react to life.

We don’t make decisions based off fear for the future, because we know that God has it all under control.

We don’t react in fear and frustration when things don’t go our way, because we know that there is more than this life has to offer.

Going back to the quote from Peggy Noonan, we don’t despair when we don’t have the riches we think we deserve, because we know God will take care of our needs and sometimes even our wants!

In a conversation with a friend about this message this week, he brought up a great point: there is a distinction between contentment and complacency.

Contentment is an active trust that says, “I may not understand what God is up to, but I know he is working.”

Complacency is passive. You aren’t calm because you have a strong trust in the providential hand of God; you are calm because you don’t care enough to think through it.

You got overwhelmed at some point and just turned that part off, so you don’t really care what happens. It is what it is.

Contentment looks at every situation and says, “Wow, I wonder what God wants to do here.”

When things are hard, contentment says, “I know God will work this out.”

When things are easy and going well, contentment says, “Since I have more than I need, what does God want me to do with this?”

Contentment comes in both when things are going great and when things are terrible:

Philippians 4:12–13 CSB

I know both how to make do with little, and I know how to make do with a lot. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being content—whether well fed or hungry, whether in abundance or in need. I am able to do all things through him who strengthens me.

That is what godliness looks like when coupled with contentment: I can do anything God calls me to, in any situation, because he gives me the strength to do it.

What is the alternative?

We live greedy lives, chasing after wealth that will never satisfy.

Look again at verses 9-10.

It is true that money itself is not evil. Money simply is a tool.

However, those who chase after money will fall into a trap. Enough will never be enough, and they will spend their lives chasing after what can never satisfy.

So, let’s bring it full circle: what is it that defines the good life for you?

A better house? A better car? A better job?

Stop chasing that.

If you are just here because you think that Jesus is the ticket to solve all your financial problems or to give you status in this life, you are sorely mistaken.

Don’t get me wrong, following Jesus is incredible. There is a joy in obeying him that is so much greater than money can buy.

That joy meets you in the doctor’s office when you get the diagnosis. Even through your tears, there is still the joy that is rooted deep within that knows your heavenly Father is still good, still gracious, and will meet all your needs.

That joy meets you when the stock market crashes and you face a hard road ahead. It allows you to honor God, even when he disappoints and confuses you, because you are living in godliness and content to know that he will care for you in everything you face.

You may not be happy, but you can be content.

What area of your life has caused you to be the most discontented recently? Why?

Why not surrender that area to him this morning?

Endnotes:

Endnotes:

[1] Noonan, Peggy. “You'd Cry Too If It Happened to You.” Forbes Magazine, 14 September 1992, peggynoonan.com/47/. Accessed 31 July 2019.