The following sermon is from the Westminster Pulpit, extending the worship ministry of Westminster Presbyterian Church, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. We are a local congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America. Please contact us for permission before reproducing this message in any format. Turn with me and follow in your Bible as I'm going to read from God's word in Philippians 4, starting at verse 10. This is the last time that I plan to consider this series of messages in the beloved letter of Philippians. I know it is a beloved letter. Many of you have told me Philippians is my favorite. I knew that before I started on it. It's one of my favorites too. And it has many things, even as we come to These last verses, which sometimes in the New Testament letters are goodbyes or, you know, kind of horizontal communication between Paul and various people, there are some wonderful consolations and promises contained here that we'll hear today. I will next week, Lord willing, begin to look with you at the Gospel of Luke. And in that context and setting, of course, as we come towards Christmas, It's actually coming only about six weeks away I think. We will face some texts in the beginning of Luke that will be most appropriate to the time of year. Look with me and listen now as I read God's Word. Philippians 4 beginning at verse 10. The apostle reiterates his main theme again. I rejoice greatly in the Lord. that at last you have renewed your concern for me. Indeed, you have been concerned but had no opportunity to show it. I'm not saying this because I am in need for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation whether well-fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength. Yet it was good of you to share in my troubles. Moreover, as you Philippians know, in the early days of your acquaintance with the gospel, when I set out from Macedonia, not one church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving except you only. For even when I was in Thessalonica, you sent me aid again and again when I was in need. Not that I'm looking for a gift, but I'm looking for what may be credited to your account. I've received full payment and even more, and I am amply supplied now that I've received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent. They are a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God. and my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus. To God our Father be glory forever and ever. Amen. Greet all the saints in Christ Jesus. The brothers who are with me send you greetings. All the saints send you greetings, especially those who belong to Caesar's household. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen. Two men are waiting in an airport terminal for the plane that has pulled into the gate where they are. And they're expecting any moment to be told that they can board the plane. But instead comes an announcement that there's a mechanical problem and their flight will be delayed. They hope for this minor problem to be repaired within an hour, but possibly more. Everyone waiting at the gate reacts in their own way. One man who is headed home after several days away knows that this glitch is simply going to delay his home arrival, and yet he's angry. And he curses the airline and displays a miserable temperament to everybody, making other people near him unhappy at his behavior. Another man is a Christian, and that doesn't necessarily guarantee his good behavior. But for him, this delay means a worse consequence than the first man because he's going to miss a connecting flight and he knows he's going to miss an appointment in Chicago with a new customer that could have meant a lucrative contract for his company. And that deal may be gone. But he bows his head and prays, Lord, your will be done. Give me wisdom and grace and show me how to deal with this setback. These two people obviously draw upon very different inner resources to face the same discouraging issue in their life. And I'd ask you to answer to yourself silently, but with honesty, which of these two people reacted the most like you would have? In his closing remarks here in Philippians, Paul speaks from his personal situation as a prisoner of Rome to once more challenge us in growth. in the Christian life. And I want to remind you the occasion for this letter. We talked about it in the very first chapter. Why was this letter written? Well, primarily for this situation. Paul, a prisoner, had been left largely alone, cut off from certain necessities of life, certainly from companionship of many people he cared about, but from the peninsula where Greece is, the area called Macedonia, Epaphroditus came, traveled a long way, whether by land the whole way, which you could do, or probably by sea. It was a hazardous journey. He got in trouble along the way of some kind and was ill. But he got there, and he conveyed to Paul the greetings of this congregation that Paul had founded, their love for him, and a very practical, generous monetary gift that had been collected. So Paul, again, as he closes, is expressing thanks for that gift. And yet it's interesting, in the unique personality that Paul has, he's always the teacher, even when he's doing something as simple as saying thank you. He says thank you in a bit of an unusual way here. I rejoice that you renewed your concern for me, but then in verse 11, he almost seems to hedge the thanks by saying, I'm not thanking you because I was in need. Now to some people that might sound ungracious. You would think with Paul in prison lacking a supply line of basic necessities, he would have said, your gift saved my life. Well, he is sincere in thanking them, but he wants them to understand that he's not desperate, and that while he's grateful, he could affirm to them and wanted to teach them from this situation this lesson. I have learned to be content in any and all circumstances. I think Paul strikes a nerve with this subject of contentment, certainly a very contemporary subject To every one of us, Christian or not, how content are we with our lives? A Puritan author wrote a fine little book. It's a gem of a book and very readable. Jeremiah Burroughs was his name. He wrote a splendid little book called The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment several hundred years ago. The Rare Jewel of Christian contentment. Burroughs was saying that in my time as I look around, I don't see too many Christians who are truly content. And centuries later, that situation hasn't necessarily changed too much. Real contentment with Christ at the center of it is still a rare and precious commodity. I want to ask us today if it's realistic that we, would think that we might learn Paul's deep state of contentment in a very difficult, harsh circumstance to rest in God as our Savior. Or is this something that maybe only the super spiritual people attain, like apostles? To be able to say, I'm in this tough place, but God is in control, and I'm at peace. Now we can't control outwardly very many of the events that come at our lives. All kinds of circumstances are outside our control. There's some we can manipulate, but others we can't. Things happen that are unfortunate and difficult. But we can often, and if not always, have some control over how we react and how we respond to the events of our lives. And I would ask you to think about the great theme of joy in Christ defying circumstances that has headlined this letter. We've called this letter, or I gave it the name as a series, Authentic Joy in Christ. Not joy of the happy face kind, you know, that you go around with that little yellow smiley face pasted on you all the time. That's artificial. The deep joy that is founded and rooted in belonging to God in Christ. I believe as we close this letter today, we're seeing something that goes with joy. I'll call it the fraternal twin of joy, contentment. Joy in Christ ought to have contentment in Christ, not very far away from it. Where one is, the other should be. And we can be trained to experience this, enjoy this, and rest in this as a direct outcome of learning to think like Christ as the Holy Spirit is at work in us. Now first of all, we need to do what we often do with a definition of something. To define contentment the right way, we have to clear away what it isn't. And so I want to speak for a few minutes about what biblical contentment is not. First, it is not based on the abundance of money that you have. If I asked any collection of 100 people to take a piece of paper and think about, make a list, what several things would be required for you to be content? I don't think it takes me being a genius to say that I would guess a preponderance of those people would have something financial high on the list, if not the first item. a bigger salary, more savings in the bank, a stronger retirement program, something. If we ask people, are you content in your life? Many of them will say, well, I could be if I had a trust fund with five million in it, turning over interest for me to live on. Give me that and then I'd be contented. Would you really be? You think you would be, but what is enough money to make you contented. It's always a moving target because you find that the more you earn, the larger your vision becomes of what you want to spend and what you think you need. And suddenly you don't just need a little cottage with two or three bedrooms and your little quarter acre of lawn. You want five acres with your McMansion and your stable of horses or whatever it might be for you. And the needs, the expenses expand to the resources. Socrates once said, who is the wealthiest man anywhere? He answered his own question and he said, it is he who is satisfied with least. Not who has most, but is satisfied with least. Now we wouldn't preach that Christians have to take vows of poverty. It's a good thing to aspire to a good income and to work hard to earn it, to save prudently, to plan for your future, to invest in good ways. That's all excellent. You should do those things. You should learn about those things. But if you're making economic peace as the primary quotient of your life for contentment, you're bound to be in trouble. Because no matter where the dollar amount moves in your particular circumstance, your desire for more is always going to be out there. You probably have heard John D. Rockefeller's famous saying. One of the early multi-millionaires of this country, when asked about his vast fortune, a reporter stuck a microphone in front of him and said, Mr. Rockefeller, how much money is enough? John D. Rockefeller said, one dollar more, young man. Always $1 more. Well, there's a sense in which Christ calls us not to deny material possessions, not to label them as evil, but to act in a sense as if material goods were, in the ultimate sense, immaterial. They really don't matter because they don't make any difference in eternal things and eternal satisfactions. Well, there's a second thing people seek their contentment from. If not from money and goods, then bodily health. You've heard me denounce this saying more than once. If you have your health, you've had everything. No, you don't. You may have nothing. You may be spiritually bankrupt and miserable and have wonderful health. People do all kinds of things to stretch out the span of their lives, and you should do that. You should, by all means, live a healthy life. Eat well, exercise, do all the things I don't do, but seek to extend your life by every reasonable means. But don't make health your little god, because one day, it's going to abandon you. It may come very suddenly. or it may be the slow erosion of health. God certainly allows many fine, obedient, faithful Christian people to live with lifetime disabilities or go through incurable diseases for year on year on year. He doesn't guarantee us that health is going to be there to buoy us up all the time. So don't make that your source of contentment. Another big source, if I asked you to make the list of what would influence me being content, possibly, I hope would make your list, would be your relationships, your family, your marriage, your friends. And you'd say, well, if I can't have much of a salary and I have to be sick, I hope I would have a faithful spouse or siblings or children who would cling to me and friends who would stand around me and enrich me. What a rich man I am in those things. Not in dollars, but in relationships. And yet, even I, and all of us who would say we have very good marriages and grandchildren and all these wonderful blessings, I have some sour relationships with people, some people in my life, some fragmented relationships that don't seem to want to work out very well. And you may have far worse ones. You're not going to find contentment in your relationships alone. None of those things are going to do it. Let me bring before you someone or a group of people from antiquity that can help us move beyond this, these three bases that don't work by themselves for contentment. A group of people called the Stoics, and you've heard of them, a Greek school of philosophy. It was already flourishing long before Paul's time. The Stoics were the folks who, they actually prized contentment, but in a specific way. They said, look, here's how you'll be content. You have to detach yourself from all the hardship and pain and difficulty of life. You have to learn to sever your emotions and become a kind of emotional superman and be indifferent to your surroundings and just kind of crawl into your castle and grit your teeth and go forward independently of what is going on around you in the world and then you can be content. Now, the Stoics were partly right and very wrong at the same time. They were right in the fact that they saw that it wasn't circumstances that were going to make them content. Not money, not health, not relationships. Other people were going to fail them. They said, you just can't look for those things to change. Contentment is inside you, they said. You have to build it up and be self-sufficient and tough it out as you face the world. Well, they were right and they were wrong. They were right in that contentment doesn't come from circumstances. They were wrong in the toughing it out and severing your emotions from hardship is the way to do it. Paul takes their right observation that circumstances won't make you content and says it is not self-sufficiency that's going to work for you, it is a God-sufficiency of Christ dwelling in you. This can allow you to face any kind of circumstance and to do it in a sense, not as some stonewalled, arms folded against the world, independent, I can do it all by myself, but rather as someone radically dependent upon Christ. And so with that definition of what it is not, let us look now at verses 11 and 12 in the second place and hear the Word of God teach that biblical contentment is something that is learned by every Christian. It's not something you're born with. It's not the matter of having a certain disposition or temperament as if you say, well, I'm a very patient person and I just, I can accept things and I don't get upset, but my husband over here, he flies off the handle. He's not a very contented person. I am by nature. We're not talking about your personality type or what you are like by nature. We're talking about biblical contentment in Christ which you learn. I was trying to think about some of the more intensive learning experiences that people can go through in life that work a rather significant change in them and whatever it is that's to be learned happens quickly. One that I came up with in my mind was a military image. I was thinking about Marine boot camp training at Parris Island, Virginia. Doesn't Parris Island just call up something for you? I know we have Marines in this audience and in this congregation. And any of you, even if you're not a Marine, you've got an image in your mind. Men and women alike go there for 11 weeks, I believe it is, Marine boot camp. There they are getting on the bus, you know, 18, 19, 20 years old, hair disheveled, posture kind of hanging loose. And they get on the bus, and then you don't see them for 11 weeks. And then they are in a parade ground, maybe when you next see them at graduation. They have changed, right, Maureen Frank? They have changed. They have probably changed for a lifetime. In 11 weeks, it isn't just the fact that their muscles have become firm and their posture has become straightened, their minds have changed. They think about doing things as a unit. They think about sacrificing themselves for the soldier beside them. They think about authority in a whole different way than they ever did before. They're changed people. It's in their mind, it's in their eyes, it's in their reactions. Well, the training school of God in the school of contentment is not 11 weeks. Would that it could be, it isn't. You enroll in it and it begins when you trust Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. And maybe you don't even know that you're signing on for this school, but you are. You're saying, Lord, I submit my life to you. I give my life to Christ. He died for me. He did what was needed for me. He lifted me out of the depths of my own hopelessness and helplessness and took my sin. He's giving me a whole new nature and washing me clean. Thank you, Lord. I want to submit myself to you. Most of us don't know what it means that we're really submitting ourselves to God as Lord of our lives from that point onward. We're saying, Lord, you're going to be the master trainer from this day on. You know, very much like what that Marine recruit says to the drill sergeant. He doesn't say it willingly. He's there and the drill sergeant is in charge. There's no question. You don't say, Mr. Drill Sergeant, could we do this today? Could we have the day off? It doesn't work that way. The master trainer is now in charge of your schooling. He's in charge of providential workings in your life, lessons that you will learn, some of which will be very unpleasant, maybe even repeatedly unpleasant, but they will be to train you. And what is aimed at in this schooling of God is what Romans 12.1 calls the renewing of our minds. You see, a marine is trained and they're not just training his body, they're training his mind. The schooling takes years. The curriculum is varied. You don't choose which classes to take. There are no electives. God decides the course. And there are times when his schooling knocks you down flat, leaves you feeling perhaps a little hopeless. What happens next? Why is this going on? God, I'm really out of my comfort zone here. Why are you rebuking me? Why are you making it so difficult for me? But then that same God, the master trainer, will pick you up and put you back on the course and even encourage you with his embrace. We can believe Paul who went through the course in its hardest version. I think Paul went through a harder version because of who he had been. The fact that he had been the persecutor of the church. The Lord, when he was converted Saul of Tarsus, destined him for a very tough course. It was the officer's course, I guess you would say. And Paul tells about it. He says, I know what it is to be in dire need. I know what it is to have plenty. I've been everywhere. Read the other things he said. He'd been beaten. He'd been imprisoned multiple times for months on end. He'd had his reputation libeled with false charges. He'd been attacked. People called him every name there was. He was shipwrecked. He was hungry. Companions had abandoned him. People he trusted, coworkers, had left him. And on top of that, he had some ailment which was serious enough for him to say three times, I went to the Lord, this Lord whom I believe, my God and Savior, and I said, Lord, please, I'd be so much better a servant for you if you would heal me of this thing. Three times I asked, and the Lord finally said, no, I want you to live with it, don't ask me again. In all of that, Paul said, I've learned to be content. Wouldn't you say God's servant Job went through much the same thing in the Old Testament? Wow. What a course of the school of contentment he had. Unbelievable. You talk about Paris Island. Your children wiped out in one day, your estate's ruined, your body's covered with painful boils, and for months you sit and say, why God, why God, why God, while your friends come and tell you what's wrong with you. Now that was the school of contentment. And it took Job quite a while to understand that God was running this school, and that he finally had to fall down on his face and say, Lord, I finally recognize. I can't question you. I have to trust you. Learning to be content begins with its most fundamental lesson to teach us that in our all-pervasive sinfulness, by our very sinful nature, we deserve nothing from God. That's where we're wrong all the time. We're always saying, God, I deserve better. Why am I not getting a better deal? Why isn't this more comfortable? Why am I not earning better money? Why don't I have a better job? Why am I not finding a husband or a wife when I want one and my friend over there has a beautiful wife? Why, God, why? Don't I deserve it? No, you don't. The fundamental lesson, you see, the fundamental lesson is finding out that any good thing comes from God as his gift. And when you live your life and understand that the good things you enjoy, the delights you have, are God's pleasures bestowed on you, then you begin to live thankfully and dependently. God's asking us to find out this lesson. He has to strip us of our pride, our greed, our me-sufficiency. Oh, I can handle it. Oh, I've got a couple of master's degrees. I am certainly qualified to deal with this. Oh, don't they know who I am around here? Me sufficiency comes out all over the place. And God is trying to teach us we are but clay and he's the potter. And he's making something out of us that's going to be fabulous in its final beauty. Glorious when the pattern's all done and the baking's all done and the colors are all applied. but the process of being molded and colored and baked isn't always fun. When we do learn that we're but clay and when we say to God, I'm but dust and you are the one who has full charge of me, oh God, and everything you're doing for me is a gift, beginning with that cross of Jesus Christ, then we go to him every day and we say, Lord, you reconciled me to yourself in Christ. You say you adopted me as your child by grace. Now I believe you. And I believe that if you were mistreating me as I'm tending to think you are, what you'd be doing is mistreating your son. And I don't see how you could do that. So Lord God, make me submissive. Help me trust you. Help me hang on and be obedient in whatever this day brings because I'm convinced that you've permitted it, you've designed it, And if I'm holding onto you, I'll get through it. Now thirdly, we come to the capstone of this text, which is verse 13 of Philippians 4. A very great text. One of the handful of verses that people will pluck out of this book and say, oh, here's what I love. Here's a life verse, some people will say. Here's what I love in Philippians 4, 13. Unfortunately, it's a verse we can misuse, as I'll try to show you in a minute. The final reading here of when Paul says, I can do everything through him who gives me strength is to tell us this, that the crown of our contentment is to rest in nothing but God's empowering grace through Christ. Here's what I find happens. People take Philippians 4.13. And first of all, they kind of drop out of it the words through him. And then they might even say those words, but they really don't think those words. And they say, I can do everything through him who gives me strength. The part they emphasize is, I can do everything. And God behind me, I can do it. Now, can you simply pluck that out of its context and say, I can do everything, everything I want to do, everything I think I should do, I can do it. God will make it possible. Well, let me give you sort of an absurd example. What if I had a flat tire on my car, and I said, oh my goodness, getting that jack out from under the car, you've got to crawl under my car to get the jack. It's the craziest thing I've ever seen. And then you get it out of there, and it doesn't work like the old kind of jacks, so you've got to read a book to find out how it works, and it's a big nuisance. And I say, now God, I can do everything through him who gives me strength. Give me strength to lift this car up and hold it up in the air and take the tire off. Well, don't be stupid. Of course God isn't going to do that. Well, then I've just told you something that I want to do that God isn't going to help me do. Now, maybe a more serious example. What if I'm told in a diagnosis that I have stage three stomach cancer? Can I go leave the doctor's office and say, I can do everything through him who gives me strength. God, take away the stomach cancer. I don't want to die of this. I expect to be cured, healed. Miraculously, is Philippians 4.13 telling me that God will do that? If it is, why didn't Paul say, I can do everything through Christ who gives me strength, therefore God, I want my chains to be struck off, I want this jail door to open, and I plan to walk out tonight and get out of here. You see, Paul wasn't treating what he said here as human possibility thinking. Verse 13, for him, flows right out of verse 12. And what did verse 12 say? I'm in need, I've had plenty, I've had nothing. In every situation, whether well-fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or want, I can do it all. All of that, I can face it through him who gives me strength. He's not saying I can do any old thing I might dream up, or any old thing that could be a human possibility. I can do anything that comes to me from the hand of my God, my providential, overruling, sovereign God. Because it's coming from Him, through Christ, I can do it. I can face it. You see, the book of Philippians is like a monument that says to us, change circumstances do not equal contentment. Change finances don't do it, change health doesn't do it, change relationships don't do it. Those are all nice things if they can be changed. But they will not bring you contentment. Living the circumstances with Christ is where contentment comes from. You see that? Paul's saying I can be content in the circumstance because Christ lives in me. and his resurrection power is making me a different person. So banish the worldly idea. It is a totally worldly idea that if your circumstances could be adjusted, you'd be content. No, that's not what's being taught. Paul similarly said in 2 Corinthians 12, I will all the more gladly boast in my weaknesses that the power of Christ may rest on me for when I'm weak, then I'm strong. You see, I might be very weak, I might be dying. but I could be content because the power of Christ has claimed me. And I'll take hold of his joy and I'll rest in him even in the most unhappy and trying circumstances. What after all has been the apostle's singular ambition in this letter back in chapter three? I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection. That power brings me joy. and brings me satisfaction that is independent of what's going on around me. And therefore he can end in verse 19 here with the last word I'll emphasize of Philippians. My God will meet all your needs according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. Will he meet everything you want? Will he change all your circumstances with a magic wand? No. But I know he meets needs, and he's done it, and he's doing it, Paul said. He'll do it for you. When I'm weak, his power makes me strong. When I'm empty, he fills my cup. When I'm poor, Christ is my richest. We'll never be content in any house of circumstantial paper castle material security that we make for ourselves. We never will. It's an illusion. but we can rest secure by abandoning our security and seeking the deep-seated joy of our souls in the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our living Lord. Let us pray. Father, we need this message. I have no idea of what things may be making someone deeply restless and deeply unsatisfied here. I pray you draw them to yourself, the source of all satisfaction. Draw them to Jesus. Let them stop fighting you and surrender at his cross. Accept him as Lord. Believe that even the hard things of their life are filtered through your hands, through those same hands that had the nails driven in. I pray, oh God, that many here would discover and exult in the joy, the wonder of knowing that I have Christ in me, the hope of final glory. And in that, be greatly content for Jesus' sake, amen.