Take our Bibles this morning and continue to focus on that great redemption, on that great forgiveness that is ours in Jesus Christ. We'll be looking at Psalm 85 this morning as we confess our sins before the Lord and praise Him for His great grace. A psalm of the sons of Korah. Psalm 85, Lord, You were favorable to Your land. You restored the fortunes of Jacob. You forgave the iniquity of Your people. You covered all their sin. You withdrew all Your wrath and You turned from Your hot anger. Restore us again, O God of our salvation, and put away Your indignation toward us. Will You be angry with us forever? Will You prolong Your anger to all generations? Will You not revive us again that Your people may rejoice in You? Show us Your steadfast love, O Lord, and grant us Your salvation. Let me hear what God the Lord will speak For He will speak peace to His people, to His saints, but let them not turn back to folly. Surely His salvation is near to those who fear Him that glory may dwell in our land. Steadfast love and faithfulness meet. Righteousness and peace kiss each other. Faithfulness springs up from the ground and righteousness looks down from the sky. Yes, the Lord will give what is good and our land will yield its increase. Righteousness will go before Him and make His footsteps away. Let us praise the Lord this morning that He has forgiven our sins and that He has turned away His wrath from us and that in fact, He has shown us His steadfast love and granted us His salvation so that we might speak of His glory and speak of His redemption and praise Him for it. Take a minute this morning to bow your head and to realize this, to confess your sins before the Lord and to thank Him for His grace. Father, this morning we come into Your presence as sinful people who have been made clean by the blood of the Lamb. And we give You praise this morning that by His blood we are forgiven and that through faith, Father, His righteousness has been imputed to us so that we might be justified, declared by You to be righteous in Your sight, worthy to stand in Your presence, not because of anything we've done, but in spite of everything we've done. because Jesus paid the price and His righteousness was perfect and unblemished. And so we can draw near to You and we can stand in Your presence blameless and with great joy. And we can bow before You and worship You and sing Your praises. And we can cast our cares upon You, knowing with full confidence that You care for us and that You take pleasure, Father, in meeting our needs and providing for us. And so, Lord, we ask this morning that we would never underestimate the great worth of the salvation that is ours in Jesus Christ. As we come at this time of year, Father, to think upon His incarnation, His birth, the fact that the perfect, holy God of this universe came down to earth and took on human form in that manger. Father, we give You praise that You did what we could never do. that you bridged that gap that Jesus Christ was the ladder that Jacob saw descending from heaven upon which the angels came to bring the greatest blessings possible to mankind. We praise You for Him and we thank You for Him and we ask You this morning that You would give us an outpouring, Father, of Your grace and Your power and Your Spirit to be able to praise Him and to sing Your praises in a way that is honoring to You and glorifying to You. Father, as we continue to sing Your praises this morning and to worship You, we pray that You would give us that comfort and that You would give us that great hope that we might live our lives as long as You give us breath on this earth in a way that is worthy of the calling with which You have called us, worthy of the Gospel of Jesus Christ by which we have been saved. Father, we love You because You have first loved us, and we pray that our lives might honor You. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen. Please rise for the reading of God's Word. This morning's text, found in Philippians chapter 4, we read in the first 13 verses. Please give your careful attention to the reading of God's word. Therefore, my brothers, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm thus in the Lord, my beloved. I entreat Iodia and I entreat Syntyche to agree in the Lord. Yes, I ask you also, true companion, to help these women who have labored side by side with me in the gospel, together with Clement and the rest of the fellow workers, whose names are in the Book of Life. 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, with thanksgiving, let 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. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you. 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 am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me." And God's people said, Amen. This past week was another one of those difficult weeks, but it was a blessed week. I was very blessed this past week to be able to spend quite a bit of time down at the hospital with Kevin and Jeanie Gates and with Valerie and Larry and some of the others of their families. And it was a blessing to be there because Kevin was my friend. He was my brother in the Lord. He did a lot for me. He did a lot for my family. And so it was a blessing to be there with him while he was dying and to read Scripture to him and to pray with him to try to make sure that if there was any possibility at all that he could hear what I was saying and be aware of what was going on around him, that he would be aware that he wasn't alone, and that he could hear the great hope and the great words of comfort that are in God's Word as he was dying. And it was a blessing to be there with Jeannie and with Valerie as they watched him die, and to pray with them, and to cry with them, and to listen to all of the stories that they had to tell about all of the good times that they had had with him during his life. And mostly, it was a blessing to be there and to watch as the Spirit of God gave peace and gave joy to Jeannie and to Valerie as they were losing a husband, a father, They didn't panic. They didn't break down. They didn't lose control. They didn't fight. They didn't strive with God. They just settled into this contented, peaceful place of trusting Him. And they knew that He was sovereign. And they believed His Word. And they believed that while Kevin's death was their loss, it was His gain because He was going to be with his Savior. They believed in the promise of glory and the reality of heaven and the hope of the future resurrection and that Kevin had all of that because it was purchased for him by the blood of Jesus Christ. They believed that and they trusted that. And so in the midst of great sorrow they had great hope. and they had great peace. This wasn't what they wanted. It wasn't what they'd hoped for. It went against what they expected. It went against what they had dared to dream of. It broke their hearts, but still, they were filled with peace. And they were able to rejoice because they stood firm on the Word of God. And I was reminded that in the Christian life, there is nothing more precious than the peace and the joy and the contentment that the truth of God and His Word brings. We need it. We can't live in this world where suffering and disease and sin and violence and immorality and death abound without the peace that surpasses all understanding and the joy that God gives us that strengthens our hearts. If our lives as Christians, even in the hardest, most disappointing, most heartbreaking times, if our lives are anchored to the truth of God's Word and filled with that peace and that joy that the Spirit of God gives through faith, then we will be content even in suffering, even in loss, and we will be strong even when in and of ourselves we are desperately and hopelessly weak. We absolutely need the joy and the peace and the contentment that the Spirit of God gives us. We don't need our lives to be free of trials. We don't need our lives to be easy. We don't need our lives to be devoid of disappointment and frustration. We need our lives in the midst of all of those things to be granted the great peace and hope and joy and contentment of the Spirit. And if your life is missing those things, if hardship and suffering causes your feelings of despair and fear or even anger and bitterness to overwhelm that peace that surpasses all understanding, and to overwhelm the joy of the Lord. If you can't say with Paul, I have learned in whatever situation I am in to be content, then you're living not according to the strength of the Spirit of God, you're living according to your own strength. And you're coping with your trials and the hardships of this life according to your own strength. You're not doing all things through Him who strengthens you. And so in reality, you're feeble. And you're weak. And you're frustrated about that. and you need to fall at His feet, and you need to surrender yourself to Him, and you need to acknowledge that He's God and that you're not. That you can't control everything in this world. That you can't always have what you want. And that things are going to be hard and that your dreams are going to be shattered. You need to admit that He's the Sovereign One who has decreed the end from the beginning. and made everything for its purpose. He is the one who determines whether you're rich or poor, strong or weak, healthy or sick, whether your loved ones live or die, whether your most cherished dreams get fulfilled or not. And you need to trust Him. And I need to trust Him. And we need to be satisfied with whatever He does or doesn't do. As Christians, that's our only source of joy. It's our only source of hope. Knowing that in life and in death, whatever happens, we belong to Him. That He is sovereign. And that He is good. And that when we trust Him, even and especially in times of terrible hardship, that He will give us peace and joy that transcend our circumstances in order to strengthen us to persevere and praise Him. That's a promise. that He will provide us with that strength and that hope and that joy. And that's what this text is about and why we're returning to it this morning. Philippians is a book that is often called the letter of joy. because joy and words like joy and rejoice are used so frequently throughout these four short little chapters. It's the dominant theme that Paul is focusing on here, and the remarkable thing about that is that Paul is writing a book all about joy while he's in prison, while he's suffering, while he's being persecuted. He's been tossed into a first century Roman prison cell for the crime of preaching the Gospel. And that meant, in terms of his time and his place, being in a situation where he had lost all human rights. He wasn't treated with any kind of dignity or respect. The way Roman prisons were, it's really something of a miracle that as many times as Paul was in prison, he survived it all. Paul wasn't sleeping on a mattress. Paul wasn't eating three square meals a day. He was sleeping in a dark, muddy, disease-infested hole in the ground where he counted himself blessed if he got a single meal each day, and it wasn't the kind of meal you'd ever want to eat. Roman prisoners were routinely stripped naked and humiliated and mocked and flogged for no other reason than the whim and the entertainment of the guards. The guards were allowed to do whatever they wanted to do with the prisoners. They were subjected to harsh and cruel labor and treatment and treated as the scum of the earth. They were looked upon as being worse than animals. And Paul was there in that kind of a situation, in that kind of a prison in Rome, during the reign of Nero the Great, who perhaps more than any other emperor despised Christians, hated Christians, made a point of persecuting them. And so humanly speaking, from an earthly perspective, didn't have much reason to be rejoicing, did he? And yet, throughout this book, 15 times in four chapters, Paul speaks of his abiding joy. He tells us that there in that prison, he was rejoicing. And then he commands us here in chapter 4 to do the same no matter what we're enduring and suffering in our lives. To rejoice. And again, let me say it, he says, Rejoice. It's a command. And then beyond His use of the actual words joy and rejoice, Paul is constantly admonishing us to in fact repent of the things that would hinder joy. The attitudes and the words and the things that we would do that stifle joy. And so he says things like, do all things without grumbling. and do all things without disputing with one another." He says, have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus. He says, stand firm in one spirit with one mind, striving together for the faith of the Gospel. Be unified, he says. And do nothing from selfish or vain conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves." Why does he say those things? He says them because grumbling and disputing and factiousness and pride and selfishness are devastating to our joy. They rob Christians of joy and that is a very grave concern for Paul because he knows that joy is something that he has to strive at all costs to protect. even when he's suffering, he has to have that joy. Why? Because joy, and we're not talking about happiness as our world defines it, we're talking about something far deeper, something that doesn't replace our sorrow, but coincides with it, coexists with it in our hearts, and in fact transcends it. And that joy that Paul is talking about here, and that he has in his own heart, and that he's rejoicing in the Lord throughout this book while he's in prison, that joy is the fuel of the Christian life. The fuel of the Christian life. Now, I don't mean that joy itself that is anchored or derived from any old source at all is something that produces growth and godliness. Just because you're happy about something doesn't mean you're going to be godly. What I mean is that as the Word of God pierces our hearts, and as the power of the Gospel works in us, it works in us through what the Bible calls the joy of our salvation. It produces holiness in us. and obedience in us, and contentment and peace in us through the joy of our salvation that transcends and overwhelms any sorrow that we might be suffering in this world. The Spirit of God produces salvation and growth in us by causing us to rejoice in His goodness. And without the joy of the Lord, our growth and our effectiveness for God is absolutely hamstrung. and we're weak and we're feeble, we need that joy. Now, there's some people who don't believe that. There's some people who believe and might even say, but at least act as if joy is a bad thing. That if we have joy in our hearts, that that's going to lead to licentiousness. or excessive or immoral living. And they think that real holiness and real piety comes from a cold, stodgy commitment to obedience that comes out of fear and shame and guilt. And that's wrong. We have to be broken over our sin. Yes, absolutely. And we have to come to grips with the depth of our depravity, and it has to horrify us, and it has to shake us to the core. Absolutely. But piety, and obedience, and sanctification, and growth, and effective service for Christ's kingdom don't come out of that. They come out of the joy that comes after that. the joy of knowing that even though I'm a desperately wicked sinner who deserves the judgment of God, that He has sent His own Son to die for me so that I might live. That Gospel truth has to fill us with great joy and rejoicing, and then that joy becomes the fuel for our growth and our maturity by faith in Christ Jesus. Where there is no joy, there is no strength, and there is no Christian life. And we know that's true from God's Word, don't we? We know that very thing, that the joy of the Lord is our strength. because God says those very words in the book of Nehemiah. In fact, turn there with me just for a minute this morning before we fully get into Paul's words in Philippians 4. We've been studying the book of Ezekiel for some time now and we know that Ezekiel was written and that he prophesied during the Babylonian captivity when things could not have gotten worse for the children of Israel. But the book of Nehemiah was written later The book of Nehemiah chronicles the return of the refugees in Babylon from their captivity. They were allowed to return to their homeland, to Jerusalem, and under Nehemiah's guidance, they were allowed to rebuild the city walls so that they could live there again. The wall gets finished in Nehemiah 6. And in chapter 7, a census is taken of all of the people of God who had returned from exile in Babylon. And then look at chapter 8, where after that census is taken, everybody's getting ready to move back into Jerusalem, and Ezra stands up before all of the people and he reads the law of God to them. And look at what it says in chapter 8 and verse 6. Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all of the people answered and said, Amen, Amen, lifting up their hands. And they bowed their heads and worshipped the Lord with their faces to the ground. Also, Yeshua and Bani, and Shariba and Jamin, and Akub, and Shatiba, and Hodiah, and Messiah, and Kalita, and Azariah, and Jozebat, and Hanan, and Peliah, and the Levites, all of these people with hard to pronounce names, helped the people to understand the law while the people remained in their places. They didn't just want to hear the law, they wanted them to understand it. And so all of these people came along as teachers. And they didn't just read it, they taught it to them. And they made them understand the ramifications of it. Verse 8, they read from the book. from the law of God clearly and they gave the sense of it so that the people understood the reading. That's what's going on here. They've heard the law and they've understood it. And this was the very law that they had lived according to prior to the Babylonian captivity, the very law that they'd broken so often. The very law that because they broke it, they had to spend 70 years in captivity in Babylon. Now they've heard it again once they've been brought home. And they've been made to understand it perhaps to a degree that they've never understood it before. And what's their response to that? To hearing and fully understanding the law of God? Verse 9, And Nehemiah, who was given the governor, and Ezra the priest and the scribe, and the Levites who taught the people, said to all the people, this day is holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn and weep, for all of the people wept as they heard the voice of the Lord and the words of the Lord. Why were they mourning? Why were they weeping after the law was read to them? The first time it was read to them at Mount Sinai, they didn't mourn, they didn't weep. They said, great, sign us up. Everything that the Lord has said, we will do. Amen and amen. Now they're mourning and weeping because they get it. They understand. They aren't as cavalier as the Sinai generation before. These people got the importance of the law and understood that in their own strength and in their own sinfulness, there was no way that they could ever keep this law and please God. That's what they understood. And so they mourned. The Hebrew word is abal. It means to mourn over the dead. They heard the law of God and they said, well, if that's the deal, then we're dead men. Because we can't do it. We're hopeless. And really, that's the right response to God's law, isn't it? If we really understand what it means when He says, you shall be holy as I am holy, we would all say, then we're dead men. We can't do that. But see, Nehemiah won't leave them there in their death mourning. He tells them not to weep. He tells them not to mourn. Verse 10, he says, go your way, eat the fats, drink the sweet wine, have a feast, he says, celebrate, he says, and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready, for this day is holy to our Lord, and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. You see? Do you feel the weight of your sin? Absolutely. Do you feel guilty? Do you feel ashamed? Absolutely. Are you afraid? Absolutely. Don't stay there. Move past that to realize the merciful purposes of God in your life and let that create a joy in you that will become your strength. And that joy is the fuel of the Christian life. It has to emanate from the kindness and the gracious provisions of God. Not from the fleeting pleasures of the world around us. That's not the source of true joy. True joy that comes from what God does in spite of our sin and in response to our sin in order to save us is the fuel. It's the source of strength for godliness and piety and growth and grace. And in Philippians, turning back there now, Paul is striving through that whole book to protect and to defend the presence of godly joy in the hearts of Christians because he knows that without it, their growth and their effectiveness and their unity as Christians, all of that's going to be stifled and hamstrung and hindered. And Paul writes of his own joy, and he encourages their joy as he is writing from prison from the worst circumstances possible for him. Humanly speaking. So what does that mean? It means that true joy, the joy of the Lord that is our strength, doesn't depend on our circumstances. It means that none of us can say, it's impossible for me to have that joy because of what I'm going through or what I've suffered. The joy of the Lord transcends our circumstances. It's anchored to the bedrock of the Gospel and the promises of God that are ours in Christ no matter what happens. Listen to these words from a commentator who is writing on this passage. This is what he says the peace of God that surpasses all understanding means. He says, when the child of God looks upon his Savior, hung and bleeding and bare, where only He Himself should rightly hang. Then, the joy of the Lord flows out of the headwaters of the precious fount of Christ's blood and righteousness as a river so swollen with grace and gratitude that all of the trials and sufferings of a thousand worlds could never stop its torrents." That's the peace of God that surpasses all understanding. that will guard your heart and your mind even if you're suffering the worst possible thing that you can suffer. It's the ability to rejoice in the Lord. It's the ability to sing His praises. It's the joy that is your strength even when you're weak because of the circumstances of your life. Just like Paul says himself, the sufferings of this present time aren't even worthy to be compared. with the glory that is the source of our joy. So does that mean that if you have your eyes fixed on Jesus and that you have this joy of the Lord filling your heart that you won't experience grief or sorrow or pain or despair? Of course it doesn't mean that. Jesus experienced those things. Job experienced those things without sinning. It just means that while you're suffering, your feet will remain firmly planted. You will be unshaken. You will be unmovable. You will be steadfast. It means that whatever hardship comes your way, you will persevere in that great transcendent joy that our Sovereign God is our Savior, and that by His grace we have peace with Him, and that that matters more than anything else. Rejoice in that, Paul says twice here. Rejoice in it. It's a command. When you're suffering, when you're feeling weak, when you're defeated and disappointed and depressed, rejoice in the salvation of your God and be strong in His strength. It's a command. The only other way is to try to be strong in your own strength. And no matter what your prideful heart says, you're not strong enough to handle the trials and the hardships of this life. And if you try to, you'll fail every time, over and over again. And instead of being filled with peace and joy, you will be more and more filled with despair and fear and frustration and bitterness and anxiety. And do you know what one word sums all of that up? discontentment. If we live this life in a world that is full of sin and the curse of sin and death in our own strength, we will be discontented people. The heart that is anxious the heart that is overwhelmed with fear when life is impossibly hard, the heart that gets bitter and angry when the trials of life are at their hardest, is the heart that isn't trusting in the sovereignty of God. It's the heart that looks at what God has ordained and says, no, I don't want that. I'm not happy with that. I can't be satisfied with this God. Instead of being able to say with Job, who lost everything? The Lord gives. The Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. He's sovereign. He's glorified in this. He somehow means it for my good. And so I praise Him. See, the anxious, untrusting, discontent heart says instead with Job's wife, that the response to trials and hardships is to curse God and die. It says, no, I'm not content, God, with Your sovereign plan and provision. Just like the Israelites who were let out of Egypt, who were sovereignly and supernaturally delivered from 400 years of slavery and given freedom by an explicit expression of God's sovereignty in action. But that freedom meant trusting Him, right? And trusting Him meant sojourning through the hot, dry wilderness where He was the only one they could trust. And they didn't, did they? They weren't satisfied with His sovereign provision, were they? They weren't content with His plan. No, they in fact had the audacity to look at the miraculous provisions of God and to say to Him, no thanks. Please God, don't do us any more favors. We'd rather be back in Egypt than here at the border of the promised land by Your provision and Your guidance and Your sovereign will. Now contrast that to what Paul says here. Remember, was constantly being persecuted for the sake of the Gospel. Just listen, don't turn, but just listen to the list that he gives of the things that he suffered for the cause of Christ. In 2 Corinthians 11, five times he says, I received at the hands of the Jews, his own countrymen, the forty lashes, last one, five times they lashed him, thirty-nine times. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. A night and a day I was adrift at sea on frequent journeys in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my own people, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers in toil and hardship. It's all around Him. through many a sleepless night, in hunger, in thirst, without food, in cold, in exposure, and apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all of the churches." He's suffering every day more than you and I ever will, probably. And this same man, having suffered all those things and still suffering them now, sitting and rotting in this Roman prison, says in Philippians 4.11, I have learned in whatever situation I am in to be content. Wow! I have not learned that. Have you? There's a lot of situations where I'm discontent. And I've never experienced what Paul experienced. How many of us have suffered far less than Paul, but responded far more like the discontented Israelites? How many of us have gone through things that look like a Sunday picnic compared to Paul's life, and yet inside we grumble and we complain and we say, no, God, I don't want this. I'm not satisfied with what You're doing in my life. How many of us want to make God out to be our servant And then we expect Him to give us whatever we want, and when He doesn't, we feel entitled to complain in our souls like those Israelites did in the desert. Well, not Paul. He was content in every situation. How? What is that contentment and where does it come from? I think one of the best bottom line definitions of what contentment in the Christian life is, that I've read at least, comes from Jeremiah Burroughs. A very famous Puritan writer, he wrote a wonderful book called The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment. I've recommended it to you before, and I would recommend it to all of you again, especially if your heart struggles with peace and joy and contentment, the kind of which Paul talks about here. Here's his definition very simply of what contentment is. He says, Christian contentment is that sweet, inward quiet, that gracious frame of spirit which freely submits to and delights in God's wise and fatherly disposal in every situation. Every situation. Not just the good ones, but every situation. Like Paul says, shipwrecked, beaten, stoned, imprisoned, doesn't matter. Whatever your outward circumstances, contentment is that inward disposition of peace and satisfaction and submission and delight in the providence of God, even when you're grieving and mourning. And so like with any other area of Christian character and maturity, contentment isn't something that can only be displayed outwardly. Contentment can't simply be pasting a smile on your face and acting calm while on the inside you're roiling with anxiety and frustration and bitterness. That's not contentment. Sanctification of our character has to touch the deepest parts of us all the way down to our most basic instincts. God's goal with your life as a Christian is not simply that you learn to keep your mouth shut when your heart is full of sin. Or to hide that sin and selfishness and pride and bitterness from others by masking it with a thin veiled smile that covers gritted teeth and a churning angry heart. God's greatest interest is to remove that from you all together so that what gets displayed on the outside is an accurate reflection of what He has done on the inside. What's He doing on the inside? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, Those aren't just outward behaviors. They are first and foremost inward attitudes and dispositions and inclinations. It's a posture of your heart that reflects itself in how you live. And so it is with contentment. God isn't content with merely outward, teeth-gritting contentment in our lives. He wants our hearts to become sweet and inwardly quiet and gracious and freely submitting to Him and delighting in His will in every circumstance that we find ourselves in. That was Paul's attitude. He didn't just bite his tongue while he was raging on the inside. There was something that enabled Paul to experience what he calls this peace that surpasses understanding, this inexplicable inner peace in the midst of his greatest trials and sufferings. And he says that peace that's incomprehensible, that's unable to be explained away by psychology or by circumstances, that peace that can only be explained by the Spirit of God working within me, he says will guard my heart and will guard my mind in Christ Jesus. Will keep me from plunging into the depths of despair. Will keep me from saying, curse God and die. will keep me from saying, no God, I'm not going to let You be sovereign in my life, and if You are going to insist on this course for me, I won't praise You. Paul says this inexplicable peace will guard your heart and your mind from those thoughts and from those attitudes. Now, where do you get that? Where do we find the incomprehensible peace that guards our hearts and minds? The biggest clue is in verse 6 where Paul says, don't be anxious about anything, but by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. Prayer. Very simply, prayer. Why is it that sometimes when life is at its hardest, when people are suffering the most, that they find praying is the most difficult thing for them to do? Have you ever encountered people like that? Have you ever felt like that? Have you ever experienced that in your own life? That your desire to pray sometimes wanes? Especially maybe when things are really, really hard? Why is that? Well, there's a really simple answer. I think it comes down to our fleshly need to believe that we can handle our lives. That we're strong enough. That we're good enough. That we're capable enough. And see, when we're praying, we're confessing the opposite. We're confessing we're not strong enough, or good enough, or capable enough. We're confessing that we need God. That we're not able to do this. We're confessing our submission to Him. We're confessing His superiority to us, and His position as our God, and His worthiness to be praised by us. We're expressing our gratitude to Him for being our God and for exercising His perfect will in our lives. And as we approach God from that standpoint, we put ourselves in His hands. We put ourselves at His disposal. We trust Him. And trusting Him is the hardest thing for our sinful flesh to do. And when our lives are suffering the most, is when our flesh is striving the most. Trusting God, surrendering to God, throwing ourselves on His mercy in prayer is where the peace comes from. The peace doesn't come from our circumstances lining up with our will and our comfort levels and our desires. It comes from knowing and trusting and confessing to God that whatever our circumstances are, they are the result of His sovereign providences and that He is perfect and that He is good and He is gracious and He is our loving Heavenly Father. In other words, very, very simply, the peace that surpasses all understanding, and the contentment that God would give us even when we're suffering at our worst, all of that comes from the stillness and stability of knowing that God is God. Turn to Psalm 46 for a minute. Psalm 46, where God says, When life is chaotic, when everything is falling apart around you, be still and know that I am God. The first thing that the psalmist does in Psalm 46 is to proclaim who God is. He is our refuge. He is our strength. He is a very present help in all of our times of trouble. That's what he remembers. That's what he meditates on. That's what he reflects on when there is trouble. That confidence in who God is. That confidence that He is always with us, even when we are in trouble. Even when terrible, hard things happen. When things don't go the way we want, we must not succumb to the temptation to think that God has checked out, or that God has turned His back on us, or that God was sleeping, or that God has failed us, or that He doesn't love us. God never stops being God in the midst of trouble. Our confidence and our peace is anchored to the truth that He is sovereign, that He is omnipotent, that He is always ever-present, and therefore, the psalmist says, because of who God is always, we will not fear, though the earth give way. Though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling." See, that's not what most people think of contentment and peace as. Most people want to define the terms of contentment and peace for themselves. All be content as soon as, and then comes the list of demands. As soon as you do these things for me, God, I'll be content." It doesn't work that way. And in fact, that is exactly where discontentment comes from in the first place. True peace and contentment can only come from God Himself, whose will is perfect. And when we put ourselves in the position of deciding what is right and best and good for our lives, then we neglect His will for our lives. And to do that is to plunge ourselves hopelessly into despair. And when we're in despair, that's when the cycle begins of our trying to stave off despair through whatever strategy we think is going to work. Some people go out and get drunk or do drugs. Some people accumulate money and material possessions, or go on shopping binges in order to make themselves feel better when they're discouraged or despairing or frustrated about their lives. Or they look to other people who are also fallen and sinful. Or they look to fame and prestige. If I only had more of whatever it is, I'd be content. When in reality, it's like a drug addiction. The more and more that you get, the more and more you think you need. And the further and further you run away from trusting God, and the less content you become. See, the psalmist here takes the opposite approach. Run to God. Don't run to the mall. Don't run to the bar. Don't run into the arms of some other sinful person. Run to God and cling to God and find shelter and strength in His arms which are omnipotent arms. The psalmist meditates on who God is. And from that reality comes the stability and the strength to endure the worst kinds of life's trials. Let the earth give way. Let the mountains be thrown into the sea. Let the water roar and foam. Let the whole earth tremble, because God's got me in all powerful arms. You can fill in your own list of things that you anchor your security and your contentment to there. Let the stock market fall. Let the government become completely corrupt. Let the worst possible candidate win next November. Bring it on. Let my husband lose his job. Let my wife have cancer. Let my hopes and my dreams fall completely apart. Let everything that we in our own strength fix our hope and confidence to. Let it all be taken away and I will still be at peace and content and secure and satisfied and still in the knowledge of my God." That's contentment. Has your life evidenced that? Are you the kind of person who can say that? Or are you the kind of person who is constantly frustrated? Constantly anxious? complaining about everything in your life, even if you're only doing it inwardly while you're looking really good to the rest of us on the outside. Are you the kind of person who's discontent always and upset and angry and stressed out and afraid and anxious about your life in general? If you're prone to that, you need to ask yourself if what you're complaining about actually justifies your complaining. Have you really suffered as Job did? who lost everything, all of his property, all of his children, everything except his grumbling wife. That's all he was left with. And he wept and he grieved and he felt great sorrow, of course, but he never complained and bickered and grumbled or evidenced discontentment. Shall we not also accept adversity from the Lord? I came into this world naked. If I go out naked, that's up to God. Have you suffered as Paul did? Who said that in all of those things he was content? Have you suffered as Christ did? Who agonized even before His crucifixion and sweated drops of blood and was flogged and was crucified and was forsaken of His own Father but never complained, never grumbled, only said, not my will but yours. Most of us have it pretty good. Most of us are pretty richly blessed. Some of you have suffered tremendously. And you have suffered the loss of the people that are most precious to you. And you've experienced unbelievable, heart-wrenching hardship. And in it, you have come to know and experience the great strength that God gives to endure those most brutal trials. And I know that because I've talked to a lot of you. To endure those things like Job did, and Paul, and Christ Himself. They all had one thing in common. Their minds were so filled with the truth of who God is that grumbling and being discontent wasn't an option. Because they knew He was sovereign. And they knew He's good. If we're confident that all of these things happen, first of all, for God's glory and not, first of all, for our comfort, then really, how can we complain? endured the cross for the joy set before Him. Because that joy was more profound than everything that He suffered. His willingness to be nailed to the Roman cross proves that for Him, there was no price that was too great to pay for the sake of achieving the glory of God. Paul's willingness to suffer so much showed that he really believed at the deepest level of his heart instinctively that his life was not his own. He was confident that above all else, God is sovereign and that He is working all things together for good according to His sovereign purposes. Paul is saying, if God is able to be glorified in my suffering, then I will gladly suffer. If God appeared to you today and told you audibly that you were going to suffer some great loss, some great pain, some great hardship, but that in it He would be glorified and He would in fact use it for your good in the furtherance of His Kingdom and the Gospel of Jesus Christ, what would you say? What would you say? Would you say, no God, I'm not willing to pay that price for Your glory. My comfort, my success, my dreams, my agenda is more important than your glory. That is in fact what the heart of discontentment is saying to God. And see, God doesn't have to come down and say to you audibly that in your sufferings and in your trials and in your hardships, He's being glorified and sovereignly using it for your good and the furtherance of His kingdom. He's told you that in His Word. He's revealed that that's who He is and what He does. He doesn't exist, first of all, for my benefit. I exist for His glory. And if He will gain glory through my suffering and my hardship, I will be content with that. Paul says in v. 12 of Philippians 4, I know how to be brought low. And I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. Have you learned that secret? Or are you only content in plenty and abundance, but not in hunger and need? You've got to believe that God is in control You have to have the stillness and stability that is not and will not and cannot be shaken when the resources that supply your earthly needs are cut off and stopped up. Because you believe that God is sovereign over all of those things, that He is in it, that His glory is being achieved through it and by it. That's the perspective of a godly, God-fearing, God-trusting man or woman. I'm going to let God be God no matter what it means. His will is perfect. Nothing happens in this world apart from what He sovereignly ordains. Paul says in Romans 5, we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. That's the hope. We don't rejoice in the hope that maybe someday God will clean this big mess up and I'm not going to have to suffer anymore. We rejoice while we tarry on this earth. in the hope that even in our suffering, God is being glorified. And yes, there is the hope that He is going to clean this mess up, and that there will be a new heavens and a new earth, and that we will dwell eternally with Him in the place where there is no suffering, and there are no tears, and there is no disease or any death, and we will be sheltered by His presence forever. And that is good hope, but while we're here, there is also good hope. and it is the glory of God. If He is God and He is God, and if we acknowledge in our hearts and are confident that He is God, then our hope is in His glory and not first and foremost in getting what we want. If we'll worship Him by repenting of our insistence that our lives and our dreams and our comfort and our desires are more important than His glory, then He will grant us that inexplicable, incomprehensible peace that surpasses all understanding in the midst of our hardships and trials. And more than that, He will be to us the loving, tender, heavenly Father that He is. He'll take care of us. He'll provide for us. Paul did say in Romans 5, that in the midst of suffering he rejoiced in the hope of the glory of God, but he went on to say that he rejoiced even in his suffering because he was confident that suffering does what? God uses it to do something good in my life. It produces endurance. It produces character. And the character produces hope. And the hope won't ever fail me because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. And suffering makes us savor that all the more. Yeah, God's glory is the priority over our comfort and our condition. And we will only ever know contentment when we repent of making ourselves more important than Him. But God is not a capricious God. He doesn't sit up in Heaven enjoying zapping you for His own pleasure. He does it for His own good. For our own good. He doesn't inflict pain on us and suffering on us arbitrarily. He loves us. And His greatest act of love is to grow us and to strengthen us by His grace. And sometimes that means using what Peter calls fiery trials that burn away the dross of our sin and flesh and weakness and leave the pure, precious metal of His holiness. Praise God that He's doing that. That He doesn't leave you the weak, wounded, frail sinner, but that He works in miraculous and marvelous ways to grow you, to produce endurance and character and hope in you, and an abiding confidence that whatever happens, He's your fortress, He's your strength, your ever-present help in trouble, that His love has been poured out, that your eternal life is secured by the gift of His Son to you. God is sovereign. And God is good. And God is love. And nothing that you endure is the product of random chance, or the caprice of the devil, or the sin of anybody else around you. God works all things together for good for those who love Him and who are called according to His purpose. Believe that today. That He's sovereign and that He's good. Because it's only by placing your full confidence and your full trust in those truths, in who He is, by being still and knowing that He is your God, it's only there that you will ever find and experience true contentment and peace and joy in this life that is inexorably full of trials and hardships and sorrow. Whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever you're going through, whatever's happening in your life, you need to turn to Christ. You need to be filled with the peace that surpasses all understanding. Be filled with the joy of the Lord that is our strength so that we will be strengthened to do all things through Christ. And that will be the wellspring of contentment by which we can be still and know that whatever happens, He's our God. Amen? Father, teach us this this morning, not in our minds, but in our hearts. What it means to be still and know that You are God. What it means to say that whatever happens, we are content in hardship, in abundance. What it means, Father, to be filled with joy even while we're suffering. What it means to find the peace that surpasses all understanding. Father, we can't do that on our own. We need Your Spirit and surrender to Him today in order to produce that joy and that peace and that contentment and that strength in our hearts. And as You do, Lord, we know that You continue to grow us through those things by Your grace, to mature us, to make us more holy as You are holy, to form Your Son in us and to mold us after His image. And Father, we know that that brings You glory. And so we invite You today, Lord, to use whatever You would in our lives, whether it be tremendous blessing or great disappointment or traumatic, brutal suffering, to bring about Your purposes and Your glory and our growth. Father, may we be humble enough to mean that today. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.