Chapter four. Philippians, chapter four, we're going to be looking at verses ten through thirteen Philippians four, ten through thirteen. So I was preparing this week, I read a sermon by Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones and his opening discussion of this just rang a big amen in my own heart, he said, this is this is one of those texts. that you just want to read and then say stand for the benediction afterwards is almost nothing that you could say better than what is already been said this is a glorious text and unfortunately it's also very challenging one and I say this often but it's so true you have to put up with it for about a half an hour on Sunday morning I've been living with this all week and it's hard to see your own deficiencies in this area but God has called me to proclaim the truth to you of his word. not my own faithfulness, necessarily, to it. And so we're all growing together in God's grace. And we have before us a glorious text and also a glorious challenge that God sets before us in his grace. Let's look together, then, at Philippians 4, verses 10 through 13. But I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at last you have revived your concern for me. Indeed, you were concerned before, but you lacked opportunity. Not that I speak from want, for I have learned to be content. In whatever circumstances, I am. I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity in any and every circumstance. I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. See what I'm saying, I sort of stand for the benediction after that awesome, awesome text. What we're going to look at this morning is found primarily in verse eleven, where Paul says, I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I find myself in life. And this is so important today because our culture is drowning in discontent. I can prove it very simply, just turn on your TV and start watching advertisements. What do they say? What are they playing to? You're obviously not happy, right? Well, we have the thing that will make you happy. Purchase this. Go on this vacation. Do this thing and you will suddenly find happiness and contentment. Advertisers know this. They play on it. Oh, you poor human being. You you're in a you're in a horrible world. You're in a horrible situation. You're unhappy. We've got the answer by X. Oh, we're sorry. Did X not make you happy? Oh, we've definitely got the answer now by Y. And on and on it goes, and we just keep amassing things and we keep pursuing contentment in all the wrong places. And so this is why Paul's words here are very important to us this morning. Paul said he has learned contentment in whatever circumstances he finds himself. Just to give you a basic sense of the flow of the argument here as well, before we get into the meat of it, Paul switches gears. We've been looking at a section where Paul was saying as citizens of heaven, looking for the return of Christ, longing for the glorification of your bodies. Stand firm in the Lord in this way, and he lists a whole bunch of ways he wants them to stand firm, and he switches gears here. And what's interesting about this is one of the main purposes for Paul writing the letter to the Philippians was to say thank you. It took him a whole letter, four chapters to finally get around where he's going to say to them, thank you. Paproditus took a financial gift probably from the church presented to Paul while he is in Rome under house arrest, chained to a centurion guard awaiting the verdict from Caesar. to say whether or not he lives or dies. And Paul's writing them back a letter. And one of the main things he wants to do is say thank you. Now, Paul, funny thing is, he can say great doctrine in just about one or two verses, just deep things in very short span. But when he gets ready to say thank you, it takes him 10 verses. It's like he talks all around it and and he's trying to find the right way to say it. And part of Paul's difficulty is he wants to avoid giving the wrong impression to the Philippians. He knew that they were a very generous people. More than once they have provided for his needs. He says they gave out of their own poverty to support him. And so he's got a church that wants to help him. He knows he needs the support, but he also knows their circumstances. They are not necessarily in a position, you know, they're not swimming in cash, but they can just send him buckets of it. And so in saying thank you, he wants to avoid a couple of pitfalls. He does not want them in saying thank you to feel that now they are obligated to keep giving to him. I don't know if you've noticed that, but sometimes it happens. We get the wrong impression from people who are saying thank you. And unfortunately, I think that tax exempt organizations that rely on donations are pretty good at this in their thank you. They they give some sense of obligation there. Thank you and keep it up. And so there's some sort of sense laid on you of guilt, like, well, I want to do this out of the goodness of my heart, but now if I don't do it, they're going to crumble and fall. And oh, no, I have to keep giving. So he wants to say thank you without leaving the impression with them. You must keep doing this. If you don't, you know, I'm sunk. So he has to say thank you without that obligation, and he also wants to say thank you in a genuine way. He doesn't want to make them feel obligation, but if he spends too much time making sure they don't feel obligated, they might come away saying, well, what an ingrate. Here we are given out of our poverty and and he's trying to find every way in the world to say, hey, you don't have to give me anything. Don't feel like you have to send me anything. Aren't you grateful at all, Paul? So he's got a difficult circumstance before him to say thank you in a way that communicates. You don't have to keep giving, but I am truly grateful. And standing before you as a minister, I suffer with the same thing. As I was thinking about this this week, this church has been so generous to me and my family. Getting choked up here, you've been so kind to us and I want to let you know how grateful I am for that kindness. And yet, like Paul is doing here, not give the impression that I expect it, that it's somehow it's my due as your minister, that you buy me lunch or that you do nice things for me or whatever. But at the same time that I'm saying I don't expect it, you don't have to do it. I'm also wanting to avoid the impression that, well, man, we do all these nice things for him. And look how he says, thank you. There's not really a whole lot there. So I understand Paul's dilemma. Thank you as a church for your kindness and generosity. But I don't expect it. I'm humbled by it, but I'm not always looking for it. So if we're talking about Paul, this applies me to you as well. All right. The main thing we want to talk about, then, is contentment. Contentment and this admonition to contentment is all over the Bible. I think we tend not to focus on it so much today. We don't hear it too often that one of the main things Christians should have in their character One of the main ways they should present themselves to the world is through contentment. We don't hear that too much. And just to give you an illustration of how this is all over the place. Paul, in another place, writing to Timothy, says godliness with contentment is great gain. Do you want to be rich? Paul says, as a Christian, if you really want to know what richness is, be godly, be content. In another place, he says that if we have at least the basic necessities, food and clothes with these things, we will be content. And the writer of the book of Hebrews says, make sure that your character is free from the love of money, being content with what you have. For he, Jesus himself, has said, I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you. And these are just a few examples. It's all over the place. One of the main things that should mark Christians is contentment. So we're going to talk about that this morning. One thing you need to notice at the outset, though, Paul says, I learned it. I learned contentment, it does not come naturally. to fall in simple human beings living in this world. We are not by nature or by personality or by any of those things that we accrue, you know, teaching social graces and that sort of thing. Contentment does not come that way. It must be learned spiritually. Does not come naturally. Jeremiah Burroughs has written a wonderful little book that I highly commend to you called The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment. I think it's a great title because one, he captures in a nutshell the fact that This particular grace character trait in a Christian's life is rare. How often do you come across people that it's just obvious they are content no matter what their circumstances are? It's a rare thing, but it's also a jewel. It's a priceless thing. It's a precious thing to find this in Christians, and God highly prizes it as well. The rare jewel of Christian contentment. It's difficult to find. What we find instead is people in the world saying, you know what, I don't have enough. And it's no matter how much you have in the world, that tends to be the case. Naturally, in our fallen state, the poor, the very poor will say, well, you know, we're poor. We need more. And in some ways you sympathize with them. Yeah, you do need more. You're in a terrible straight, but they say we need more. But then you get on the rich and you think, well, obviously, if anybody in the world is going to be content, look at them. They could, you know, they could buy the country out three times over something, Bill Gates or someone like that. But the point is, you get to the richest people in the world. They're not content either. I think someone asked Howard Hughes once, how much is enough? And he said, just a little bit more. Just a little bit more. So it doesn't matter how much you have native to us as fallen human beings outside of the grace of Christ in our life, we are naturally discontented. It's never enough. And it doesn't have to do with just merely material things. You know, looking at the Joneses across the street and saying, I wish we had their new SUV or why don't we have something like that or look at so-and-so's rose garden. It has to do not only just with money and things, but also honor. and title position. Alexander the Great, after he had conquered most of the known world and pretty much most of the ground on the earth was under his control. He lamented that there was not another world to conquer. He had the whole world at his feet. He wasn't satisfied. Oh, that there were another world that I could march out with my armies and conquer. If you want to take a biblical example in the book of Esther, Haman, was made second in the kingdom underneath the king. There was no one more powerful except the king himself. He had all the rule that he wanted. Was he content? No. One little Jewish guy, Mordecai, who wouldn't take off his hat and bow, just bugged him no end. He was not satisfied. I want him to take off his hat and bow to me. Mordecai wouldn't do it. And Haman then wasn't, you know, content to say, well, why don't we just get him to take off his hat and bow or why don't we just kill him? Not just one person. He said, that's it. I want all the Jews exterminated. I won't be happy till there's none of you left here. He had all the power in the kingdom saved for the king. And he wasn't content. Problem is, when we look at our own lives, we don't have that problem. I think very few of us have got all the power, so to speak. But yet we have a certain level of authority, a certain level of title. And are we content with that? Are we always saying, you know what? This is not where I need to be. I've got to go higher. I've got to have more. Discontent is a very big problem. All right, what isn't? I wanted to find, first of all, what isn't contentment? What isn't it? It is not part of our natural makeup, as I've said. You don't want to look at somebody and say, well, you know, their personality is the kind where they seem unruffled by circumstances. That is not what Paul is talking about here. Divine contentment. Just because somebody outwardly looks calm does not mean that inwardly their heart is not in turmoil. People have willpower and self-control, and they can stand before you when it's appropriate and say, oh, yeah, no big deal. But they can't hide from God. And inside, they're going, this is awful. I hate this. God, why have you done this to me? And they're all in a rage, but it's all controlled and it's never seen. So we don't want to say contentment is merely just this outward exterior of being unruffled by circumstances. It's also not an attitude that just says, hey, case or officer, I'm just a victim of fate. Whatever will be will be. No big deal. That is not what Paul is talking about when he talks about contentment. And we need to be careful in this area that we don't blame God for our circumstances. Spurgeon said there are the Lord's poor and there are Satan's poor. The Lord's poor are poor because God and his providence has made them such. They're industrious. They work hard. They work at lawful endeavors. They do all they can. And for whatever reason, God has kept them from achieving more in life. Then there are Satan's for these are the purple people who say, you know, I don't want to work. I'd rather not work. I bought a hamburger for a guy in college one time who said, the good Lord knows that I don't need to work. And that's why he's provided you to buy me this hamburger. You know, I almost felt like opening my Bible there and saying, give me back the hamburger. And Paul says in Thessalonians, if a man will not work and what that word will mean, there has no desire, refuses to work is lazy. Neither shall he eat. Get a job, work with your hands so you can provide for your own needs and also for those who are in need. So we don't want to blame God and say, well, I'm just in this difficult situation because God has put me here. Sometimes that's true, but we need to be careful with ourselves and not just chalk it up to God when, in fact, the problem lies with us. We have not been as industrious as we ought to be. All right. So what it is a contentment is not just this acquiescing to circumstances. It's not merely saying that, you know, I have this personality trait. So that is not contentment. What contentment is not opposed to now? I know a lot of negatives here, but hang with me. We're getting to the positives. Contentment is not opposed. True, godly, Christian, biblical contentment is not opposed to feeling the pain and the difficulty of our situation, owning it as our own. It is not opposed to you saying this is difficult. This is painful. Job and David are good examples of this. In the book of Job, you know, he lost everything he owned. He lost his entire family, except for his wife. And after she talked to him, he probably wished that he'd lost her instead of his kids. She looked at him and said, curse God and die. Why are you clinging to your integrity? Just get it over with. And he had some kind words for her. Woman, you speak as one of the foolish women. Will we accept good from God and not calamity too? And while he is saying these things and he's not charging God with wrong, his very first speech is this long lament saying, oh, that I had never been born. May the day be darkened forever in which it was said a son is born. He owned it as his own, and yet the book of Job is very clear. He never charged God with wrong. It wasn't that he was discontented, but he truly owned his experience and the feeling of it. David is another great example, and I'd like to read a psalm to you if you want to turn with me. Turn over to Psalm 142. David, anointed by the Lord to be king on the run for his life from Saul. God, I don't get it. You said Samuel poured oil on my head and said, I am the king of Israel. What are you doing? Saul's trying to kill me. I'm stuck in a cave. I can't even go home and see my family. He was in a difficult situation. Psalm 142. This is a Psalm of David says, I cry aloud with my voice to the Lord. I make supplication with my voice to the Lord. I pour out my complaint before him. I declare my trouble before him when my spirit was overwhelmed within me. You knew my path and the way where I walk. They have hidden a trap for me. Look to the right and see, for there is no one who regards me. There is no escape for me. No one cares for my soul. I cried out to you, O Lord. I said, you are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living. Give heed to my cry, for I am brought very low. Deliver me from my persecutors, for they are too strong for me. Bring my soul out of prison so that I may give thanks to your name. The righteous will surround me, for you will deal bountifully with me. He owns the pain of it. And he cries out to God. True Christian contentment is not opposed to you owning the difficulty of the situation, feeling the pain. It is not also it is not against also praying to God for relief. It's not wrong to be content, as Paul talks about here in Philippians, is not saying, don't you dare pray for God to remove that thing. David prayed. Joe prayed, Paul prayed when he was given the thorn in the flesh, he pleaded with the Lord three times. Take this from me. And each time the Lord said, my grace is sufficient for you. To have true contentment does not mean that you have to sit there and just take it on the chin. You can own the pain of it. You can pray to God for relief. You can seek lawful means of finding relief from the situation. When it's all said and done, if God hands you in and leaves you there. You're to be content. Cry out to God, feel the pain of it, seek to alleviate the problem lawfully. But in the end result, Your heart has to be quiet before God and say, I will be content in the Lord. He has, for whatever reason, brought this upon me for this time. We need to be careful with these things, this feeling of the pain, the owning it, of crying out to God, of seeking relief from it, because it all too easily gets justified in our brains and we cross the line. God really wants me to be free from this pain, so I'm going to do this sinful thing. It's justified. The ends justify the means. And we'll do this to ourselves because our hearts are deceitful. They trick us. So we need to realize that owning the pain, praying and seeking relief are not opposed to true contentment, but be careful where we can cross the line. OK, what should we avoid then in this whole area of learning contentment in whatever circumstance we find ourselves? We need to avoid murmuring. It's a fun word to say, murmuring. It even sounds like what it is. Murmur, murmur, murmur, complaining against God, accusing God of wrong, blaming God. This is your fault. Being angry with God. You did this to me. There's almost a sense of that in the Garden of Eden. God comes to Adam and says, Where are you? God knew very well where he was. Why have you run away? Have you eaten from the tree that I told you not to eat up? Simple yes or no question there, isn't it? Yes, God, I did. No, God, I didn't. Which would have been a lie. What does Adam say? Stands up like a lawyer. Well, you see, God, the woman you gave me, remember you gave her to me. She gave me and I ate. It's your fault, God, not mine. If you hadn't given her to me, I would never leave. OK, that's a nice way of doing it. It gets worse when we get to the children of Israel. They're in the wilderness. God has just done a huge number of miracles. Absolutely amazed the whole country of Egypt. I mean, how would you like to be in the land of Goshen knowing that you have light and just just across the border, there is darkness that can be felt. Can you see your hand in front of your face? all the place, but your land is spared. Everything that goes on there, you've seen all these miracles. You've just plundered the Egyptians. All you had to do was go to your Egyptian neighbor and say, got any gold lying around? Yes, here, take it off. Just get out of the country. Clothes? Sure. Whole closet full. Take them. Get out. Plundered the Egyptians. God sent you out. He split an entire sea, marched you through on dry ground, brought the sea back on top of an entire Egyptian army, says you'll never see him again, has done all these miracles, and now you're out in the desert. A rational person would have said, Oh, gee, we're in need. Let's ask God to help us. Well, sorry, we're not rational. We're sinful. What did they do? God, why did you bring us out into this desert? Oh, we know you brought us out here to kill us. But on and on it goes, they murmur, they complain, God, this is your fault. Can the Lord really spread the table in the desert? We doubt it. Is he really going to give us meat? Probably not. We're going to die of thirst. We have to eat this horrible bread that is loathsome to us. I mean, it's the bread of heaven. God rained food on him every day. We're sick of it. They constantly murmured against the Lord and complained. No contentment. That's the worst example. I've already mentioned a very good example, and that's Job, who in all of his sufferings, and let's face it, no one in this room probably suffered near as much as Job did. He never charged the Lord with wrong. He never sinned with his lips. He never said, God, this is your fault. Why are you doing this to me? I don't deserve it. And you're wrong. He never said that he never sinned against the Lord. I think he pushed the line a little bit, got a little close there towards the end before God showed up and but he never really crossed the line and said, God, I'm mad at you. You have no right to do this to me. And that's what we have to be careful of. It's the opposite of contentment, blaming God. All right. So what is contentment then? Turn to the front of your bulletin. I want to read you the definition that Jeremiah Burroughs gives. It's the third paragraph down on the front there. Jeremiah Burroughs says, Christian contentment is that sweet inward quiet, gracious frame of spirit, which freely submits to and delights in God's wise and fatherly disposal in every condition. Love the Puritans, man, they can cram a lot into one sentence. Basically, he's saying true Christian contentment, that which God works in your heart by his spirit, because you're in Christ, because you believe the gospel, what he does in you is give you an inner frame of mind totally separates you from your circumstances around. You don't find your joy or your completeness or your happiness in your circumstances. You find it within in Christ and he makes you quiet and have a gracious inward frame so that you freely submit to God and you even delight in what he brings into your life. And he reminds us here, Jeremiah Burroughs reminds us that what God brings in, he does because of his wisdom and because of his fatherly care. Discontentment is like the children of Israel looking at God saying, you're not our father, you don't love us, you don't care for us. The reason you brought us out here was to kill us. Now, I doubt very seriously any of us go that far, but the point is, any amount of discontentment has that attitude in it. Lord, you are merely putting me through this because you don't love me, you want to squash me like a bug, you could care less. It's not true, if you belong to Jesus Christ, if you belong to God, He already gave you his one and only son. How will he not also freely give you all things? God loves you. He's shown that love in Christ, and he has said, I will give you everything. And so if he, by his wisdom and his fatherly care, has brought you into straits, into difficult circumstances, into painful circumstances, you've got to go back again and say, God is wise. He is loving. He is my father. And I will rest content under his mighty hand. He is not dealing with me as my sins deserve. What do I deserve on my own? Hell, death, condemnation and eternity of torment. That's what I've earned by my sins. What is he given step? Grace, goodness, provision, the promise of heaven and eternity in his presence. No more tears. All the joy that he promises there. So if we have to go through some difficulty in this earth, you need to get the right perspective and pray God to work This gracious, quiet, inward, sweet frame of mind that not only submits to God freely, but even delights in what he is doing. Brothers, consider it all joy. When you encounter various trials, James says. Consider it joy, don't just put up with it, don't just endure it, rejoice in it. You can only do that, I believe, by God's grace and as his spirit works within us. So what is that? that contentment, which we needed, is not being mastered or controlled by our circumstances. The one who is content is not mastered and not controlled by their circumstances. And it's got to be learned by God and from his grace. All right, so some applications, then. To those of us who may be more wealthy, and I feel kind of funny doing this, splitting up rich, poor, those who are sick, that sort of thing, compared to the rest of the world, every American is rich, but compared to each other, there is a There's a spectrum. There are people who are truly wealthy to the wealthy. I say, be careful of greed. Be careful of greed. Some people might say, why would you even address this to the wealthy? They obviously have contentment, right? They have all they need. Well, we saw from the richest people, they always say just a little bit more, just a little bit more. Be careful of greed. It is not wrong for us to lawfully pursue increase and gain in this world. If the Lord prospers us and gives us good things. Amen. There is nothing inherently wrong with being rich. Money is not the root of all evil. The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. The Bible says money is not wrong. It's a means to an end. If God gives you lots of it. Amen. Use it for his glory, but be careful of greed. So even though I give these nuances and these caveats saying it's OK for you to pursue wealth, it's OK for you to lawfully be blessed by God in these areas. It's so easy to take that just a little step and say, yeah, the pastor said it's lawful for me to do this. And you use it as a covering for greed. Search your heart. Be careful. Be content with what the Lord has given you. Remember the rich fool. Jesus told the story of a man who had a bumper crop. and his warehouses were big enough to contain. I know I'll do a turn down the bigger ones. They said, so take your ease. You have much good much. Well, just take it easy. Life is good. God said to him, you fool. Your soul will be required of you this very night, and then who will get what you stored up for yourself. Once again, in the book of Deuteronomy, God has said to the children of Israel, then it shall come about when the Lord your God brings you into the land which he swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you great and splendid cities which you did not build and houses full of goods which you did not fill, hewn cisterns which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant, and you eat and are satisfied. Then watch yourself that you do not forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. And again, he says, beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments in his ordinances and his statutes, which I command you today. Otherwise, when you have eaten and are satisfied and have built good houses and lived in them and when your herds and your flocks multiply and your silver and gold multiply and all that you have multiplies, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God. who brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of slavery. Otherwise, you may say in your heart, my power and the strength of my hand made me this well. But you shall remember the Lord, your God, for it is he who is giving you the power to make well that he may confirm his covenant, which he swore to your father, says it is this day. The writer of the Book of Proverbs says two things I asked of the Lord. Do not refuse me before I die. Keep falsehood and lies far from me. Give me neither poverty nor riches. But give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, who is the Lord? Or I may become poor and steal and so dishonor the name of my God. Good advice. So to those of us who the Lord has blessed richly, don't forget the Lord your God. He is the one that gives you the ability to make well. Don't forget him. Avoid greed to the poor. Once again, remember here, the Lord's poor versus Satan's poor. Those who are working hard, not able to get ahead for whatever reason. Be content. Work hard. Pray hard. Trust God. Seek ways to lawfully advance your condition. But ultimately, if God does not provide that, don't be discontented. Don't be angry with God. Don't blame him. Do all you can. Trust the Lord. He's the one that's taking care of you. Jesus said you will always have the poor with you. And in one sense, that's prophetic. There will always be poor people here for whatever reason, to their own sin. or through God's sovereignty, there will be poor people in the earth. If it is God's will that you suffer this way, then remember what he said through Peter. Therefore, those also who suffer according to the will of God shall entrust their souls to a faithful creator in doing what is right. Entrust your soul to your faithful creator and continue to do what is right. God knows better than you do what is good for you. OK, that's axiomatic, right? God knows better for me what I need that I know. Perhaps God knows that if he were to give you great wealth, it would destroy your soul. And if he knows that, if he knows by giving you more than you can handle would destroy you, then it's his love and his kindness that keeps you in this condition. It's a matter of how you look at it, you might be thinking, well, this stinks, God, I'll be good. Give me more. I can handle it. You don't know that. But God does. And if he chooses to keep you poor, then he knows it's for a good reason. Trust him. Trust him. He is good. He is wise. He is loving. He is your father. Trust him. Now, for the rest of us who are kind of middle class, same thing, contentment. Trust God. Don't feel bad about getting ahead. If you have a difficult situation, cry out to God, but ultimately learn contentment with where you are and what God has given you. To the sick and the suffering, and I know a lot of this has been on money, but there are people who suffer physically horribly. And our heart goes out to you. We know it's difficult to go your whole life with difficult circumstances that are painful and make you weak and unable to do things. But ultimately, ultimately, you must learn contentment as well in God. You must glorify God in your circumstances and to be content with them, no matter what he lays on us. Remember, it's less severe than we deserve. Whatever God lays on us in this life is less severe than we deserve. To the unconverted, to those here who do not know Christ. You can't learn contentment until you come to Christ, but I will tell you this plainly. If you don't know Christ, then you are of all people in this room most to be pitied, because this is your heaven. If you don't come to Christ and trust him by faith, this is as good as it gets. And let's face it, if we're honest with ourselves, it's not that good. It doesn't satisfy. No one yet has come and said, I found it. I know the thing that you can buy or the vacation you can take or the house you can purchase or the car you can have that will fully satisfy you for the rest of your life. And you'll be content and happy. No one's been able to come up with it yet. This is as good as it gets. And if that's the case, you're most to be pitied. For you have a short span, even if you had, let's say, the whole world, all the money in the world, all the power, you could do whatever you wanted, your span of life. You know, 70 years, 80, 90, let's say God gave you 150 years. OK, 150 years of all power, all money, anything you wanted, and then eternity, never ending, forever and ever and ever torment in hell. What kind of exchange is that? I guarantee you, there is no true Christian anywhere in the world who would exchange places with you. Nowhere. You could tell you could come to the lowest Christian that has no money. Their health is shattered. They're due to die in a short time and say, I figured out a way for us to change places. I will take all of your pain and misery that you have left in this life, and I'm going to give you all of my wealth and everything else. The true Christian would never change places with you. Because they know the only hell they will ever have to suffer is this earth. It will never get any worse than it is now. It's only going to get better in heaven. No true Christian would trade places with you. If that's not a sobering thought, I don't know what is. Your call is to come to Christ and find your contentment there. To stop fooling yourself and saying, I will have it in this life. You won't. It's what awaits you hereafter. Christians, you can put up with all sorts of bad things in this life because you know what awaits you hereafter. The sovereign God of the universe has promised an eternal inheritance in Christ. Glory that is this morning. I want to quote from C.H. Spurgeon in conclusion here. Spurgeon in preaching on this very passage to the unconverted has said, Saints have no hell, but what they suffer here on Earth. Sinners will have no heaven, but what they have here in this poor, troubled world. We have our sufferings now as Christians here and our glory afterwards. You, Mr. Unconverted, may have your glory here, but you will have your sufferings forever and ever. God grants you new hearts and right spirits. and a living faith in a living Jesus. And then I would say to you, as I have said to the rest, man, in whatever state you are, be content. God is good. Heaven awaits us, and we can, by the help of the Holy Spirit, be truly content. We ought to pursue this contentment, learning it by God's grace, growth. And we should grow in this rare Christian jewel because it honors God, brings glory to his name, and it pleases him. For I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity in any and every circumstance. I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.