This morning we come to chapter 8 in our studies of Jeremiah Burroughs' classic, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment. Thus far in our study, Burroughs has highlighted many different facets of the doctrine of contentment. He's highlighted the excellence, the beauty of it, the mystery of it, the necessity of it. He's actually treated it like a jewel. He's taken it and turned it, looking at the different facets and angles and the way the light beautifies it so that we can see all the different things that it has to offer. And I think it's helpful at this point again to remember Burroughs' definition. What we're not talking about is not maintaining a stiff upper lip in the face of trial, but it's that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit which freely submits to and delights in God's wise and fatherly disposal in every condition. And he reminded us back in chapter one that to be well skilled in the mystery of contentment is the duty, the glory, and the excellence of every Christian. Now, having gone through six more chapters, On the glories of contentment, I think we can all probably say, yes, this is something we need, something we probably don't have to its fullest extent. I agree. It would seem that we do not need any more convincing. But like it or not, the Puritans are never not thorough in their discussion of anything. And so at the beginning of chapter 8, Burroughs is beginning to point us towards putting this into practice. Because this can't simply be a speculation or something we talk about on Sunday. This actually needs to live on the ground where we are. There's a temptation to think that doctrine and church speak stay in the closet with our Sunday clothes, but divinity is practical. And this is where Burroughs is taking us. And so we've got to work at it. This shouldn't surprise us. Last summer when we went through John Owen's book, The Mortification of Sin, we realized that mortifying the flesh is warfare. It's hard work. And this is no different. So, studying the jewel of Christian contentment needs to be worked at. And he's beginning to shift gears to teach us now that we are to labor to set this in our hearts. That this grace would be in us, in order that we would honor God and honor our profession of faith. He tells us this, that no one honors God more. No one lives up to their Christian profession more. than those who have this grace of contentment. What Burroughs begins to do in these next few chapters then is foundational, yet still part of the fabric of putting this into practice. He's going to show us the evil of discontentment. And if maybe you've heard about the difference between preaching and meddling, this is where Burroughs begins to get a little meddling. There are some piercing things in these chapters and some hard thoughts. And there's a well-worn caricature of the Puritans that they simply want us to be sour, shameful, guilty, always serious. But that is not what Burroughs is doing here. What he's doing is actually really practical. Because without a true sense of the evil of discontentment, the beauty of contentment can simply be this noble ideal that we might aspire to. rather than the utter necessity that it is for all of us. Burroughs says that we are not able to tackle any duty with any degree of success until our hearts are humbled for a lack of performance of it. When we know of a duty, we might get after it, but first we have to be humbled for the lack of it. In other words, convincing ourselves how little contentment we have and how much discontentment is still there. It's not going to serve as a guilt trip, but a stimulus, an inspiration to really get after working at putting this grace in our hearts. The goal here, again, is not to just hold our head up and have a stiff upper lip in the face of real trial. The goal is what the Heidelberg Catechism wants us to do, to rest in the comfort that not a hair can fall from my head. without the will of my Heavenly Father, that in fact all things must work together for my good, and that I can begin to say, I trust my Heavenly Father so much that I do not doubt that He will turn whatever adversity He sends upon me in this sad world for good. The goal is for us to know that His eye is on the sparrow, and so I know He's watching me. And we know that we don't know these things as much as we need to. We know that these things need to be in our hearts more. I think sometimes we tend to act in opposite ways of these truths. So he wants us to realize our lack of this grace. He wants us to say within our hearts, I have had a murmuring, a vexing, and a fretting heart. Every little burden has put me out of composure and ruined my mood. My spirit at times is like a raging tempest. God sees evil in the vexing and fretting of my heart and the grumbling and discontentment of my spirit. And in order to show us how much we lack discontentment and to humble us for it, he's going to examine discontentment in the very same way he examined contentment. The first great evil that is in a murmuring and discontented spirit is this. The murmuring and discontentedness of ours reveals much corruption in our hearts. Burroughs says this, as contentment argues much grace, strong grace and beautiful grace, so murmuring and discontentment argues much corruption. In other words, a grumbling spirit functions sort of like a barometer. It's an indicator of how much grace we have. He compares it to a body when we're sick. Every little thing hurts, and that is an indicator of how sick we are. When things hurt that under normal circumstances wouldn't cause us to flinch, something's wrong. When even the room temperature causes us severe discomfort, it's a sign that we're sick. Everyone else is comfortable, but we can't stay warm enough because something's wrong. And so it is, Burroughs says, much the same way with discontentment. If every little trouble and affliction makes you discontented and makes you murmur and even causes your spirit within you to rankle. And that word rankle is a bit archaic. What it normally refers to is a wound that's festering, a sore that is infected. When every little inconvenience causes our spirits to fester with resentment or annoyance, that's a very reliable barometer of grace. The infection in the wound is the problem, not the wound. A deep flesh wound might look really bad, but it'll heal just fine if you take care of it. However, if there's an infection, The wound is not the issue. The infection is. And it has to be treated. It has to be disinfected. We always tend to think that the troubling situation that we are in, the trial we're encountering, the affliction we are undergoing is the problem. That that crisis or that difficult person or that job or whatever the case may be is what is making me miserable. But that's not the case. There is an infection, as Burroughs calls it, a fretting humor or an inflammation of the heart. An infection. And that is the real misery of our condition. The murmuring spirit is what needs to go away, not the affliction. The complaining, the grumbling needs to be purged, disinfected from us. Listen to the pastor, Burroughs, and he is not downplaying real trial here, but he points to the heart issue. He speaks of the great need to convince us that the murmuring spirit is the greater evil than any affliction, whatever the affliction. He calls it the evil of the evil or the misery of the misery that we're in. The second evil that he highlights of a grumbling spirit is this. When God speaks of wicked men, when he describes ungodly men, when he shows us in scripture just what a wicked man looks like, he shows us discontentment. That's kind of an astounding statement. Because when we think of great sins and really ungodly people, I'm pretty sure we can come up with a few things other than complaining. But Burroughs takes us to the book of Jude in verses 14 through 16 to illustrate this point. In verses 14 and 15 of Jude, it says this, Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him." There's a theme there. Four times in that one verse he uses the word ungodly. ungodly sinners, the deeds of ungodliness in an ungodly way, ungodly sinners, describing those who are assigned for judgment. And then look at verse 16. These are grumblers, malcontents. You want to know who the ungodly ones are, says Jude? The ones designated for judgment? Grumblers and malcontents. In this alarming scripture, God puts at the forefront of the ungodly ones, grumblers. So this isn't as small of a matter as we would probably like to think. Maybe we aren't drunks. Maybe we aren't cursing like sailors or whatever heinous public sin might be. But maybe we're in the habit of complaining. Maybe our default is ornery. Maybe my first instinct, maybe my modus operandi is to whine at the first irritation that possibly comes my way. And it doesn't have to be big things. The check engine soon light and my car comes on, or my wife's car doesn't start one afternoon, and my reaction immediately is, come on! Why? Burroughs is writing this to Christians. And he's well aware that there is no sin out there, but some seed of it doesn't or some remnant of it doesn't exist in our hearts. And he wants us to take a hard look at how God looks at this sin. He says this, this one scripture, the Jude passage, should make the heart shake at the thought of the sin of murmuring. Which brings us to the third evil he brings up, which is that God considers it rebellion. Plain and simple, grumbling and complaining is rebellion, and we don't see it this way. But you don't understand the situation I'm in, what this person said to me, or how he treated me, or whatever. No, it's rebellion. We would never act it out this way, we would never put it on paper, but my grumbling, complaining is the equivalent of shaking my fist and saying, this should not be happening to me. I do not deserve this. And Burroughs takes us to the Book of Numbers. In chapter 16, we read about the rebellion of Korah. We read through this recently during the morning worship services. After the ground opens and swallows up Korah and his tribe, their family, and then fire comes down and takes out 250 others, we read in verse 41 of number 16, but on the next day, all the congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and against Aaron, saying, you have killed the people of Yahweh. And in the verses following, God tells Moses to get away from the congregation, that I may consume them in a moment. And then a plague breaks out, killing almost 15,000 Israelites. So skip ahead to chapter 17 and verse 10, and we read this. And Yahweh said to Moses, put back the staff of Aaron before the testimony to be kept as a sign for the rebels, that you may make an end of their grumblings against me, lest they die. So, in scripture, murmuring equals rebellion. It's like the smoke before a fire. Burroughs compares it to the beginnings or the birth pangs of a revolution. First you have rumors in the houses, then you have complaining that starts to manifest itself in public, and then you have more organized outward complaining, and before you know it, the revolution is taking shape and the people are in outright rebellion. And he challenges us to charge ourselves with this sin. He says, will you be a rebel against God? When we feel our hearts discontented and complaining against the providence of God toward us, we've got to check it. We have the obligation to bring ourselves up on the charge of malcontentedness. And he gets very direct and personal here. You who are guilty of this sin of murmuring, you are this day charged by the Lord as being guilty of rebellion against him. And God expects that when you go home, you should humble your souls before him for this sin. We don't tend to view ourselves as rebels against the infinite God, but God speaks of and God views our sin differently than we do. Psalm 106 speaks of the wilderness generation and it says this, Another one of my favorite Puritans is John Flavel. He wrote a fantastic little book called The Mystery of Providence. In it, he speaks of our duty to meditate on God's providences. He says this, It is a vile slighting of God not to observe what he manifests of himself in his providences, good and bad. It is the character of the wicked not to regard God's favors or frowns. He goes on to write, in all the sad and afflicted providences that befall us, we are to view God as the author and orderer of them. And it follows then that to give in to the temptation to vex and complain is to rebel against his very presence in our lives. The fourth great evil that Burroughs gives us is this. It is a wickedness which is greatly contrary to grace, especially contrary to the work of God in bringing a sinner home to himself. And Burroughs asked the question, well, what is the work of God when he brings a sinner home to himself? And in answering this question, we're going to begin to see the contrast between grace and grumbling. So, what is the work of God when he saves a sinner? The first thing is this, his normal way is to make us see the great sinfulness of sin. the great evil that is sin, the great chasm that is between ourselves and a holy God, the great wrath that hangs over us that is a just due for our sin. Because, as Burroughs says, Jesus Christ can never be known in his beauty and excellence until we realize this. St. Anselm, in his great work, Why the God-Man, asks what can satisfy for a single slight sin, perhaps a sin so small as just a solitary look contrary to the will of God. And his opponent in this dialogue in the book replies, well, I would think that a single repentant feeling on my part should blot out this sin. And Anselm's reply gets right at the heart of what Burroughs is telling us here. You have not as yet estimated the great burden of sin. And so an accurate comprehension of sin then leads to God's giving sinners a sight of the infinite excellence and glory of Jesus Christ. John Owen, in the preface to his book, The Glory of Christ, writes this, The revelation made of Christ in the blessed gospel is far more excellent, far more glorious, and more filled with joys and rays of divine wisdom and goodness than the whole creation and the just comprehension of it can contain or afford." This is one reason why I selected the hymn that we sang when we opened this morning. How sweet and awesome is the place with Christ within the doors. Because this isn't just a trite cliche when you're going through a hard time. Well, remember your salvation and you won't be discontent. This is a concerted effort to meditate on the lavish display of God's grace. The picture in the hymn is that of a lavish feast of a king spread out in front of strangers and rebels. Each of us cries with thankful tongue, Lord, why was I a guest? Why was I made to hear your voice and enter while there's room when thousands make a wretched choice and rather starve than come? Why was I a guest? Grace. And Burroughs wants us to see that grumbling is contrary to grace. It's so contrary to a true sight of Christ and his glory and salvation and our utter unworthiness of it. He also takes, in salvation, he takes our heart off the creature, disengaging it from creature comforts. He takes those who were once seeking all meaning and identity in the world, and he says to them, no, now your happiness is no longer here. Now your soul must be wrestled from the things of this world. And he compares it to tearing apart things that have been glued together. So Burroughs explains, if God, by an affliction, should come to take anything in the world from you and you can part from it with ease, without tearing, it is a sign then that your heart is not glued to the world. We would certainly look strangely at a person who became angry over what style the bathroom fixtures were in his hotel room, or what color the carpeting might be. If you're renting an apartment, you don't go out and install hardwood floors. That would be absurd. That would be a bad idea. Why? Because it's not yours. It's temporary. You're not going to be there forever. Burroughs next, after that aspect of salvation, he next reminds us of the kingship and the lordship of Jesus Christ. We have bent the knee to King Jesus. And bending the knee to our king is not congruent to murmuring over slights or inconveniences. This goes back to the concept of rebellion that we talked about. Another one of my favorite Puritans is Richard Sibbes. his little book called Josiah's Reformation, which is a collection of four sermons about the time when Josiah realized, when the law was read to him, that they were in deep trouble. They had broken God's law in many and diverse ways, and he began to repent. And so Sibbes has these four sermons, and one of them is called The Art of Self-Humbling. Sibbes points out that if an earthly king were to be angry with us for breaking his law, we would be horrified. But when the great God of heaven threatens, what an atheistic, unbelieving heart have I that can be moved at the threatenings of a mortal man that is but dust and ashes and yet cannot be moved with the threatenings of the great God." Burroughs reminds us that when we became Christians, we entered into an everlasting covenant with God himself, that we have resigned our souls to him in an everlasting covenant In Genesis chapter 17, when God inaugurated his covenant with Abraham, he told him, walk before me and be blameless. This is not a call to perfection, but it was a call to walk before God in a wholehearted integrity, to live out what he believed. He is to believe God and live like he believes God. And up until this point, you'll remember that Abraham had been living somewhat half-heartedly, He had kind of resigned himself to a half-fulfillment of the covenant. He was content having Ishmael be the heir. So he basically figured that that was going to be it. And so when God re-announced the covenant and commanded Abraham to walk before me and be blameless, he is demanding that he not be doubtful. But he must be wholehearted, believing and acting like he believes. A paraphrase of Genesis 17.1 could read, I am God Almighty, live like it. The covenant is a covenant of grace, initiated, established, and fulfilled by God. But grace demands a response. God administers his covenant sovereignly, but he places obligations on me for those who are in covenant with him. And if this is true for us, Burroughs says, if we are in covenant with God, Grumbling is absolutely antithetical to that. When we grumble, we are forgetting what we believe. He's urging us to remember the work of God in our lives at conversion. It was grace that taught me first to fear. In grace, my fears relieved. How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed. When we catch ourselves in a discontented way, in a grumbling way, we do well to remember how it was with our souls when God first brought us to himself. And there is a labor here. There is a diligent effort here. When I am in the throes of dissatisfaction over whatever the irritant might be, I do not feel like remembering God's grace to me in my conversion. But this is exactly what Burroughs is prescribing us. This is to be a way of life for us. These are our privileges and duties. Remembering and sensing a true apprehension of our sin, remembering the great chasm between a holy God and us, seeing what Jesus prayed for us, that they may behold my glory, pressing on in our efforts to be unglued to the things of the world, Remembering our covenant obligations to walk before God and be blameless. These are hard things for us to read and hard things to practice. And Burroughs tells us if we make these daily parts of our lives, discontentment will begin to run out of room to reside in our lives. When I was a little boy, my mother would sometimes kindly compare me to the Winnie the Pooh character Eeyore. Eeyore was the lovable, at least I always thought he was lovable, pessimist. He didn't exactly have the brightest outlook on life. Somebody would say, good morning, Eeyore. And he would say, well, I don't know what's good about it. I guess I've always been a little prone to land on the pessimistic side of the scale. And this is incompatible with God's grace in the conversion, sanctification, and preservation of a sinner. This is incompatible with the biblical understanding of God's sovereignty and providence and care for me. Burroughs closes out this chapter by pointing out various ways that murmuring and discontentment is beneath us. He says that it is too mean and base a disorder for a Christian to give place to. One of the ways that a spirit of discontentment is beneath a Christian is that it is below our relations. It's below our relationships, and he gives several brief perspectives on this. For one, it's below our relationship to God himself. Jesus taught us to pray, our Father. We are in relationship to the creator of the universe, like a father and a son. And not just a father, a perfect father. Jesus said, if you ask your earthly father for an egg, he wouldn't give you a scorpion. And then he argues from the lesser to the greater, if you are evil and do this, how much more your Heavenly Father. We teach our children to be thankful for what they have. When they inevitably display a spirit of unthankfulness or ungratefulness, we rightly point out how unfitting that is of their relationship to us when they have so much to be thankful for. Just because they didn't get a particular toy or what have you, it's beneath them. But we do the same thing all the time. It is hard for us to remember Psalm 23.1, Yahweh is my shepherd, I will never lack anything. It's also below our relationship to Christ as his bride. We are the bride of Christ, all that he has is ours. Listen to Burroughs here. He gets very direct. Though some husbands are so vile that their wives may be forced to sue for maintenance, certainly Jesus Christ will never deny maintenance to his spouse. It is a dishonor for a husband to have the wife go whining up and down. Oh, Jesus Christ does not love to see his spouse with a scowling countenance. No man loves to see discontent in the face of his wife. And surely Christ does not love to see discontent in the face of his spouse. Pastor Phillips has recently preached on Ephesians 111, and we are not only in relationship to Christ as a spouse, but we're in relationship to him as an elder brother. He's our elder brother, and we're in union with him. In him, we have obtained an inheritance. And in Romans 8, the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs or fellow heirs with Christ. Discontentment is below our relationship to the Holy Spirit. It is holy beneath a Christian to be overtaken by a grumbling spirit when we are nothing less than the temple of the Holy Spirit of God. the comforter sent by the Father and the Son to convey all comfort to the saints. So Burroughs asks us, does he dwell in you and yet for all that you murmur for every little thing? Grumbling and discontentment is below the high dignity which God has placed upon the Christian. There are no ordinary Christians. On page 147 in this book he says this, I say the poorest Christian who lives is raised to a position above all the creatures in the world except angels, and above them in many respects too, and yet discontented. We who would have been, as Burroughs calls us, hell's firewood, that would have been scorching and yelling and roaring there to all eternity, God has rescued and raised to a dignity beyond all creation. C.S. Lewis, in his great essay, The Weight of Glory, reminds us to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be tempted to worship. And so because God placed so much dignity on us when we give in to the sin of grumbling, we are allowing things which are far beneath us to walk all over us. I'm just summarizing the final few elements that Burroughs mentions here, and we'll close. Murmuring is below our profession of faith. Our Christian calling is to be dead to the world and alive to God. And if that is so, when we allow ourselves to complain and whine at not getting everything we want, we are denying our profession. When we begin to grouse and complain over a lack of comfort, we should remember that God never promised me that I should have these comforts. And I am discontented because I do not have what God never promised me. And the things that He has promised me, the many precious things that He has promised me, I'm ignoring. And this is against my profession of faith. When circumstances go badly for an unbeliever, when everything in their life is a crisis, there's a certain sense in which their reaction of malcontent is kind of understandable. They don't really know any better, considering what they believe. But we know better. We have covenant promises to lean on and to remember. That soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose, I will not, I will not desert to its foes. That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake, I will never, no, never, no, never forsake. Psalm 56.3, what time I am afraid, I put my trust in thee. Murmuring is far below these precious covenant promises that we have in Christ. The lines have truly fallen to us in pleasant places. Let us remember this constantly. Let us work to remember this. Let us pray. Father, we need help. We are prone to wander. We are prone to discontentment. Would you help us to focus on the beauty of Christ, the lavishness of grace? Would you help us to always be in wonder, why was I a guest? And that we would be slowly torn from the things of this world, and that we would look to the hope in the city that has foundations, our possession that is in Christ. Help us this morning, help us to worship, and we pray in Jesus' name.