Well, good morning, friends. Welcome to Ridgefield Baptist Church, where the gospel changes everything. I love Psalm 62, verse 1, a passage about waiting on God. Waiting can be hard work, but if we trust the Lord and we know He has our best in mind, we can wait for His deliverance. And here's what the psalmist says. For God alone, my soul waits in silence. From Him comes my salvation. Now I know that we often are waiting for God's deliverance or waiting for Him to act or speak in some way. And as the psalmist says, I wait in silence, that doesn't just mean like literal silence, though I don't doubt he's doing that. But it's a picture of waiting in trust and waiting with silent anticipation that God will work. He worked in the past in the deliverance of Noah and then Israel. He vindicated Jesus on the cross. He worked mightily in the early church. So our God has a wonderful track record of working. We can trust Him. And if you're waiting for God to speak or waiting for Him to work in your life in some way today, boy, we can wait in silence, silent anticipation that God will come and do all that He said He would do. Well, I hope this message finds you well. We just got power back over the weekend here at Ridgefield Baptist Church. It's been a tough week for residents of Ridgefield and the surrounding area with power outages. If you don't have your power back yet and you have some kind of need that we can help, whether it's food or water, maybe the heat is really getting to you and there's some way that we can minister to you and try to get you a cooler space, don't hesitate to let us know. That RBC06877 email, that's at gmail.com, just hit us on that and we'll do everything we can to try to help you through this and minister to you until your power comes back on. Well, today, Philippians chapter 4, we're going to talk about the theme of contentment. Pretty interesting, isn't it, that I've been studying contentment all week and the power goes out? I had no power and had no water for a couple days, and maybe you don't have power, water, and things like that right now. And lo and behold, our theme is contentment. I have to sit there and say, Lord, are you teaching me something through this? And I think the answer is probably yes. Maybe the Lord's doing something similar in your life, and we're gonna talk about contentment today. Well, I've been told that the rarest mineral in the world is something called painite. In 1951, a small mineral, a small jewel of painite was found in Burma. And then another one was found shortly after that. So for several decades, there were only two samples of painite in the known world. A couple decades later, by the 2000s, there was about a couple dozen. And I think since then, 1,000 or so of these gems have been found. Guinness Book of World Records calls this the rarest jewels or gems in the world. Well, today's sermon, we're gonna title, The Rare Jewel of Contentment. Because Paul tells us that this is something so rare, but something so important, and we Christians can have this. Paul says, I have learned the secret to contentment. In other words, we don't just have to constantly want more, and constantly want better, to the point where it robs our joy. And it does that, doesn't it? We need a better job. We need more pay. We need a bigger house. We can't wait till next weekend. We're always looking forward to retirement. That's how our culture operates. And sometimes that kind of, I need this next, and I need better, that robs us of the gifts that God wants us to enjoy today. And so the Apostle Paul says, I have found, I have learned the secret of contentment. There he is in a Roman prison, and he shares with us what that secret is. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Jesus is Paul's avenue to contentment. So today, title of our sermon, The Rare Jewel of Contentment. I want to read the first six verses of Psalm 62. I already read verse one, but let's get the first six verses that talk about finding our contentment in God and waiting on the Lord patiently with that expectation. For God alone my soul waits in silence. From Him comes my salvation. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress. I shall not be greatly shaken. How long will all of you attack a man to batter him like a leaning wall in a tottering fence? They only plan to thrust him down from his high position. They take pleasure in falsehood. They bless with their mouths, but inwardly they curse. For God alone, oh my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him. He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress, and I shall not be shaken. Lord God, we thank you for your wonderful grace. Thank you for our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And today, as we take up this theme of contentment, we need to confess before you, Lord, that we are often moved with discontentment, sometimes discontentment that borders on greed and covetousness. There's a feeling inside of us that we always need more. We always need something better. And we struggle to find contentment in the gifts and the things and what we have right now. And that discontentment just robs us of enjoying life, robs us of enjoying the relationships around us and the good things you've put before us. So help us today to say with Paul that we can learn that secret of contentment. For some of us, Lord, we are looking for contentment in all the wrong places. If only we get a little more, or maybe we just constantly lower our expectations. Maybe we're on the path of just self-denial in a monastic kind of way. Not that those things aren't necessarily helpful at times, but our contentment needs to be in Christ. That when we're in that relationship with you, our hearts can settle and they can find peace. So I pray that you'd help us to say with Paul today, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I want to pray for our community today here in Ridgefield and the surrounding area. There's a lot of needs right now as folks are still maybe without power and some are just getting their power back. We pray you'd work in a special way in every single home and help us to be the kind of community that cares about neighbors and cares about each other. Lord Jesus, today we recognize and remember that we live under the sky of grace. That in you we have life. You've given us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, Peter says. And so we walk under the sky of grace. We know that we have fellowship with you, not because we're good, but because we're forgiven. So help us to enjoy this relationship with God in Christ. And I pray today you'd meet the need of every heart under the sound of my voice. Help us to discover contentment. Help us to rediscover the joy you want us to have. For some of us, we have a lot of good things going on in life and we're still unhappy. For others, we're in a prison experience like the Apostle Paul. In either situation, Lord, whether we have plenty or whether we're in want, you can help our hearts settle in Jesus and find a contentment that we desperately need. Lord, I pray our worship would bring you much glory. Speak to us in a special way. Help us to be every bit of the redeemed people you've saved us to be in Jesus name. Amen. So today we're talking about the rare jewel of contentment. I want to read a couple of verses out of Philippians 4, verse 10. And notice what Paul says. Listen to that word, contentment. Paul says in Philippians 4, 10, 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. I know how to abound. And in 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. Well, here's the problem. Our world suffers from what a historian, Arthur Schlesinger, says is an inextinguishable discontent. Let that word kind of sink in. inextinguishable discontent. In other words, we have a discontentment in our hearts, even if we have plenty and a lot of things, where we're so often discontent and it's inextinguishable. Everything we try to do to put it out, it's like throwing water on a grease fire and just spreads it out and makes it worse. So we think that by adding more to our lives and by achieving that next level of this or that, it's going to kind of tamper down and push back against discontentment. But it rarely works that way. It almost feeds the fire of discontentment more and more. Inextinguishable discontent. We think, if only I had a better job, if only I had better pay, if only I had a better boss, if only I had a better relationship. Or we live for the next best thing. We live endlessly for the next best thing. I can't wait to get to next weekend. I can't wait until the next vacation, the next purchase, the next experience, the next deal that I can close. And there's this inextinguishable discontent in our hearts that we wrestle with almost on a daily basis. the russian author leo tolstoy tola uh... parable or a metaphor that moves in this direction he talks about uh... uh... uh... uh... a peasant that has a little bit of money uh... and he's got a couple of servants not not a lot of money but enough to kinda do business in the area there and he's doing okay for himself and he says to himself that if i had plenty of land i should not fear the devil himself And in the little parable that Tolstoy tells, there's the devil is sitting behind a stove and he overhears the man talking. And so the devil comes out and strikes a deal with this peasant. He says for a thousand rubles you could have all the land that surrounds you by walking around it. Whatever land you walk around, if you make it back to that beginning point before sundown, all that land will belong to you. A thousand rubles to bring you into this game. And so if he doesn't make it back, he's going to lose all of his money. So the peasant strikes a deal with the devil. And he sets out early in the morning as the sun is coming up, and he's walking at a brisk pace, and he knows that he can circle back and own much more land than he has now, but there's something inside of him that says, just go a little bit further. And so he keeps pushing it and pushing it, and he knows it's going to be close to get back, but he thinks, I can run back, and I can jog, and I can make it back, and he pushes a little further and a little further. And finally he realizes, as the sun is going down, that if he doesn't make it back, he's going to lose everything he has. So he starts to circle around and he runs as fast as he can. And as the sun is going down, he picks up his pace even more, his heart is just thumping and thumping. Finally, as the sun is almost all the way down, he can see the finish line in the distance. And it runs through his mind that he might not make it back. And so he bursts into a full sprint with everything he has, and he finally dives over the line. And as soon as he dives over the line, a couple seconds later, the sun goes down. And yet, in the process of that, he collapses over the finish line, and he dies. A stream of blood pours out his mouth. He lays dead. And in the story, the servant takes a spade and buries the peasant in a grave just six feet wide, just enough to get him in the ground. The title of Tolstoy's little story is How Much Does a Man Need? And he concludes the parable by saying six feet from his head to his feet is all that he needed. There's an inextinguishable discontent. And many of us, all of us, are like the peasant in that parable Tolstoy is saying. He's saying, we just think if I get a little more and a little more and a little more, and it drives us to the point where we fail to enjoy the things around us, and even more so to the point where we even live unhealthy lifestyles. The Progress of Paradox, Greg Easterbrook, talks about modern Americans, and he reminds us that we live better than 99.9% of people that have ever lived. And so he asked this question, so why do Americans behave as though they have nothing? Why do so many walk around scowling rather than smiling at their good fortune? It's a real paradox, isn't it? We think if I only have a little bit more, I'm going to be a lot happier and I'm going to be a content person. But we have more than most people in the history of the world and even in the modern world today. And yet we're still struggling to find contentment. There's an inextinguishable discontent in our lives. Now in the middle of this inextinguishable discontent that people struggle with, the Apostle Paul makes a bold declaration. I have learned in whatever situation I am in to be content. Now that alone ought to inspire a little bit of confidence in our lives. That contentment is possible. and enjoying life and enjoying that which God has given us now, we don't have to have that inextinguishable discontent in our lives. We can learn contentment in Christ. Let that be an encouragement to us today. So let's do this. Let me define contentment the best I can, and then we'll give about four points on contentment as time allows from the Apostle Paul and how we can grow in contentment. All right, so what's the definition of contentment? Well, this is harder to nail down than meets the eye, because you can't necessarily use all the secular definitions of contentment. And there's a lot of tension. So here's my best shot at it. Years ago, I came across Elio Carletti's definition of beauty. Carletti was an Italian police inspector and he was also a painter in Italy. He would paint like village scenes and countryside and things like that. And he came up with a really good definition of beauty. And I think it kind of doubles nicely as a definition of contentment. So let me give you his definition of beauty and then we'll flip it into contentment, okay? Ilio Carletti said this, beauty is the summation of the parts working together in such a way that nothing needs to be added, taken away, or altered. Think about a beautiful piece of music. Think about a beautiful painting or a beautiful sculpture. It's hard to define what beauty is, isn't it? A little bit slippery, but Carletti nails it here, I think. Beauty is the summation of all the parts working together where nothing needs to be added, taken away, or altered. Now, I think that doubles nicely as a definition of contentment. Here's my best shot at it. Contentment is a, let's call it a condition of the heart, or an inner satisfaction, where because of the presence of God in my life, nothing needs to be added, taken away, or altered. Contentment, a condition of my heart, a satisfaction that I have, because God's presence is so real in my life, that nothing needs to be added, taken away, or altered. Now, in other words, because of God's presence in my life, and notice the definition uses the word need here. It's not that there aren't things that you want. It's okay to want a better job, and it's okay to want better relationships. It's okay to want more for the people around us. That's fine, but the word need here is an important one. Nothing needs to be added, subtracted, or altered for me to enjoy this satisfaction, this inner satisfaction in my heart that God is giving me. Nothing needs to be added. In other words, I may want to have a new job. I may want to have a bigger place. Or I may want more for people around me. I may want better health. There's nothing wrong with those things in their proper place, right? But I don't need those for inner satisfaction. I don't need those for peace in my heart and in my life. My relationship with God is enough to bring me satisfaction on the inside of my soul. So it's not that I don't want things. We don't want to confuse this. The opposite of contentment, by the way, is something like the 10th commandment. Remember the 10th commandment, thou shall not covet? It's like the opposite of contentment. So it's okay to want things, but when we're at a point where I need those in order to have inner satisfaction, that's when we've probably crossed the line to discontentment. So one more time before we move forward. Contentment. It's this inner satisfaction that because God's presence is so real in my life, nothing needs to be added, taken away, or altered. So I don't doubt for a minute that the Apostle Paul would say, I would really prefer not to be in jail right now. And I'd prefer to have better clothes than this. I want a good meal. I want water. I'd love to have a sofa that I can sit on. There's nothing wrong with Paul wanting those things. But his relationship with God is so real and so powerful in that prison experience. that nothing needs to be added, taken away, or altered for him to have satisfaction. All right, let's talk about four or five, as time allows, principles about contentment. And we have to start with this one. Principle one is this, contentment is elusive. It's rare and it's elusive. Notice verse 11 where Paul says, I have learned the secret to contentment. That word secret's an important one. It's not a secret like we think of the word secret. Maybe it's close to that, but not exactly. What it tells us is that contentment is elusive. It hides in plain sight. It's like nailing jello to the wall. As soon as you think you get your hands around something like contentment, it's like sand that falls through your fingers and then you have nothing left and you have to reach down and get a little bit more. Contentment has a very elusive nature to it. When I was a kid, I remember this in middle school, some, you know, these little toys would come out and, you know, for like a month they'd be the big craze. They're in the middle school or the elementary school and something came out called water snakes. Water snakes are like these balloons and there's water in them and they just, they slip through your hands really quickly, you know, kind of like this and they're very hard to hold on to so you have to be careful or they'll fall on the ground and break. And these water snakes were like, I mean, in my middle school for about a month, if you had a water snake, you were cool, and if you didn't have a water snake, well, you just were on the outs. And I thought, man, I've got to get a water snake, you know, I've got to be on the inside here. And I got on my bike and, you know, pulled my change together, stuffed it in my pockets, got on my bike, and I rode all the way across town to the store that I knew would have these little water snakes. And I go into the store, and I don't even know if at that point I had held one. I'd just kind of seen them there in school. And I walked in and bought one of these little water snakes, these little toys. And I got back on my bike. And I took it out of the package, and I'm holding it like this, and I start to pedal. And I kid you not, I don't think I got 20 feet before that thing slipped out of my hand and smashed on the ground. And I would be uncool without a water snake for the next several months. But you know, contentment reminds me of that water snake. It's one of those things where you're holding on to it, but it's so unbelievably elusive and slippery that as soon as you have it, it can slip out of your hands at any moment. You can't get your hands around it. I once heard a story about a pilot that was flying over the Appalachian Mountains there. And every time he flew with his co-pilot, he would look down and kind of stare at a certain valley down there. And his co-pilot finally asked, why do you stare down in that valley? What's so important down in that valley? And he said, that's where I grew up. And see that little river there? I used to fish on that river all the time. And when I was a little boy fishing on that river, every time an airplane flew over, I would look up, and I'd see the airplane, and I would think to myself, I wish I wasn't fishing. I wish I was flying up there. So that's why I became a pilot. He said, and now every time I fly over that little river, I think to myself, I wish I wasn't a pilot flying. I wish I was a little kid sitting on the river fishing. You know, it's so elusive. And we always think the grass is greener on the other side. It's like a water snake that slips out of our hands. Now, this is the key. When Paul says or implies here that contentment is slippery and it hides in plain sight and it's elusive, why is that the case? And here's the reason, because that which you truly need is not necessarily that which you think you need. You think you need more, but in reality, we need Christ. That's what Paul is saying. So think of it like this. In order to battle contentment, most of the world says, if I only get a little bit more and I only do a little better and I only get to the next thing, then I'm going to be content in this life. You feel like you need more, but in reality, you need to deepen your relationship with Jesus. You need more of Christ. You don't need more rooms in your house. That's what Paul is saying. It kind of works like this. If you have a knee surgery, for example, you have a knee replacement or something like that, something inside of you is saying, I need to rest. Because every time you move your knee, it hurts. You feel like you need rest. But every professional and physical therapist is going to come along and say, you need to move the knee. It's a very painful experience, but you need to start moving and stretching and maybe even get up and walk. On the inside of us, it says, I need rest, but in reality, you actually need the opposite thing, right? You need to get up and exercise a little bit. Contentment works in a similar way. Something in our minds and in our hearts says, if I only have more, I'll be content. But what you really need is not what you think you need. Paul says, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. You don't need more rooms in your house. You need a deeper relationship with Christ. And that's because acquiring more doesn't really help, right? Because we were not created for things in this world. We were created primarily to be in that relationship with God. So principle number one, commitment is rather elusive. Number two, Our hearts are revealed in times of plenty or in need. In other words, discontentment reveals itself in times of plenty and in times of want. Notice the circumstances in the passage that Paul talks about. He says, in whatever state I am in, And then he talks about two extreme states, right? I know how to be a base and I know how to abound. I know how to be full, I know how to be hungry. I know how to suffer, I know how to abound. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. So the Apostle Paul talks about contentment and then he talks about the two extreme situations that we may find ourselves in. The point to appreciate is this. When we're in times of plenty and in times of want, that's when our hearts tend to reveal the discontentment that's lying on the inside of those. Ask yourself this question, when do people typically fall into despair? Or when does your heart really grow discontent? Usually when we're suffering loss, things have been taken away from us or might be. Or for the people that finally get everything they thought would make them happy, then they find out it doesn't work. Then they're in despair and discontentment. Times of plenty and times of want. See, plenty and want. is like a why in the road, you know? It's like we become terribly discontent or it can be a catalyst to deepening our relationship with Christ. Let's talk about these just for a moment. What does it mean, discontent in time of want? So, sometimes we have a dream, we have a vision of what might make us content. Climbing all the way up the corporate ladder, getting through school, becoming married, having children, whatever it is in your life that you think will make you content. And you chase that vision, and you chase that vision, and you never quite achieve the vision that you have in your mind, and that's when this inextinguishable discontent can come into our lives. And so we just double down on the vision. We say to ourselves, if only I had this, or if only I had that, I'd be a content person. Discontentment comes out in times of want. There's a really good metaphor, parable, or illustration of this in the book of Habakkuk. Habakkuk talks about discontentment in chapter 2 verse 5. He says this, he says, a proud man, this is someone that's not content, he neither keeps it home, he enlarges his desires as hell and as death. He cannot be satisfied. Get that language. The proud man never stays at home. and he's kind of like the grave. He's never satisfied. Now, this is interesting, the illustration here. What Habakkuk is saying is this, that discontentment works that way, that we're like a landowner that constantly has to get more and more land. Or we're like the grave. What is discontentment? How is a grave a metaphor for discontentment? Well, it works like this. This is what Habakkuk means. Every time the grave takes a victim, it's a metaphor. Every time the grave takes a victim, it wants one more. The grave constantly needs one more victim. That's what he means. So I've been told that almost two people die per second. There's 102 people per minute worldwide. Habakkuk says, that's what discontentment is like. As soon as the grave gets a victim, it wants another victim and another victim and another victim. And our hearts are very much like that, that we're constantly trying to acquire things to satisfy ourselves. Sometimes when we're in times of want, we think that if we just acquire enough, we're going to get off the merry-go-round and be content, but it never ends up being that way. We always need more and more and more and more. Now, here's the interesting one, times of plenty. There are a small exclusive group of people in our world today that have actually achieved the dream that they set out to achieve. They have everything that they set out to discover. And they climb all the way to the top of that ladder, whatever that ladder will be. They're full, they're plenty, they abound, as the Apostle Paul says. But then they find out that that vision in life really did not bring them the contentment, the joy, and the peace that they thought it would. Book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon says, I acquired everything. I acquired wisdom. I acquired houses and lands. I had more than anybody around me. It's everything I set out to achieve. But vanity, vanity, all is vanity, vanity and vexation of spirits, says the preacher. So we remember somebody like Alexander the Great. Who had the whole known world at his feet. And at that moment, he cried out for another world to conquer. It just wasn't enough. There's an often quoted article by Cynthia Heimel in the Village Voice, and she describes celebrities that are all the way at the top of that popularity food chain, the A-list celebrities. And this is what she says for people that had their vision and life fulfilled, and how it left them actually in despair and didn't help with the discontentment in their hearts. She said, I pity celebrities. No, I really do. Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Barbara Streisand, they were once perfectly pleasant human beings, but now their wrath is awful. I think when God wants to play a really rotten practical joke on you, he grants you your deepest wish, and then he laughs merrily when you realize you want to kill yourself. You see, Sly, Bruce, and Barbara wanted fame. They worked, they pushed. And the morning after each of them became famous, they wanted to take an overdose. Because the giant thing they were striving for, the fame that was going to make everything okay, that was going to make their lives bearable, that was going to provide them with personal fulfillment and happiness, But they were still them. The disillusionment turned them howling and insufferable. Cynthia Heimel is saying again that sometimes we're fortunate enough to get everything that we set out for. And then we find that because it doesn't fulfill us, it actually makes us insufferable. So discontentment will often reveal itself in times of plenty and in times of want. All right, principle three. This is where we turn the corner a little bit to encouragement, right? It's elusive. It shows up at different points in our lives. But now we can get a little bit encouraged here. Contentment is learned. It's a learned spiritual discipline. I want you to notice that word in verse 12. Paul says, So let me give you three thoughts about contentment being a learned spiritual discipline. All right, let's start with this. Number one, be optimistic. And I say be optimistic because learning here communicates that you can actually learn to do this in Christ. Right now, you may find yourself in a pit of misery on the inside of you. You may find no peace, that inextinguishable discontent. But the Apostle Paul reminds us here, you can learn to do this in Christ. We don't have to have that discontentment in our lives. The word learn here, by the way, you know how there's different Greek words for learn. So like in English, there's different Greek words for learn. Learn, educate, study, follow, know, understand, those words come to mind for me. In the Greek, there's a whole myriad of words for the word learn. This particular one means to learn through practice or by habit. So it's not just an intellectual knowledge. He's talking about learning because you're in the habit of doing things. Almost means creating a habit, and you learn from creating that habit. Contentment is a learned spiritual discipline, and we learn that by practicing contentment in Christ. And the more we practice it and think about it, the more we can grow in contentment. Mary Lou Retton, the great gymnast, 1984. You can find us on YouTube if you haven't seen it. I remember watching this on my TV back then, no cable back then, could barely see the picture. But she got that final perfect 10 in gymnastics. It stands as one of the great Olympic moments of all time for the United States. And she was asked the question, what does it take to be a great gymnast? And this is her answer. What it takes to be a complete gymnast, someone should be able to sneak up, drag you out of your bed at midnight, push you onto a strange floor, and you should be able to do your entire routine sound asleep in your pajamas without a single mistake. That's the secret. It's got to be a natural reaction. In other words, Mary Lou Retton says, I have practiced that vault and that floor routine over and over and over and over to the point where I could do that in my sleep. Ted Williams, one of the greatest major league hitters, hit .406 in 1941. It's a record that still stands to this day. Batting .406, and they used to say, he's the best natural hitter of all time. And Ted Williams would push back against that. He says, there's no such thing as a natural hitter. I became a good hitter because I paid the price of constant practice, constant practice. The Apostle Paul is saying that the more we practice contentment in Christ, the more it's like a snowball that builds and builds to the point where it becomes part of our life and part of who we are as Christians. We learn contentment in Jesus. We're in groove with God. We discover contentment as we practice contentment. Be optimistic. If you're someone that struggles with contentment right now, Paul says you can learn this, but you're gonna have to start practicing contentment in your daily life and focusing on who Christ is in order to make that a reality. Principle number two or thought number two that it's learned is be realistic. The verb here not only means to learn it by practicing it, but it's talking about the sum total of learning something, the sum total of the experience. So when Paul says, I have learned contentment, it doesn't mean that he learned this overnight. And it doesn't mean that he took a seminar and all of a sudden he walked out content. But it was over a long period of time, it's the sum total. So it's not like Paul took a big step up in his life towards retaining, he didn't get on an elevator and go all the way up all at once. But it's like a series of ramps in his life, one after another, that moved him higher and higher and deeper into contentment in Christ. I remember a story about a great artist who did a sculpture. He did a sculpture in the public square, and the artist might have been 45 or 50 years old. He's been doing this for 20, 30 years. And it took him four weeks to complete this sculpture. And there it was on the day of dedication in the public square in a small town, and he stood next to the sculpture. And the mayor leaned over and whispered something like, how long did that take you to do? And the artist looked back with a puzzled look and said, 50 years, of course. In other words, the artist is saying, the sculptor is saying, you don't do that in four weeks. That is the sum total of who I am as an artist. Don't trivialize this into a four-week project. All my experience, all my education, all the practice I've put in over the years, that went into that sculpture right there. Every time when I was a 15, 20, 30-year-old young man and I was chipping away at another block, that experience built itself into what you see before you. And the artist is saying that this work of art would not be possible if not for all my training and all my experience. That's what the Apostle Paul is saying about contentment. I have learned to be content. And if you ask Paul, well, how long did it take you to learn to be content? He would not trivialize this and say, a month or two or three years. He'd say it took a lifetime, especially my conversion in Christ and since then. Contentment is achieved by the sum total of my Christian training. Last point I want to make about learning to be content is be opportunistic. I don't have time to unpack this point, but it's worth just pointing out verse 10. It's a little bit confusing, but Paul says, I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at last your care for me hath flourished again, wherein you were also careful, but lacked opportunity. So the Apostle Paul is saying to the Philippians here that I've had this need of your offering. Remember they sent an offering for Paul? I've had that need for a very long time, but I haven't been able to follow up with you on this, and you haven't been able to send it to me for a variety of reasons. The main reason was that Paul wanted all the money to go to the Jerusalem church instead of caring for his needs. Now that that's been taken care of, Paul receives an offering from the Philippians. But the point to appreciate here is this, that there are times in our lives when our contentment is really tested. I mean really tested. Again, we have a need that people around us can't help us with. Or maybe there's something going on in your life and you just can't do anything about it. Paul is saying, don't let that parade go by without growing in contentment. Use that as an opportunity to build towards being a better sculpture, so to speak, being a better artist, to grow in your contentment. All right, so now to the last principle, the most important one is this, that the avenue to contentment is Jesus. deepening that relationship with Christ, that's where we find contentment. Again, the world tells us, and even our hearts tell us, if only I get a little bit more, I'll be a content person. But Paul says, I have discovered the secret, and it's not what everybody is telling you. Contentment is found in Christ. Verse 13, I can do all things through him who strengthens me. Now, I want to talk for a minute about contentment in Christ, but let me say this. When you wrestle with discontentment, a lot of different models come up through your mind. Things that we think will help with discontentment, and some of them do a little bit, but they're not the model that Paul is presenting. So let me just check these off real quick. The first one we've already talked about, which is, if only I get more stuff, everything's going to be okay, right? If only I get a bigger house, if only I get more, if only I get to the next weekend, the next fishing trip, whatever it is, that's how most of our culture lives. If only I get more and more and more. But that's only one way people deal with discontentment. Another way, and this is a little bit more in other cultures, but still here in the US, we take kind of a monastic approach. The monastic approach is like self-denial. that we know more stuff is not going to make us content with that much we're good with. So we just deny ourselves everything. And a monastic person says, you know, I'm just going to discipline my body. I'm just going to discipline my mind. I'm going to actually pretend like I actually don't like things. If I deny myself everything, then I won't feed the fire. See, some of us say, if I only get more stuff, I'm going to become a content person. But there's another group that says, well, I know that's not true, so I don't want to throw gas on the fire. I don't want to throw water on the grease fire. So I'm just going to be like a monk. I'm just going to deny myself things. Then you have a third approach. I call this the freeze frame approach. There are points in your life, kind of like very specific moments, where it feels like just for a second, even, everything's okay. Or just for 10 minutes or an hour, everything is, and on the inside, you've discovered contentment. Remember Jim Croce? I'm dating myself now. If I could save time in a bottle, you know? You think about that song about saving time in a bottle. What Croce is saying is there's a specific point in my life where everything seemed to be okay and everything seemed to be right. And if I could just freeze that for a moment, I once read about a guy who felt that way every Christmas as a little kid, that moment when you walk downstairs and open a present. And so as an adult, he decided he was going to do Christmas every day. I know it sounds a little crazy, right? He'd wrap a present the night before. He always had his Christmas tree up. That way, when he came downstairs, he tried to reproduce the moment that brought him peace and contentment as a kid. Well, that's a little bit extreme, but sometimes there are these moments where we just feel like if we can reproduce that we're going to get contentment. So we're always trying to reproduce, we're trying to freeze frame. Now, a fourth way that people deal with contentment, instead of finding it in Christ, and there's actually some merit to this one, is lower expectations. So again, some people say, if only I have more. Others say, nah, I'm just gonna deny myself everything. Others say, if I just freeze that moment, then everything would be right in my life. And then there's a group that says, well, I'm just gonna lower my expectations. I was recently reading an article about Buddhism, and he talked about one strain of Buddhism, though our contentment is found through lower expectations, and it kind of described this kind of technique. And so what we do is we say to ourselves, I can't expect too much from my work. I can't expect too much from material things. If my health goes bad, I shouldn't expect to be happy because I'm a healthy person anyway. It's almost an Eeyore approach. Constantly lowering expectations so you never disappoint yourself. And by the way, that's not only today where people lower expectations. The ancient Greeks had a whole group that talked about lowering expectations to receive contentment. Let me give you a quote from an ancient Greek writer on this. The writer said, begin with a cup or a household utensil. And if it breaks, just say, I don't care. Get on your horse or pet a dog, and if anything happens, just say, I don't care. Get on to yourself. And if you're hurt or injured in any way, just say, I don't really care. And if you go long enough and you try hard enough, you come to a state where you can walk to the nearest Dearest, the nearest and dearest can suffer and die. And you can just say that I don't care. And so sometimes we take on this posture of lower expectations and I don't care. Set the bar low and you'll never be disappointed. There's a lot of ways that people deal with this inextinguishable discontent in their lives. But Paul says, oh, no, my contentment is in Christ. My contentment is in Christ. Not one of these kind of secular approaches, but our contentment is in Christ. All these models that we talk about, these four outside of what Paul says here. And verse 13 is a shock to the ancient and the modern world. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. In any situation I am in, Jesus can strengthen me to find contentment. That's what that verse means. Now I know this is a popular verse, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And I'm not saying it doesn't apply to other things, but we try to make it apply to everything. I mean, you know, I can hit a 400-foot home run through Christ who strengthens me. Well, I don't doubt God can help you hit a home run, but that's not what the verse means, you know? It means God can strengthen you and give you contentment in any situation you find yourself in. Jesus is our contentment. And here's how I want to tie this sermon up. Paul is telling us, he's telling you as a Christian, here's the rare jewel of contentment. That the secret to contentment is digging deeper into your relationship with Christ, that I may know him and the power is resurrection and fellowship with the sufferings to pursue Jesus with my whole heart. That's the avenue to contentment, your relationship with God. In other words. Contentment is hiding in plain sight. It's right under our noses as Christian. We just have to dig deeper into this relationship with Jesus. I heard a story once. I don't know if it's apocryphal or not. Some say it's a true story. Ali Haifid owned a very large farm. He had orchards and grain fields and gardens. He was wealthy, pretty content. And one day, he received a visitor. It was a priest or a monk. And the priest or monk started telling him about all the diamond fields that are being found all over the place in the area there. And Haifid went to bed that night poor. It bred in him a certain discontentment. He thought to himself, well I have a lot here, but think about how much more I could have. And so this farmer started to imagine what it would be like to have all that money and all those diamonds and his children could even sit on diamond thrones and things like that. And so, finally he sold his farm. and started setting off to find the diamond fields. We're told that in the end he felt very self-defeated because he never found a single diamond and eventually committed suicide. A few years after Hayford sold the farm, the man who purchased the farm led his camel to the garden to drink. His camel put his nose down into the brook. He saw a flash of light come from one of the streams. He pulled out a stone, and he reflected all the hues of the rainbow there, and he discovered a diamond that would later be called the diamond mine. of Golganta, one of the most magnificent mines in all of history. As I was thinking about that story, Ali Haifid, the farmer there, had a diamond mine right under his nose. He just had to dig deep. You and I, we have this rare jewel of contentment right under our noses. It's our relationship with Christ. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. The world is saying, go out and acquire more. And you'll be a happy, content person, Paul says. Don't be like Hayford, who sold the farm, but dig deep into the soil of the gospel and you can discover that contentment and learn that contentment that God wants you to have in Christ. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Lord, I want to thank you today for your grace. Thank you for your love and your commitment and concern for us. Help us to find that contentment in Jesus. That doesn't mean there's not things that we want in this life. There's nothing wrong with wanting things in their proper place. But we don't need those things for the satisfaction in our souls. For our strength is in Jesus. And as we dig deep into the soil of the gospel, We can find, learn, and grow in the contentment that you want us to have. All glory belongs to you in Jesus' name, amen.