I invite you to turn to Mark Chapter 14, the Gospel of Mark Chapter 14. And we have a number of visitors here this morning, and it's good to have you. And just to let you know that in the evenings, I have been preaching through the Gospel of Mark, and we've come now to that section of Mark's Gospel called the Passion, and we've come to the solemn scene of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane, his agony and his prayer. And this message will be a continuation of really what is somewhat of a topical message on submission to the will of God. And we've looked at some of the roots of submission, and we will consider some of the fruits of a submission to the will of God. And I want to go ahead and read a portion from Mark 14, beginning at verse 32 and concluding with Jesus' prayer in verse 36. So Mark 14, verse 32. Then they came to a place which was named Gethsemane. And he said to his disciples, sit here while I pray. And he took Peter, James, and John with him. And he began to be troubled and deeply distressed Then he said to them, my soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch. He went a little farther and fell on the ground and prayed that if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Take this cup away from me. Nevertheless, not what I will, but what you will. And let's again pray. God, we thank you that we are gathered here together to worship you. And Lord, we desire to hear from you and ask that you would bless us now and help us and send your Holy Spirit as we open your word. Pray that we would learn, that we would grow as we feed upon your word. that Christ would be exalted in every heart here. We pray in his name, amen. Now, even in this fallen world, it is not always a hard and painful thing to submit to the will of God. Often really submission doesn't seem to be the right word, but simply to open our hands wide and receive an abundance of good gifts from a kind, and gracious and good God. And at such times, we have no real need, no great need of patience, but only to rejoice and to give thanks and to be content with the things that God has given us. But at times when the will of God is at odds with our will, that is when we need great patience and when we need endurance in order to submit to the will of God in all things. I want you to think about two solemn but very different occasions, both common in this life, and that is a funeral and a wedding. Several of us attended a wedding a week ago, Saturday, last Saturday, and we celebrated the goodness of God in bringing together two young believers, a godly young man and a godly young woman, together in marriage. And it was a happy occasion. And there were tears, but it was a submitting to the providential will of God that was cheerful and for which we were thankful and joyful. But then how different when we consider the loss of life? And just two weeks before that wedding, there was a funeral, a friend of mine in Oklahoma, a 38-year-old woman, a mother of two who died of cancer. And on such an occasion, submitting to the will of God was anything but easy or joyful and continues to be so, especially for her family. but it is a thing possible, and yet only by the grace of God that we can submit to the will of God. Now, having looked at our Lord's prayer in the garden, especially those last words that I read there, where Jesus says, nevertheless, not what I will, but what you will, speaking to his Father, we have begun to ask, what does it look like to submit to the will of God in all things? And in Christ certainly we have to say we have the ultimate example of godly submission. And this submission is perhaps most clearly on display here in the Gethsemane records. A submission that results in his obedience unto death. That results in Christ laying down his life freely for sinners. Two weeks ago, we were looking at the roots, and we looked at godly fear. We submit to the will of God in godly fear, and also in faith. And we consider that it wasn't faith as this nebulous, cloudy, vague thing that we submit to the will of God in faith, but that we fix our minds upon truths revealed in the word of God, and we let that strengthen our faith. and times when it is hard to submit to the will of God, we remind ourselves of who God is, of his goodness, his power, his wisdom, et cetera. We were digging beneath the surface then at the roots, but today I wanna consider three fruits or what we might call outward manifestations of a submissive heart. And all of these fruits, all three of these are more or less exemplified by Christ here in the garden. So let us now seek to learn from the example of our Lord and also from other places in the word of God. And I wanna consider firstly, the fruit of prayer. Prayer or humbly pleading with God, this is a fruit of submission to his will. And even fervent prayer for relief, this is a fruit of patient submission. We know to be prayerless in general is inconsistent with the life of faith. And so it's inconsistent with godly submission, that we are just prayerless in general. But not to pray in times of adversity or other times in which we find it difficult to submit to the providential will of God in our lives, this also is inconsistent with godly submission. Remember, we're not talking about a stoical indifference An acceptance of the inevitable. That's not what submitting to the will of God is. Just saying, oh well, it couldn't be any different. God's sovereign. No, that's not what we're talking about. Not the kind of attitude that would say there's no use in praying because God is sovereign. We have a very simple but important practical observation here in the garden as we're looking at Christ. And it is simply that Jesus prayed for relief. Even as he is submitting to the will of God, he's praying for relief. Take this cup away from me. So we must conclude that praying for relief in our times of trouble and sorrow is not at odds with submitting patiently to God's will. You see that here in the text. So crying out for help, crying out for some kind of relief or deliverance, whatever it might be, this isn't at odds with saying from the heart, whatever my God ordains is right. Your will be done. They're not at odds. I want to go further than that, though, and say that to submit to God's will and to never pray for relief is not only inhuman, but quite possibly ungodly. So in your times of adversity, never to cry out to God for relief and help in your suffering, not only is that inhuman, but quite possibly ungodly. Search the scriptures and you will find many examples of godly saints crying out to God, praying for relief, some kind of deliverance, even though they knew that what was happening to them was happening by the will of God. And what you will also find is that God often granted their requests. So are we to conclude, as we look at the prayers of these godly saints of old, Are we to conclude that they were just the fruit of some stubborn refusal to submit to God's will? God has said you must suffer this and they're crying out for relief, that stubborn refusal to submit to God's will. We cannot conclude that as we look at the scriptures. We cannot conclude that they were being presumptuous, but they were acting in faith. And I wanna give you just a few notable examples very quickly that are worthy of our study. Godly saints crying out for relief. Think of Abraham boldly interceding for Sodom when God had said what he would do as he looked upon the wickedness of Sodom. He did not withhold from Abraham what he planned to do. And you see Abraham there pleading with the Lord that he would spare Sodom, even if there's 10 righteous. God said, yes, I will spare. That's in Genesis chapter 18. I do not believe Abraham was being presumptuous, but submitting to the will of God, even as he was pleading that God would have mercy. Think about Moses. On more than one occasion, he interceded for the stubborn people of God, as they're rebelling against God, and as God's anger rose up against them. He's interceding that God would relent and would have mercy even when God says, this is my will to wipe them out. Exodus 32, Numbers 14. You can see Moses interceding in prayer for God's people. But on another occasion, Moses is pleading with God. that he would relent and allow him to enter the promised land. Remember that Moses was not allowed to enter the promised land, to cross the Jordan. And what did God say to Moses? He said, enough, enough of this matter. So Moses was at peace and he submitted. But you see, he knew the will of God and he prayed. And yet when God said enough, he ceased. David, David fasted and prayed earnestly for the life of his sick child when he was told through Nathan the prophet that the child would surely die. And when on the seventh day it did die, he worshiped God in humble submission to God's holy will. We have that in 2 Samuel 12. Hezekiah, when the Lord told him through the prophet Isaiah that he would surely die and he would not live, so he better put his house in order, what did he do? He prayed. He didn't just say that's God's will and therefore if I'm going to submit to it, I just do nothing and be silent. No, he wept and he prayed and we read that God heard him. We read that God heard and saw his tears and actually healed him, 2 Kings 20, and then also in Isaiah 38. Many of you are probably thinking of Paul, who suffered a painful, distressing thorn in the flesh, and we don't know what it was, but he suffered with this, and we see how earnest he was. He prayed for relief. pleading with the Lord three times until he received that answer that we are all familiar with when God told him, the Lord said, my grace is sufficient for you, Paul. My grace is enough. And then Paul knew, and he stopped pleading for that, but he knew, he knew that the Lord's will was clear and he would give him strength. to endure the thorn, whatever it was, 2 Corinthians 12. So those are just a few examples, and you can think of more, no doubt. And from these examples, and especially the example of Christ in the garden, we learn that submission to the will of God does not lead to prayerlessness. It doesn't lead to indifferent resignation but to earnest pleading for relief, healing, and deliverance. But what we notice too, and this is very important, that this pleading must be done from the right posture, and that is the posture of heart. a posture of faith. We must do it in faith, trusting in God's goodness and in God's power, knowing that he's our God, and for us, knowing that he's our Father, who is both able and willing to help us in all of our times of need. So our posture ought to be a posture of faith, but also of humility, of holy reverence, not insisting that our will be done. not making demands of God. That's not consistent with this humility and this submission to God's will. But as Paul says in Philippians 4, when he says not to be anxious, but he says, let your requests be made known to God. Not that you come demanding, but you make requests. And he says, even with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. So in all of our prayers for relief, Whether we speak the words of not, the overruling desire needs to be the words of Christ when he said, nevertheless, not what I will, but what you will. We need to think often about what exactly that meant for Christ, to pray that prayer, to mean that prayer. And never was there such a costly prayer Because what did it mean for Jesus? It certainly meant intense suffering, beyond what we can imagine. It meant shame, public shame and humiliation. But more than all of that, and this is what really explains the agony of this moment in the life of Christ, it meant that he was taking the cup of divine wrath, the wrath of God for our sins, which his father was placing in his hands. and that he was going to drink that cup completely for us. So as we think of those words, and even as we apply them to our own lives, not my will but yours, we ought to reflect often on what that meant for Jesus and what it cost him and what it gained for us, life and salvation. Practically speaking though, How do we apply this lesson to our own lives? I don't know if you've felt this way, but I have at times. I felt like I cannot really pray for something fervently and repeatedly without elevating my own will above God's. Have you felt that way, that if I'm really earnest and I'm praying again and again sometimes I have felt like perhaps I'm elevating my will above God's. But on the other hand there's been times when I've been hesitant to say it either out loud if we've been in a prayer meeting here or just in my heart I've been hesitant to say not what I will but what you either from a lack of faith or with the wrong idea that that would somehow take away from the earnestness of my prayers, that I couldn't really be earnest and plead with God and also say, yet not my will but yours. Am I alone in that? You've felt that tension before in your prayer life. But what we see in the example of Christ is that fervency in prayer and humble submission to God's will not only can but should exist in harmony together. Now recently in our life together, you know that we have prayed intensely and often for baby Gus, for his life. Now our will in this situation has been very clear and it's been unanimous. We know what we want. We know what our will is, but God's will still remains hidden, and such is the case with many other issues in our life. But we've prayed with an earnestness, I think it's safe to say, at least since I have been here for roughly 10 years, we've prayed with an earnestness that has been unmatched for the life of Gus. And yet I trust that we've done so and continue to do so in humble submission, knowing that God's will might be different from ours. Let me ask you, is there something you desire that is agreeable to God's revealed will? We're never at liberty to pray for something that is not agreeable with God's will revealed in the word of God. That should be clear. But is there something that you want, be it relief or something else, that is agreeable to God's will? Maybe you want to be married. I know several of you do here. And we know from the word of God, that's a good desire. It is a good thing. We even read, he who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord, Proverbs 18, 22. God ordained marriage. Maybe some of you want a better job or a higher paying job, provided you're content. That could be a very good request. You want to provide for your family better, et cetera, et cetera. Maybe you want some kind of relief or healing for yourself, for another person who needs healing, the salvation of the lost, protection from harm, the sparing of life, on and on and we could go. There are many things that we might want. that are not disagreeable, but in fact agreeable to the revealed will of God. And I wanna say to you that we have biblical grounds for praying to God for all of these things and more. We can do it without feeling like we're demanding, as long as we have this heart that we see in our Savior. Truly not my will, but yours, O God. But we can plead earnestly for these things. So we might give ourselves to fervent and repeated prayer for these things, but always in humility, submitting our desires to God's perfect will. Now, you need not always say with your lips, not what I will, but what you will, but that must be the settled disposition of your heart. Really, it comes down to this. Do you and I believe that God with whom all things are possible, as Jesus says here in verse 36, do you and I believe that God, who is infinitely good and wise and knows in the end all things, do we really believe that he knows what is best for us? I think that's what it comes down to. And also that he really knows what will work out for his greater glory. So you see, we pray in faith. trusting that God does know best and that he knows how he will be most glorified in us and through us. Let me give a final thought on this point. And it's simply to ask when, if ever, should we stop praying for something or change the focus of our prayers? This is a hard question, and I don't think that there's a one-size-fits-all response that I can give you from the Word of God. In general, we know that God wants us to endure in prayer. Jesus spoke a parable to make this point. We have that in Luke 18, teaching that men always ought to pray and not lose heart. So we know it's God's will that we persevere in prayer. And he might want us to persevere long in prayer, to test us, to refine us, to strengthen us in the end, and to bring him glory, more glory in the end. Think of Gus again. God could have made his heart beat immediately, but he didn't. We're able to look back a little bit now and see all that God did in that window of time where we're pleading and pleading and pleading, making us wait and endure for our good and his glory. But we have to say there's surely times to stop praying for something. Like Moses, God said enough. Or David, when he got that answer from the Lord, my grace is sufficient, you think he went on praying and pleading? No, he said, I'm content to be weak and to have this thorn if the power of Christ would be more manifested in my weakness. We might wish that God would do that. tell us so clearly, enough, stop praying. Or if you've seen these flow charts, these decision flow charts, so you could just go step by step and say, okay, if this, then this, and then you make your way here until you have a decision. We don't have a divinely inspired decision flow chart. So what's the way forward? It's the way of wisdom, the path of wisdom. So as we're communing with God in prayer, in the careful and prayerful study of his word. As we're seeking out godly counsel from people whom we trust, the Lord will guide us in these things. Now this question was very personal for me a few years ago when my mom was dying. I never stopped believing that God could take the cancer away from her, remove it from her brain. But I also knew that in the normal course of things, she did not have long to live. And I also knew as I studied the word of God, that God never promised healing in this life. Though he might, though he was able. And so it became clear to me that the focus of my prayers ought to shift to praying for her faith. praying that she would be strengthened, that she would know a sense of God's help and presence as she's going through that valley of death, that she would know the Lord, her shepherd, is with her. So many of you have similar things that you could say. So that's the first thing I want us to see here. One of the fruits of a godly submission is prayer, even fervent prayer for relief. But secondly, Lament, lament, or pouring out our anguish, especially pouring it out to God and doing so reverently. As we look at Jesus again, this perfect example of submission to the Father's will, of Him receiving the cup placed in His hand, we see Him in anguish, in agony. He expresses this too. Notice to the three that he took with him. The 11 were with him. Judas is gone. They go to the garden. He leaves eight there at the entrance. And then he takes the three, Peter, James, and John, a little bit further. And it's to these three that Jesus unburdens his soul and tells them of his grief. My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. That's in verse 34. And then, of course, he expresses this anguish in prayer to his father. And from this, we learn that submitting to God's will is not opposed to a true and deep sense of pain and grief and sorrow. Submitting to God's will does not mean that we have to bottle up expressions or feelings of pain and grief. The funeral of that young woman I mentioned earlier was a solemn event. It was full of weeping and sorrow for a tragic loss. And I wasn't able to go in person, but I was able to do the live stream, to tune into that. And it was a moving service, but there was something that the preacher said. And at one sense, I appreciated the point he was trying to make, but there's something that he said that just troubled me. As he's talking about how we are to deal with our grief, and our pain and he spoke of lamenting in terms of cursing towards God, yelling at God, screaming heavenward. And I can understand how that could be comforting to some when they want to yell and scream and they're angry and confused. He went on to say that Jesus is the best model of this kind of cursing. I do think there's an element of truth in this. And it is that we may and should turn our grief heavenward. That's a right thing to do. But cursing, yelling, screaming, this is not the example that we find in Jesus or elsewhere in the Bible. That is not the picture of biblical godly lamenting. Again, in our trials, God doesn't expect us to be inhuman. He doesn't expect us to act in a way contrary to how he created us. and knit us together. He didn't create us to respond to suffering as lifeless robots, or just like the animals, as we were considering this morning, created in the image of God. He didn't make us that way, to respond in cold and indifferent ways to pain. So suppressing our grief and sorrow is not a godly response. Just say, I'm gonna cope with it by just sort of pushing it aside. and leaving it undealt with. Seeking to drown it out with mind-numbing entertainment, which is a very easily accessible and easy thing to do. I'll just numb my mind. Or with drugs. Or with alcohol. A lot of people do this. Drown out their sorrows. Sometimes a constant stream of activity, which seems maybe a little bit better, a stream of activity that keeps the mind occupied elsewhere. Anything to keep from really dealing with the pain and the grief. None of these responses are godly. Patient submission to God's will does not and cannot bypass our emotions and their proper expression. We're not free to give unrestrained vent to our emotions, to our grief, whatever it might be. We're not free to allow ourselves to be utterly consumed by our grief and our sorrows. That would be to commit an opposite error. On the one hand, bottling it up and ignoring it or drowning it out, but we cannot allow our emotions to control us. But rather, we are called to exercise that self-control, which is the fruit of the Holy Spirit, even in our lamenting and in our grief. And of course we see that perfectly in Christ. We have the perfect pattern. But we could also turn to other places in scripture. You could think of Job, which God sets up for us as this example of great patience in the midst of afflictions that are really unimaginable to us. And what we have there is an example of a man responding with grief, shaving his head, tearing his garments, other things. There's real grief he's not putting on a show. Real grief, and yet he submits to God. We read that he even bows in worship to God. So Job is an example. As we look for patterns of godly sorrow, of course we look to the Psalms, where we have so many examples of godly sorrow and grieving, lamenting, So the Psalter is full of spirit-inspired laments. And in fact, people have categorized the Psalms, and the largest category is lament Psalms. Over a third of the Psalms, of the 150, have been categorized as lament Psalms. Without question, Jesus was familiar with them. Familiar with all the Psalms, with all the scriptures, But I think especially familiar with these Psalms, we see him taking up some of the language. It's suggested that this language here in Mark 14, 34, when he's speaking to the disciples, my soul is exceedingly sorrowful. It's suggested that that is an echo of that memorable refrain of Psalms 42 and 43. Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Or perhaps Psalm 143, four, my spirit is overwhelmed within me. My heart within me is distressed. And who could forget the lament that Christ takes up on the cross as he's breathing his last from Psalm 22 when he says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Our word lament is interesting. It actually comes from a Latin word meaning weeping and wailing. That tells you a little something about what lament is. It's to express profound sorrow or grief, to mourn passionately, we could say, over some loss, over some occurrence, some painful reality, lament. In the Lament Psalms, this takes on a more or less set form. And what we find is not cursing at God or yelling heavenward, but expressions of deep pain and sorrow and even confusion. We find that. But we find it mingled with earnest petitions and with faith and with hope. So biblical lament is not an irreverent raging against God, giving free vent to our emotions Godward and screaming heavenward. That's not biblical lament, but it's an act of reverent devotion. It is taking our grief and pain to the best possible place, to the throne of grace, taking it to God. taking it in prayer to our God and our Father who knows and cares. He knows our circumstances better than we do. He knows our needs better than we do. He sees us. He hears our cries. He sees our tears. And he cares about it. And so who better to go to than our God with our grief and with our pain? For us, as with the psalmists, lament sometimes involves a mourning over our sin. That's something Christ never could lament, grieving over his own sins. But rather what we see with Christ is this grief and this anguish over our sins, which he is going to bear in his body on the tree. But we have to acknowledge this element of lament in our lives of those who continue to sin and need the grace of God. There's this element of confession, of godly sorrow and of grief over our own sins and take that to God by all means. Psalm 51 is a lament over David's own sin. We are to lament our sin, if nothing else, our sin, to come to God to confess it, to express our grief that we've offended him and sinned against him, and to plead for him to be merciful and gracious to us. When you think about the prevalence of lament in the Psalms, it's remarkable. as we think about our culture, even among Christians, to avoid this kind of thing. And not every Christian, but maybe you found this to be the case. Certain Christian bookstores you walk in and you wouldn't get any sense that a third of the Psalter has laments and grief. You would get the idea that to be godly and to submit to the will of God is to always be wearing a smile. to put on a smile, and to be happy, and when people ask you how you're doing, to say everything's fine. Now, I know many of you do not do that, because you know the Word of God. And I'm thankful, and I'm just reminding you of that. There is a place for this grieving, and lamenting, and expressions of that grief. Based on the prevalence of the Lament Psalms, one person says that the experience of anguish and puzzlement in the life of faith is not a sign of deficient faith, but is intrinsic to the very nature of faith. Now, as we close this point, I wanna give three simple practical applications. And the first is to learn to unburden your soul to others and to God. So we need to learn to unburden our souls to others and to God. It's good to go to others with our grief, and especially to those who are closest to us, to trusted friends. We might call them bosom friends. So you notice that Jesus didn't express this to the other eight, but it's when he took the three a little bit further in the garden that he unburdened his soul. to Peter, James, and John, the inner circle within the inner circle. So it's good for us to do this. We ought to do this, to share our griefs with one another. And this helps us to bear each other's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. But the best thing we can do is to take our grief and our pain to God. and to express it reverently to God. Pour out your soul to God and let him know. He knows how you feel, but let him know and tell him and cry out to God humbly and reverently. He alone is able to sustain us. We can unburden best on God, who not only says, you may come to me and cast your burdens on me, But he says, do come to me and cast your cares upon me because I care for you. I love you, I will support you, I will sustain you. We have every incentive in the word of God to go to God in prayer with our deepest pains and sorrows and to unburden ourself before the throne of grace. Second thing, take up biblical patterns and use them. Take up biblical patterns for lament and use them. Note well the pattern of Christ's prayer here in the garden in verse 36. There's an address, Abba, Father. And it's likely this is just a summary of his prayer, but these are the main elements. There's an address, Abba, Father. And we, of course, are taught by Christ to pray our Father in heaven. So address God, and as you do so, think about that. My Father, our Father in heaven, consider that relationship and all that it means. But notice then Jesus goes on, he's expressing his anguish, and he expresses his confidence in God. He says, all things are possible for you. He goes on to make an earnest request, take this cup away from me, but all of it, all of it he, submits to the will of God. There's a humble resignation. So there's much to learn here from the pattern of Christ. But this is filled out even more as we turn to the Psalms and elsewhere. Use the Psalms as a guide if you've never done this. Consider the Lament Psalms. If it's sin in your life, I can think of no better place than Psalm 51. Take that as your own prayer. But as you do so, Think of Christ and his finished work. Don't read it like an Old Testament saint. Read it like a New Testament saint. Take up these laments, learn from them, and you'll note their various elements. The things that you usually find are an address to God in these lament psalms. Oh God. There's a lament or complaint letting God know what it is. Enemies have surrounded me, or perhaps my own sin. There's complaint. laments. There's an expression of faith and confidence. so often in these lament psalms. Confidence in God and in his character and in his power. And then there's specific petitions for some deliverance, some relief. Save me, oh God, from my enemies. Save me from this. Heal me, whatever it might be. And then often it concludes with praise or declarations of hope. You see how instructive that is. Study these laments. And this teaches us something about what it looks like to have godly lament. all of these elements. So we should learn to unburden our soul to others and to God, take up biblical patterns and use them, but a third simple practical application is that in all of your sorrow, speaking to you brothers and sisters, in all of our sorrow, do not lose hope. Do not lose hope. You have to reason with yourself. Many of you know Martin Lloyd-Jones and his famous advice to preach to yourself. Preach to yourself what you know, especially in these times when it's hard to submit to God's will. Why are you downcast, oh my soul? Psalmist didn't stop there, did he? He said, hope in God, hope in God. He's preaching to himself, we have to do the same thing. And if the psalmist, thinking of Psalm 130, which we looked at briefly last Lord's Day, at the end of the sermon, if the psalmist there crying out of the depths can finish that prayer by saying, hope in the Lord, and declaring, for he is merciful, and also with him is abundant redemption, how much more can we, who have beheld our Redeemer in Christ, when we're crying out from the depths of despair, also rise in hope and saying, hope in God through Jesus Christ. So you see, this is the pattern that we see. So never lose hope. Gethsemane reminds us of our hope. It reminds us of the grounds of our hope because we see Jesus agonizing and praying and ultimately for us. that he would lay down his life, that he would finish that work that God gave him to do. That's what submitting to the will of God looked like for him. So we see in this a picture of our hope. We see our Savior not backing down, not shrinking from the horrors of the cross and even the outpouring and the drinking to the full the wrath of God. And so we remember our hope. Don't lose hope. Never lose hope. And this morning, I wanna ask you, do you have this hope in your suffering? God uses all kinds of things in his providence to bring people to himself, and often it's suffering, some loss, whatever it might be. If you're suffering and you don't know this hope, let that lead you, your suffering, to the place where you can find a solid hope in Christ alone. You don't have, you're going to face suffering, but you don't have to face it without hope. You can have hope beyond this life. So we've seen that prayer, and we've seen that lament, the two are very closely related, inseparable really, are two fruits of submission, and now let's consider thirdly and finally, contentment is another fruit. contentment, we could call it quiet resting in the providence of God. Quiet resting in God's providence. What do I mean by quiet? Well, two things. I have two things in mind. First, what we looked at when we were looking at Psalm 131, where David is saying, I've calmed and I've quieted myself. That inward quiet of soul. Having a calm and quiet soul is not at odds with what we've just been considering, lament. On the surface, it might seem like it. But a troubled soul can still be a quieted soul that is resting confidently in God. We see that in Jesus. My soul is troubled, he says. But Jesus, all the while, was resting confidently in God. And we see that especially as he rises from prayer in the garden, and we see his composure, we see even his calmness and his resolve as he meets his betrayer, and as he meets head on the hour, the appointed hour, and all of the suffering and the death that would follow, even all the way to the cross. resting, trusting in God. He says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? There's still confidence. There's still a resting in God. The second thing I mean, though, by quiet resting in the providence of God is not complaining and grumbling against God, murmuring against God. That was one of the great sins of Israel, and we're not going to turn there, but you know it well. Pastor Jim referred to it last week, his own children saying, didn't we read this already? And saying, no, they're just complaining again. So again and again and again, we see Israel complaining. It was no minor sin. It was a serious offense against God that they complained against their God. Paul specifically addresses this sin in Philippians 2, and he makes it a matter of their testimony before the world when he says, do all things without complaining and disputing. And I believe primarily he means against God. And do this so that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation among whom you shine as lights in the world. So to be a complaining people, this neither pleases God or brings him glory. It's not a good testimony to the world. There's a world of difference though as we think about this and you say, wait, isn't lamenting in a sense complaining? Yes. But there is a world of difference between complaining to God and complaining against God. We may and ought to complain to God, but not against him. We must never allow our lamenting to turn into ungodly complaining and murmuring against God. So we have to guard our hearts always, calling to mind such things that we know well, preaching to ourselves about the goodness and the faithfulness and the mercy and the kindness and the power and the wisdom of God and all of the promises of God. So contentment is a fruit of submission. And what are we talking about with contentment? What is it? Let me just give you a very short definition and a book recommendation, Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment. He 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. It 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. That's contentment. And it's something we must learn by grace and often by painful experience like Paul. You remember Paul in jail writing Philippians chapter four. He says, I've learned to be content. He says, in whatever state I am, I have learned to be content, Philippians 4.11. So for some of us, what is this learning, what is this fight going to look at? For some of us, it might particularly be in regard to your condition in life, to your state in life. Sickness or health, poverty or wealth, something in regard to your state or condition in life. might be where the battle rages for you to be content. For some, it might be in regard to some good gift desired, as we considered earlier. You wanna be married, or maybe you're married and you wanna have children, and God has withheld that. Or you want more children, and God has withheld that. That might be the battle for you. For some, it might be in regard to your calling. It might be in regard to your gifts that God has given to you. Maybe you look at other people's gifts and you wish that you had that gift, or you look at someone else's calling and you wish that you had his or her calling. And so the battle really for all of us is with a covetous spirit, with an inordinate desire for what God has not, at least for the moment, given to us, what is not ours. And with this, I wanna quickly conclude. What is the key, or we might even say the secret to contentment, to Christian contentment? Not dwelling on the things that God has not given to us, but dwelling on the things that he has given to us in Christ. Thinking about all that we have, in Christ, every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Considering such things as God not being against us, but for us, Romans 8. Considering that God will never leave us or forsake us, Hebrews 13, that's actually given as the grounds. Why ought we to be content? Because God has said he'll never leave you or forsake you. So there's a key to contentment. God's presence with you, his promised presence. And also this, that the Lord is our portion forever. As we read so often, for example, in Psalm 16, the psalmist says, oh Lord, you are the portion of my inheritance and my cup. You maintain my lot. You are my portion, oh God. So this, in a word, is the secret to living with contentment, is to resting satisfied in God as your portion. God has given himself to us, and he's given us his son and everything we need and more in his son. We have every blessing in Christ. So these are just three fruits. of humble submission to the will of God. Prayer, lament, and this contentment, which is satisfied in God ultimately and alone. And may God increase these fruits in our life. Let's pray. Our Father, again, we thank you for your word and how precious it is to us to be reminded this morning of who you are, even of what you are, your attributes. Lord, we thank you for your love toward us. We thank you that you have not withheld blessing from us, that you have not withheld your only son. Lord, you have given him to us, not sparing him. How will you not also graciously with him give us all things? So Lord, teach us contentment. May these fruits of submitting to your will abound in our lives, that we would be a people fervent in prayer, even lamenting taking our grief to you, but always with reverence and with hope. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.