Contentment or Corruption? — Part One

Father, we do lift our eyes to the hills and say, “Where does our help come from?” And we affirm with the psalmist, “Our help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”[1] And we recognize that in these moments now, we’re not about the business of simply listening to a man expound his views, but we are concerned to bring our lives underneath the instruction of your unerring truth in the words of the Bible. Surely, it is by this book that you keep our feet from falling and our lives from stumbling. So instruct us, we pray, and teach us in the way that we should go, so that when we become old, we won’t wander from it like those who “pierced themselves with many griefs” because they loved gold rather than God. Amen.

I invite you to turn with me again to 1 Timothy 6 and to the verses that we read. And our subject this morning is essentially contentment. Contentment. What has been referred to as “the rare jewel of Christian contentment.”[2] The preceding verses set the context for this instruction. These verses, 3–5, we dealt with two weeks ago, and we noticed that the false teachers viewed godliness as “a means to financial gain.”[3] And Paul was chiding them for this. Indeed, he was warning against this. And he described these individuals as men of corruption: their minds had been corrupted, they were warped as far as the truth of the gospel had been concerned, and they had begun to think that they could turn godliness to their own personal profit.

Now, having introduced this notion of profit or of gain, he picks up on it with great wisdom and skill, and he says, “If you want to think in terms of godliness and gain, let me suggest to you that you are actually half right. Because,” he says, “there is a link between godliness and gain, and it is that which is present when godliness is accompanied by contentment. You don’t have godliness apart from contentment, and you don’t have contentment apart from godliness. These two elements are interwoven with one another.”

Now, when we think this morning about contentment, what are we thinking about? Perhaps we can define it in this way: that contentment is a sense of satisfaction that results from having what one desires or from not desiring more than one has. A sense of satisfaction that arises from being content with what one has or from not desiring anything more than we have. Epicurus, who lived in the fourth century—the father of Epicureanism, which has been summarized at the end of the twentieth century as “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die”—Epicurus, interestingly, said that the secret to contentment does not lie in adding to a man’s possessions but in taking away from his desires. I think it’s a very helpful way to think about it: that the secret of contentment does not lie in adding to my possessions but actually is to be found in taking away from my desires.

You don’t have godliness apart from contentment, and you don’t have contentment apart from godliness. These two elements are interwoven with one another.

Now, the absence of such contentment is—as we’re going to see both this morning and then more significantly this evening—the absence of such contentment is absolutely ruinous. And there are indications of this all around us. I recently read and have filed an article in which the police discovered the body of a suicide. And on the victim’s body they found thirty thousand dollars in cash and a note which reads as follows, or read as follows: “I have discovered during my life that piles of money do not bring happiness. I am taking my own life because I can no longer stand the solitude and boredom. When I was an ordinary workman in New York I was happy. Now that I possess millions, I am infinitely sad and prefer death.”[4] Now, that is just one illustration that is picked from a whole folder full of indications that the truth of God’s Word is exactly that truth, and that when we come to think in terms of contentment, if we are ever going to approximate to understanding it, believing it, and living it, then it is essential that we turn to this book.

And what I would like to do this morning is to consider with you just this concept. If you take notes, in my own notes I have A, “The Concept.” B is “The Contrast,” which doesn’t come till we get to verse 9, with the people that want to get rich. And we won’t get to verse 9 this morning; I’m pretty confident of that. So we really have one point, and that is this concept of contentment.

Contentment and Godliness Go Hand in Hand

J. B. Phillips paraphrases verse 6, “There is a real profit, of course, but it comes only to those who live contentedly as God would have them live.” Living contentedly as God would have us live. It is imperative that we understand that Paul is not suggesting here for a moment that contentment as an ideal is the key to life, and certainly, he’s not suggesting that it is the key to death.

Now, the reason I mention this is because it is fairly trendy to think in terms of contentment. It is not difficult to engage people in conversations these days, and they are very, very happy to talk about simplifying things. And they want to tell you about how they have been simplifying their lives, and how this particular guru or this particular philosophy or whatever it might be has led them to this process of simplification. It often leads them to organic farming and to stress-free living and to yoga and to a number of other things, but the fact is that in their desire for contentment, in the vast majority of cases, these individuals are not only disinterested in the gospel; they are radically opposed to the gospel. And so if we were to be so foolish as to fasten on the idea of contentment in abstraction from what the Bible teaches in relationship to godliness, then we may well find ourselves as bedfellows with Buddhists and Confucianists and Hare Krishnas and a whole list of other people united in a common quest for contentment—and especially a contentment that is discovered in simplifying our lives.

Now, there is no question that most of us could do well with simplifying our lives, and we’ll come to that. But the point that I’m endeavoring to make is this: contentment and godliness are horse and cart. They go hand in hand. Paul has already distinguished in 1 Timothy 4:8 between physical values and spiritual values. He says, “Physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things.” And when we tackled those verses, we said how people say, “As long as you have your health, that’s all that matters.” And we said, “No, that’s not all that matters, because a healthy body with a sick soul is a tragic thing.” And so people will say, “Well, as long as you’re contented, that’s all that matters.” No, it’s not all that matters! Because contentment and godliness are completely interwoven in the instruction of Scripture.

Now, this is borne out when we realize that word for contentment which Paul is using here, autarkeia, means, essentially, self-sufficiency. And the Stoic philosophers made much of this word. Indeed, it was one of their favorite words. Because remember, the Stoics—unlike the Epicureans, who were just immersing themselves in stuff—the Stoics found their life and lifestyle in distancing themselves from the surrounding environment. And so the apex for the Stoic was a sense of self-sufficiency whereby they were removed from all of the clamor and from all of the clutter of stuff that was offered to them as a source of satisfaction.

Now, Paul obviously recognizes this, and he picks up this word, and he makes use of it. But we need to understand Paul as Paul makes himself understood. For Paul, contentment with godliness was not about self-sufficiency. It was about Christ-sufficiency. When he summarizes the life that he lives in just a few words in Philippians 1:21, he says, “To me, to live is Christ and to die is gain”—said, “If you want to understand my perspective on life, then you need to understand that my life is Christ, and Christ is my life. And when I face my death, Christ is my sufficiency.” So we dare not read into this statement late twentieth-century ideas of contentment, but rather, we must understand that for the Christian, contentment involves submission to and delight in our heavenly Father’s wise disposal. Christian contentment is submission to and delight in what God our Father gives us.

Isn’t that what Jesus was teaching in Matthew chapter 6, when he says to these folks, “Do[n’t] worry about your life”?[5] “Why do you worry about [your] clothes?” he says.[6] Do you ever worry about your clothes? Be honest: How many of you worried about your clothes this morning before you came to church? Okay, fine. Jesus says, “Don’t worry. Don’t go around saying, ‘What are we going to eat?’ or ‘What are we going wear?’ or ‘What are we going to drink?’” He says, “That’s what pagans do. They run after all these things.”[7] Now, notice this phrase: “Your heavenly Father knows … you need them.”[8] I don’t know if you underline in your Bible, but if you do, this is a good one to underline: “Your heavenly Father knows … you need them.”

Christian contentment is submission to and delight in what God our Father gives us.

You see, the Christian worldview is that the creator God did not simply create the world and take his hands off it. That’s deism. He created the world and is organically involved in the world that he has made. And therefore, he is interested in the affairs of his children. We have been intricately wrought in our mother’s womb.[9] He has guarded and guided us through that pilgrimage. Whatever lies beyond that, God remains sovereign in these things. And for the Christian, contentment is in recognizing Father knows best. The hymn writer puts it like this:

Day by day and with each passing moment,
Strength I find to meet my trials there,
Trusting in my Father’s wise bestowment
What have I to worry or to fear?[10]

The Fixed Points of Our Lives

Now, the way in which we will get to grips with this, says Paul, is by thinking about the fixed points in between which our lives are lived. Isn’t that what he’s saying here in verse 7? “For we brought nothing into the world.” That’s our arrival. “And we can take nothing out of it.” That’s our departure. So he says, “You’ll never understand contentment unless you put down these two fixed points: entry and exit.” The Christian does not believe in reincarnation. We’re not going around in a circle. We’re not coming back as something else or someone else. We’re heading for the exit. The entry was planned; the exit is also planned. All the days of our lives are written in his book before one of them came to be.[11] God is in charge of all of that. “Now,” says Paul, “think about godliness with contentment in light of these two poles.”

Think about your arrival, or think about the arrival of your children. I’ve been present for three natural births, and I’ve heard of countless others, and as of yet, I have not heard of a birth whereby an infant came into the world bringing packages—little Nordstrom bags and little Bath & Body Works bags or stuff like that, little lipsticks and everything: “Ooh, here I am!” It never happened! It doesn’t happen. Well, when they kind of got their bottoms smacked and woke up, were they disappointed to be without the Nordstrom’s bags? No. They were totally satisfied to come squirting in stark naked into the provision that God had made for their helpless existence. Now, Paul says, “If you want to think contentment, think about your naked arrival.”

Isn’t that what Job does as he puts things to rights as he opens his book? Despite all of his problems, he says, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I [shall] depart.”[12] He says, “Let’s just put down the fixed points here for a moment.” You have the same thing when the writer of Ecclesiastes addresses the issues in Ecclesiastes 5, I think it is. Yeah, verse 15: “Naked a man comes from his mother’s womb, and as he comes, so he departs. He takes nothing from his labor that he can carry in is hand.” All human beings made a satisfactory beginning to life without bringing any material stuff.

Now, here it is: the wisdom of contentment has its basis, says Paul, in understanding our possessionless entry and exit. Consider your exit. Are you planning on taking luggage? If you are, I suggest it’s foolish—unless you’re planning to build a mausoleum and surround yourself with all your toys and tributes to any apparent success you may care to boast in. But it will all rot. No one will care. No one will visit. No one will know. “Think,” he says. “Consider your exit.” All the stuff that we manage to amass in the journey through life—and it is considerable for each of us—all of that stuff has to be checked at the tollbooth of death. When you come to that tollbooth, you leave everything behind, and you go through as you arrived: completely with nothing. There are no pockets in a shroud.

Now, when this dawns on the life of an individual, they are at least in the position to be able to think through to some sensible conclusions. In “The Ballad of John and Yoko” (with which I’m sure you’re all so very familiar), there is a line that pops out as if from nowhere, and Lennon sings,

Last night the wife said,
“[O] boy, when you’re dead,
You [can’t] take nothing with you but your soul.”[13]

Now, where did that come from? Presumably, the two of them are sitting round at night talking metaphysics, talking about life. Goodness gracious, they had all the money in the world and all the time in the world to talk about whatever they wanted to talk about! She’s one of the richest landowners at that point in New York City, in terms of the Dakota Building and all the apartments that she has possessed, but she says to him, “Hey, John, when you go, you don’t take anything!” And it dawns on him, and he writes it down in the song. He then goes, “Honeymooning down by the Seine, took the last train back from Paris,”[14] and so on, and on with his journey.

The Bare Necessities

Now, while there are no pockets in a shroud, and while we arrive naked and we leave essentially naked, we don’t live naked, and we don’t live without pockets. So the real issue is: What goes in our pockets? Because stuff does go in our pockets.

Well, that’s where verse 8 balances out verse 7. If we brought nothing into the world, we can take nothing out of it—principle. Understood. “But,” he says, “if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that.” There are certain things we need to get through life: one is shelter, and the other is food. So that’s what he’s talking about. The word that is used for clothing speaks not only of the stuff that we would put immediately on our bodies but speaks of the shelter in which we might live as within a dwelling place. And he says, “So if we have food and we have clothes, there is the basis of contentment.”

It’s essentially what you have worked out so masterfully in The Jungle Book, right? You’re all thinking of it already, aren’t you? “Bare necessities, the simple bare necessities.”[15] That’s what he’s saying. Oh, you were thinking, “I’m the king of the swingers, … the jungle VIP.”[16] Sorry, that was the wrong one. No, “Bare necessities, the simple bare necessities.” Is that what he’s saying here? “If we have food and clothing, here is the basics for contentment.”

Now, loved ones, you’ve got to get this. I have to get this. This is absolutely pivotal. Here in verse 8 is the level at which our expectations and consequently our contentment should be pitched. This is the level of expectation for contentment. Food and clothes: contentment. Not food and clothes plus, but “Food and clothes—we will be content with that,” he says. Discontentedness in life—my discontentedness in life—is on account of being seduced into believing the lie that a man’s life consists in the abundance of his possessions. That’s what Jesus says in Luke chapter 12. He says to his disciples, “Listen, if you want to think about a man’s life, a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of what he possesses.”[17]

Now, this was brought home graphically to me yesterday in the funeral service. No matter how successful or how notorious my late father-in-law was within the Chrysler Corporation, he didn’t take any of that with him. And what he left behind was a legacy in relationship to Christian things—in believing children and in believing grandchildren and in great-grandchildren that will be nurtured in the framework of faith. It would have been a dreadful waste of sixty-nine years of a life, and some forty-three of them as a Christian life, had he not at least begun to understand some of these things.

“Godliness with contentment is great gain,” he says. The two things go together. “We brought nothing into the world; we’re taking nothing out of it.” Those are the fixed points. “But,” he says, “if we have food and clothes, we’ll be content with that.”

Going Down the River of Life

My favorite illustration from literature of this comes from Jerome K. Jerome’s little book, which I’m sure you all read regularly, called Three Men in a Boat. It was actually published in 1889, and it’s still in print. This is a fresh copy from the bookstore on Mayfield Road. So it’s got to be a pretty good book if after all these years it is still in print. And it’s the story—a humorous story, a little quaint for our years now—but the story of three men going down the Thames on a boat and the preparations that they make for this journey. And when they meet together at the side of the river, the first thing that they determine they need to settle is what it is that they’re going to take with them on their journey. And if you’d like to relax for just a moment, I’m going to read a little bit of the story to you:

The first list we made out had to be discarded. It was clear that the upper reaches of the Thames would not allow of the navigation of a boat sufficiently large to take the things we had set down as indispensable; so we tore the list up, and looked at one another.

George said:

“You know we[’re] on [the] wrong track altogether. We must not think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can’t do without.”

George comes out really quite sensible at times. You’d be surprised. I call that downright wisdom, not merely as regards the present case, but with reference to our trip up the river of life, generally.

So now we’ve got an analogy, okay? Says, “Let’s not think about going down the Thames. Let’s think about going down the river of life.” Then he comments,

How many people, on that voyage, load up the boat till it is … in danger of swamping with a store of foolish things which they think essential to the pleasure and comfort of the trip, but which are really only useless lumber.

How they pile the poor little craft mast-high with fine clothes … big houses … useless servants, and a host of swell friends that do[n’t] care twopence for them, and that they do[n’t] care three ha’pence for; with expensive entertainments that nobody enjoys…

I love that. You know, you have to go to these things… Well, I better not mention what it is. But anyway. And you’re sitting in there, and after about seven minutes, you’re going, “There can’t be a soul in here enjoying this. We’ve got to go for ice cream.” And you have to endure it to the end.

With expensive entertainments that nobody enjoys, with formalities and fashions, with pretense and ostentation, and with—oh, heaviest, maddest lumber of all!—the dread of what will my neighbor think, with luxuries that only cloy, with pleasures that [are a] bore, with empty show that, like the criminal’s iron crown of yore, makes to bleed and swoon the aching head that wears it!

It is lumber …—all lumber! Throw it overboard. It makes the boat so heavy to pull, you nearly faint at the oars. It makes it so cumbersome and dangerous to manage, you never know a moment’s freedom from anxiety and care, never … a moment’s rest for dreamy laziness—no time to watch the windy shadows skimming lightly o’er the shallows, or the glittering sunbeams flitting in and out among the ripples, or the great trees by the margin looking down at their own image, or the woods all green and golden, or the lilies white and yellow, or the somber-waving rushes, or the sedges, or the orchids, or the blue forget-me-nots.

Throw the lumber over, man! Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need—a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, some one to love … some one to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two…

That’s—I’m not editing this.

… and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.

You will find the boat easier to pull then, and it will not be so liable to upset, and it will not matter so much if it does upset.

See, that’s the problem. See, we get so much crud that if it upsets, we can’t deal with the upset. Says, “But if you do it this way, then even if it flips over, it won’t be that big of a deal, because you don’t have that much junk on it.”

You will have time to think as well [as] to work. Time to drink in life’s sunshine—time to listen to the Æolian music that the wind of God draws from the human heartstrings around us—time to—

“I beg your pardon,” he says, “I [really] quite forgot [myself].”[18] But there it is.

Now, there isn’t a person in this room right now who doesn’t feel themselves pulled and pushed and moved by this. There can’t be. I mean, if you do not, then you have some issues you need to deal with. You’re in need of treatment.

Contentment, Not Poverty

Now, here’s the question: Is Paul issuing a call to poverty? No. Is Paul condemning riches? No. In fact, if you look at verse 17, to which we’ll come in a later study, he gives instructions to those who are rich. This little section has to do with those who want to get rich. And he has a certain way of thinking for those who are tempted to believe that getting rich is the answer to life, and he instructs them in that way. But there are some people who are rich. The rich people are to make sure that they don’t get arrogant, they don’t put their hope in their riches, “which is so uncertain,” but they “put their hope in God”—now notice the final phrase of verse 17—“who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.” He “richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.”

Paul is not issuing a call to poverty or to a certain level of simplicity beyond which we sin. Rather, he is saying that whatever exceeds the basics of food and clothing can be gratefully received and can be enjoyed. But the essence of contentment is not in the other stuff. And he is saying if you don’t learn to be contented with food and clothes, then the amassing of all the other junk will hold out the notion of security, but it actually only creates anxiety. Because when you didn’t have anything, you didn’t have to worry about it. Now that you’ve got it, you have to worry about where it is. “Did it get serviced? Who’s looking after it? When will I go back for it? When does it…” and so on. It drives you totally nuts. But don’t leave here and go and buy yourself a hair shirt or phone Waterbed City to see if they have beds of nails for you to lie on. That would be easy, wouldn’t it? Oh yes, we could all do that: from where we are now to a shack in the woods with nothing. “We understand 1 Timothy 6:6. We have it mastered.” Tell me about your heart in the shack. Do you ever look over at the other guy’s shack and say, “Hey, he’s got a chimney on his. If I had a chimney, that would be the thing to have.”

Yeah, you see, the issue is not out here coming in. The issue is in here going out. You see, why is it that kids get steamed up about toys? If they’re contented when they arrive and they’ve got nothing really to play with, they only have stuff to eat, how come the appeal of toys and other people’s toys drive these little rascals nuts? Because they’re sinners, and because all of this stuff only appeals to their sinful nature in them, which is acquisitive and thinks that “with this little house, or this little bike, or this little bus, or this little empire, then I’ll be the king of my castle.” What is that? It’s an appeal to their inherent selfishness. That’s why secular man has no answer for these things; he can’t explain this. The answer is not in some radical externalizing of things, but it is in a change at the very core of my being. The other things that we have in life should never be regarded as necessities, because if we regard them as necessities, then when we do not have them, our contentment will be destroyed.

Do you understand that? When we turn luxuries into necessities, we jeopardize our ability for contentedness. No wonder we live in such a discontented age, because we’re told that the previous generation’s luxuries have become our necessities. So we cannot live now without a level of luxury which we have now deemed necessity. And in the absence of all of this stuff, there is an absence of godliness with contentment, which is great gain.

When we turn luxuries into necessities, we jeopardize our ability for contentedness.

But still we want to believe the lie. You know, if you talk with people, they’ll tell you not to believe the lie. Lady Alethea Savile, one of the Sloan Rangers of Knightsbridge of a few years ago, brought up with a very silver spoon in her mouth, on the fringes of royalty and moving in the kind of circles in London that invited her to every significant party and made it possible for her to purchase anything she chose on account of the resources of her father’s trust funds in her name: the Guardian described her as an intelligent girl who could see the worthlessness of the world she found herself in but couldn’t work out a way to make it more fulfilling.

Listen to what she said: “What I crave more than anything else is middle-class normality; ordinary, boring parents; ordinary, boring brothers and sisters; and ordinary, boring things.” So she drives through Knightsbridge in her XJS, and the kids on the corner say, “She must be happy with everything she has. And one day I’ll have a car like that, and one day I’ll shop in there, and one day I’ll have my hair done in there. And then I’ll be just as contented as she is.” Yeah, that’s probably right. You probably will. She would have stopped in the middle of the street and given you the car. She would have stopped in the street and set fire to the car, because she had never understood that godliness with contentment is great gain.

Calvin comments in this way: he says, “For nature is content with a little.” “Nature is content with a little and all that goes beyond natural usage is superfluous. Not that a more liberal use of possessions should be condemned as bad in itself, but a desire for it is always sinful.”[19] See? “Not that a more liberal use of possessions should be condemned as bad in itself,” but the prevailing, longing, driving, passionate commitment to have this as the source of life and contentment is, he says, “always sinful.”

And so we need to learn that the human heart finds satisfaction ultimately only in God, not in worldly accumulations—not actually even in the discarding of worldly accumulations. As the psalmist says, “Better the little that the righteous have than the wealth of many wicked.”[20] Contentedness is not found in piling up added securities beside the daily necessities of food and clothing.

Now, you don’t have to have a lot to understand this, do you? I don’t think so. Contented people are fabulous. If you had a contented parent or a contented grandpa and you spent any time with him, it’s gold. It’s always dangerous; you deify your relatives, you know, in their absence. And my grandfather, he’d come up here and do a little Irish jig for you and tell you the truth. But my grandfather was severely wounded in the trenches—the front-line trenches in the First World War—so much so that he could never drive a car. His right arm was immobilized. There was shrapnel through his body till the day he died. So he never drove a car; he never owned a car. We went everywhere on the bus or the ferry or the subway. He used to smoke on the bus, and he thought I didn’t know he smoked. He would sit next to me and give me candies and make me look out the window while he took a drag on his cigarette. He didn’t want to be a bad example to me. He stopped after Christ got a hold of him, but it was always hard. He’d blow it out the kitchen, bathroom window every so often.

But the thing I remember about my grandfather more than anything else is I never once in all of his life heard him complain. I never heard him ask for anything; I never heard him say he needed something—never once. Once! And my first child was born before he died, so I lived with him for a while. “Well,” you say, “well, he was kind of down there, you know? He’s, after all, you know.” No, no, no, no, don’t get it wrong. You think it’s the people that have it all that do this? No, no, no, no, no. See, sometimes, when you don’t have it, you’re consumed with money.

[All] the best things in life are free.
… You can keep ’em for the birds and the bees.

[But] give me money.
That’s what I want. …

Your lovin’ gives me a thrill,
But your lovin’ don’t pay my bills.

[So] give me money.
That’s what I want,
That’s what I want …,
That’s what I want.[21]

Now, how did Lennon get from “Give me money; that’s what I want” to

Last night the wife said,
‘[O] boy, when you’re dead
You don’t take nothing with you but your soul.’

I’ll tell you how he got there: he got what he wanted, and when he got it, he knew that it did not bring contentment. He could fly anywhere in the world, be with anyone he chose, buy anything in all the universe—and he was empty.

Contentment is not ultimately a matter of money in the bank or the absence of money in the bank. it is a heart attitude towards life and things itself. In the course of my days, God has introduced me to many people who have vast resources. And if they were to be here this morning and sit in this church, you wouldn’t even recognize them by their clothes or by anything. You know people like that. And what is it that marks them? Contentedness. They never went for the money in the first place. God gave them the money because he knew he could trust them with the money. I don’t want to condemn them for being rich. They’re underpinning ministry all over the place because of their hands-off approach. They’re not wearing their money as a badge. They’re not strutting their stuff.

Let me finish in this way: In King Henry VI, Part [3]—which you probably were reading this week—there’s a wonderful little section where the king is out in the country, and he is encountered by two gamekeepers. And one of the gamekeepers says to him, “Who are you?” He says, “I’m the king.” The guy replies, “But, if thou be a king, where is thy crown?” To which the king replies,

My crown is in my heart, not on my head;
Not decked with diamonds and Indian stones,
[Not] to be seen. My crown is called content;
A crown it is that seldom kings enjoy.[22]

Question: Where’s your crown? What’s your crown? You wearing it on your head at a jaunty angle? It’s so easy to do, isn’t it? So easy to fall into the lie. So easy to set our expectations for contentment always just one notch higher. “How much money do you need, Mr. Rockefeller?” “Just a little more than I have.”

Now, I want to say this, and then I’m going to read a note, and we’re done: my greatest fear in addressing this issue is that I may talk about it in such a way as to create the impression that somehow or another, you know, I took this test, and I mastered it. Uh-uh. I got more stuff at this point in my life than I could ever have imagined amassing in the fourteen and a half years since I came here with absolutely nothing from Scotland. And I want to tell myself that when I go to McDonald’s when it just opens and get that black coffee and the blueberry muffin, which costs me $1.74, and then have a little bit of luxury, buy the New York Times for a dollar, which takes me up to $2.74, I want to tell myself that I’m really content with that—that if I didn’t have my car to drive there in, or if I didn’t have my home to return to, or whatever else it is, that I could find simple pleasures in the conversations with the people around me, in the “good mornings” and the “how are yous” and “how’s it going” and that kind of stuff. I want to tell myself I can be content with that. I’m not sure I can. But you see, we’re supposed to be. If you have coffee and a blueberry muffin, “we will be content with that.” Oh yeah? But the guy next to you gets the big breakfast. “Oh man, look at that sucker! Whew!” You’re going in your pockets; you’re going, “Oh, I don’t… Geez!”

A letter and we’re done. Guy writes to me this week, says, “I want to drop a note of thanks for the ministry of Parkside. I became a Christian some years ago, but I was not living for Christ. I didn’t understand what it meant to walk with the Lord. We’ve been coming to Parkside, and God has been speaking to us.” He says, “Attached please find a check,” which was for a substantial sum of money. He said,

I’ve been saving for many years to buy a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Several weeks ago, however, during one of your moving messages, I realized that I should use my financial blessings for God’s work rather than buying a bike in the spring. It dawned on me through your messages that I would rather be known as a strong Christian than a businessman who owns a motorcycle and that I needed to strengthen the former before pursuing the latter. Please use the funds at your discretion. I have also sent funds to Truth For Life so that others around the nation may become convicted to serve the Lord Jesus. Thank you for your leadership.

“Godliness with contentment is great gain. We brought nothing in, we’re taking nothing out. If we have food and clothes, we’ll be content with that.” Now, about those who want to get rich: that’s this evening.

Let’s pray:

Father, thank you that your Word is sharp as a two-edged sword, that it speaks into our lives.[23] It’s not some remote book, but down through the corridors of time, it rings into our experience, and we thank you for it. Help us to evaluate our lives today in relationship to the fixed points of entry and exit, first of all in relationship to whether we know Christ and are ready to serve him; secondly, if in following him we are prepared to begin, at least, to work at this great discovery of godliness with contentment. Save us from sidestepping the difficult question. Save us also from making bizarre and extravagant claims or doing things that are dramatic without having our heart attitude changed.

We pray that you would take our lives afresh this day—all of our coming and our going, our plans and our hopes and our dreams and our schemes. And help us, Lord, in all of the pins we might amass and in all of the jewelry we may manage to wear, that you will allow us to fasten on to the rare jewel of Christian contentment. Save us from looking over our shoulders, from jealousy, from antagonism, from spite. Turn our eyes to Christ alone, we pray.

And may his grace and mercy and peace that comes from the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit be our abiding portion evermore. Amen.

[1] Psalm 121:1–2 (paraphrased).

[2] See Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment.

[3] 1 Timothy 6:5 (NIV 1984).

[4] “Rich Italian Ends Life, Once a Workman Here,” New York Times, March 17, 1926, https://www.nytimes.com/1926/03/17/archives/rich-italian-ends-life-once-a-workman-here-eccentric-man-hangs.html. Paraphrased.

[5] Matthew 6:25 (NIV 1984).

[6] Matthew 6:28 (NIV 1984).

[7] Matthew 6:31–32 (paraphrased).

[8] Matthew 6:32 (NIV 1948).

[9] See Psalm 139:13.

[10] Carolina Sandell, trans. A. L. Skoog, “Day by Day” (1865). Lyrics lightly altered.

[11] See Psalm 139:16.

[12] Job 1:21 (NIV 1984).

[13] John Lennon and Paul McCartney, “The Ballad of John and Yoko” (1969).

[14] Lennon and McCartney. Lyrics lightly altered.

[15] Terry Gilkyson, “The Bare Necessities” (1967).

[16] Robert B. Sherman and Richard M. Sherman, “I Wan’na Be Like You (The Monkey Song)” (1967).

[17] Luke 12:15 (paraphrased).

[18] Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) (1889), chap. 3.

[19] John Calvin, The Second Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians and the Epistles to Timothy, Titus and Philemon, trans. T. A. Smail, ed. David W. Torrance and Thomas F. Torrance, Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), 274–75.

[20] Psalm 37:16 (NIV 1984).

[21] Berry Gordy and Janie Bradford, adapt. John Lennon, “Money (That’s What I Want)” (1959, 1963).

[22] William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 3, 3.1.

[23] See Hebrews 4:12.