Christian Contentment

And thank you, George. Oh, I'm going to tell you. Well, that is the lowest register we have ever sung a hymn in. The foundations were quaking. The bass tones, no one could even sing the bass on that one because it would be below any possibilities.

But a song that I've sung 1 ,000 times, but no matter how hard I tried, I could not find that tune. And if you can't hear it in your mind, you're never going to get it right. So as you can see, Pastor Frye is quite skilled at being able to do a wide variety of those.

But I don't know about the rest of you. I think Roxy was wreaking a little havoc upon us because almost every one of those songs with the last one had a real big range to it. And so we're going to have to ask about that.

Either that or pray that Lord will bring us another pianist, someone who at least can, at least the first few notes would be very, very helpful. I bet you there are a few of you out there that could do that.

But you're just going, I'm not telling anybody. Mm-mm. I'm not letting anybody know that I have that secret skill because then you know what's going to happen. All right, let's turn to Hebrews chapter 13.

Hebrews chapter 13, if you're visiting with us, please apologize. The B team is in, especially as far as music skills go. And we have been working through. I looked this morning and we began our study of Hebrews in September of 2008.

2008. So if we don't get done by the end of August, we will have spent six years. Now, if you're visiting, you're going, wow, you people are slow. I'm obviously only talking about when I get to preach.

There have been, I think, 77, somewhere around there, 76, 77 sermons in the Hebrews series so far. And we are in the last chapter. So we are pressing on. We're going to get there. It is possible, if I do not chase too many rabbits, that we may well finish this up by the end of August.

We'll make some real headway, I think, over the next two weeks. And so we might finish it up. So I think that would be a good thing. I mean, there are some young people here who all they've ever heard me preach about is the book of Hebrews.

They probably think, you know, are there any other books in the Bible other than just the book of Hebrews? It's a sad thing to recognize, but a good thing. And we see the end, and we are going to press on.

We are in chapter 13. Let's look at what the Word of God says. We have preached through verse 4, but for context, let's begin at Hebrews chapter 13, verse 1. Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

Remember those who are in prison as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated since you are also in the body. Let marriage be held in honor among all. Let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and the adulterous.

Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. So we can confidently say, the Lord is my helper. I will not fear. What can man do to me?

Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever. Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods which have not benefited those devoted to them.

We have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat. The bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sins are burned outside the camp.

So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore, let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.

Through him, then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning. That would be of no advantage to you.

Pray for us, for we are sure that we have a clear conscience desiring to act honorably in all things. I urge you the more earnestly to do this in order that I may be restored to you the sooner. Now may the God of peace, who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with every good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever.

Amen. I appeal to you brothers, bear with my word of exhortation, for I've written to you briefly. You should know that our brother Timothy has been released, with whom I shall see you if he comes soon.

Greet all your leaders and all the saints, those who come from Italy, send you greetings. Grace be with you all. And so here is the end of the book of Hebrews. As I said, we worked through verse four the last time that we were together.

We discussed, obviously, an extremely important issue in our day today, and that is the subject of Christian marriage, the establishment of Christian marriage, the fact that marriage is an establishment made by God.

And so we worked through verse four, so beginning with verse five. Keep your life free from love of money and be content with what you have, for he has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. The term that is used here in verse five, love of money, occurs also in Paul's letter to Timothy, where in an unfortunate translation that became very popular, you have certainly heard it said that the love of money is the root of all evil.

Well, in reality, the better translation of that would be love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Certainly there are people who have done very evil things and money had absolutely positively nothing to do with their actions or with their behavior.

And there are people who live very evil lifestyles, who have very little interest in the things of this world. They are unusual, obviously, but there are people more than happy to give up love of money and personal possessions to have power over other people.

In this particular instance, you just take that word, love of money, you put what's called the alpha privative on the front and it negates the whole word. So what is actually said is rather than saying do not have a love of money, it simply says your life, your way of behavior, your walk should be marked by a non -love of money.

And so there is an assertion that is made here and it's immediately followed up by the necessary secondary assertion and that is the issue of contentment. The only person that can possibly avoid that money-grubbing attitude that is so common in our society is a person who is seeking to cultivate the very Christian attitude of contentment with what God has given us in this life.

Now, you and I both know very, very well that we live in a society that, well, if we're really honest our entire economic system is based upon creating in each and every one of us lack of contentment and covetousness toward what everybody else has.

I mean, think about your trip down here this morning if you were awake enough to remember your trip down here this morning. I remember about two years ago I was driving down on a Sunday morning and it might've been even longer than that now, the years are beginning to meld together and I was coming up to 19th Avenue in Indian School and I was still, I don't know, about 150 yards away or so and the light was green, my direction, so I hadn't slowed down and all of a sudden I am shocked to see a pickup truck just go right on through going northbound on 19th Avenue, just blew the light, it wasn't like it was a yellow or it had just turned green, no, it had been green for a while, it was not even quite a stale green yet and yet, and I just, I had to think to myself, my, how many times has God kept me from being at the wrong place at the wrong time when something like that happens?

But think about your trip down here and try to put away any similar situations you had. You were, and we don't even notice this anymore, assaulted by advertisements. You didn't have to have the radio on, if you had the radio on, you were, but how many advertisements did you see just coming down here today?

None of us counted them, but there were many of them. They were on the sides of buses, they were at bus stops. These new, and I don't even know how these things work, especially in the desert heat, but these new billboards that have only been around for a few years now where they time it so you can get hit with two or three advertisements in the amount of time that you go by that huge, massive jumbotron thing where you have the advertisements rolling through in all sorts of different colors and things like that and they catch the eye a whole lot more than the old billboards did.

But you were hit with advertisements all along. If you turn on your computer, there are advertisements along the side on Facebook or almost any other website you go to, a news site, whatever it might be.

If you go on YouTube, half the videos are gonna have an advertisement where you can even watch the thing. Sometimes it has absolutely no connection whatsoever, obviously. And of course, if you're going to a movie, if you're going to watch television, if you're watching a sporting event, you're going to be hit constantly.

And obviously, many of these advertisements are immoral. They utilize the scantily clad men and women to get your attention. But so much of it is just simply to inculcate in your heart a discontentment with what you currently have.

I would be so much happier if I had that. And every one of us in this room can think of how successful that effort has been in our lives, probably for all of us easily within the last week, maybe within the last 24 hours.

I mean, I bought something I saw advertised, I think, on Friday. I think it was on Friday. Everybody knows that I am a cyclist. And right now, the biggest cycling event of the year is going on over in France called the Tour de France.

And so I've been keeping up. I didn't, I sort of missed the first week because I was up in Colorado, but I've been keeping up and they have advertisements. And they have something called sports beans.

I knew there was this racing team called Jelly Belly. And I always thought it was really weird that these teeny tiny guys that have 4 body fat are peddling jelly beans. I always thought that was a little bit of a contradiction, but lo and behold, they actually make jelly beans that you're supposed to use while you're riding.

And they've stuck vitamins and electrolytes in them and stuff like that. And I've got a sweet tooth. And so I wonder what they taste like. So I got some. They got me. And they are really, really good.

Now I'm not gonna use them while riding. I've got other stuff to use for that. But afterwards, you know, electrolytes and stuff like that, it's not bad to, you know. So it worked. It worked, you know.

Now they didn't convince me that if you get this product, I would be able to ride in the Tour de France. I realized that that's not going to happen. But we all recognize that there's a bunch of stuff that we're exposed to that makes us, it's one thing to buy something.

I mean, how many of you have upgraded your phone within the past six months? Go ahead, come on. All right. How many of you absolutely had to upgrade your phone in the last six months? Okay, some of you had to.

But let's be honest with ourselves. Some of us upgrade just because that new one is so cool. And my old one has got a few scratches, and you know, it doesn't have all the neat features, and they keep packing stuff in there.

I don't know how they're gonna continue doing this for much longer, to be perfectly honest with you. Your phone's gonna be able to wake you up, brush your teeth, clothe you, and everything else in a very short period of time.

But those types of things, that's stuff. You know, that's the upgrade cycle that we're all caught in. Stuff that really, I think, ends up impacting our character especially is when we are made to be unhappy about, dissatisfied in who we are, how we look.

Our society, for example, puts us into a cycle where we're all aging. And when your body ages, it doesn't work as well as it used to, and it doesn't look as good as it used to. And that's a part of aging.

And we spend billions of dollars to try to fight that, and many of us buy into the discontentment that comes that really should not be an issue of discontentment. I mean, aging happens, and stuff hurts that didn't used to hurt, and you can't run as fast, and walk as fast, and lift as much, and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

That's God's way of reminding us that we are temporal creatures, and we're not gonna be around for all that long. But when we become unhappy with God, when we become unhappy with his providence in our lives, that becomes a settled attitude.

And what the writer here is talking about is a settled attitude. Let your character, let your life be one that is marked by a freedom from the love of money. Now, we all need to have money. We all need to work.

It is appropriate to work. It is appropriate to seek to do well. It's appropriate to get promotions. But we all know what love of money looks like, and we all know that it does not limit itself to the rich.

There are rich people who have a love of money, and they are always just trying to get more, and they're consumed with keeping what they've got. But I know rich people that do not have a love of money.

They just happen to have a lot of money, and they help other people with it. And if it all went away, they'd still be happy people. They're in the minority, but I know people like that. But let me tell you something.

I know a lot of poor people who have just as deep a love of money as any rich person does. They just don't have much of it, but oh, they love it when they've got it. People in the middle class, a mixture of both.

See, it's not a matter of how much you've got. It's what your eyes are upon. It's what your mind is upon. The poor person can dream all day long of being rich. The rich person can dream all day long of being richer.

It doesn't matter how much you've got. The issue is what your attitude toward it is, and the Christian answer for the love of money is contentment. I've preached on contentment many times before. It is a truly Christian attribute of life.

It is something that we should be seeking to cultivate in our minds and in our thoughts, and like I said, it's so difficult in our land to do this because the very engine of the economy is you need to be discontent with what you have.

But why can a Christian have an attitude of contentment that no one else could possibly have? Well, the text is clear. Be content with what you have, for he has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you.

I will never leave you nor forsake you. So what is the Christian answer to the discontentment that brings so much unhappiness? Everybody will tell you that especially amongst younger married couples, what is the issue that so often brings division and failure and divorce?

Money. Money, the pressures that money brings. What's the Christian answer? It's not stoicism. The Stoics, you know, and it's not asceticism. How the monks in the old days, I've told the story when we go through church history in the past, that when the Desert Fathers first developed in the third century, and these people known for their piety, people would go out to them and they would live in these caves.

And some of them would have no bedding. There'd be some who actually taught themselves to sleep while standing. Not sure how that works, but because to lay down would be to be giving some comfort to the body.

And some of them developed the idea that any type of cleanliness was showing deference for the body. And so they would not clean themselves. They would not brush their teeth. And some even developed the idea that when your teeth would rot out, that it was a sign of your absolute mastery over your body for you to be able to sit there and to talk to people, because people would go out and get advice from these people because they thought they were especially spiritual and things like that.

And one of the greatest ways to show the mastery of your body was that while you were talking to people, you could have bugs running in and out of your teeth and it would not slow you down. You would not even notice it.

And this was the attitude that people would have. Well, that's not what the writer here is talking about. He's not talking about asceticism. He's not talking about what Luther did when Luther damaged for the entirety of his life his digestive system through his fasting and his laying upon a cold stone floor without bedding or a blanket in the bleak German winters because he was trying to prove his faithfulness to God and all the rest of that stuff.

That's not what the text says. What's the source of contentment? Be content with what you have for he has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. And so the Christian can be content with much or with little because the object of the passion of the Christian's heart is not upon the things of the world anyways.

It is upon God himself. If you are satisfied with God's presence, if you are satisfied with the contemplation of his glory and his greatness and his goodness and what he has done, then the stuff around you will always glow with his presence as a gift from him.

If any of you have read stories of persecuted Christians down through the ages, it's a very common theme to, and I don't think it's because, well, they read somebody else's books, they're trying to imitate that.

I think it's just simply what happens when God strips you of all the distractions that so many of us have and you are forced either to despair or to truly find out what the strength of the Christian faith is and that is to find your contentment and your happiness and your joy in God and in God alone.

Very often what they will talk about is that in their dreary prison cell, in that tiny dark place, little things that for you and I would be just so horrible, a dirty mat with bugs in it, a hole in the wall, a small drinking cup will take on glorious joy for that person.

And some people say, yeah, well, there's psychological reasons for all of that. The reason for the Christian is that they see the provision of their loving Heavenly Father even in that situation that most of us would find utterly unacceptable because we have become so accustomed to a level of pampering, quite honestly, that many people in the world cannot begin to understand.

I know that was brought home to me. I mentioned to you last year when I got back from South Africa that I ministered in an area while I was there that there's no place in Phoenix, in the worst place in South Phoenix that even comes close to the huge areas outside of Johannesburg, Soweto and Tambisi and places like that where it's something beyond our experience.

And yet the Christians that gathered in that church where you could see the holes in the walls and had the bare lights in the ceilings, but they did have a digital projector. That was very, bare bulbs in the ceiling and a digital projector.

There you go. It was a place of real contrast. But we are so accustomed to having such a high standard of comfort in our lives. But the reality is these people, when they're persecuted, when each and every day their freedoms have been deprived for them because of their confession of faith in Christ, those things that He does provide to them become so much more glorious than anything that has been given to us.

So you see, I will never leave you nor forsake you. The key to Christian contentment is to recognize that any true believer has fellowship with Christ. And that fellowship is something the world cannot take away.

The evil, depraved men, God has just taken His hand of restraint off the evil, depraved men in North Korea who are murdering our brothers and sisters, are simply ushering those people directly into the presence of Christ and bring tremendous judgment upon themselves.

Same with ISIS, or now it's just IS, wiping out the last of the Christians in all of Iraq. Think about that. Think about the impact that actions can have. The last of the Christians being driven out of Iraq right now.

There'd be none left. There were, what, four million? Something like that under Saddam Hussein, and they're gone. They're gone. And those men that are doing these things, evil hearts, haters of God. They claim to be serving God, but they're haters of God.

The judgment will be upon them, those Christians who are dying and are being driven away, find in Christ their all in all. So that, verse six, we can confidently say, we can say with, the term is courageous, bravery.

With courage, with bravery, in the face of persecution, in the face of difficulty, we can with bravery say, and these are strong words. The Lord is my helper. I will not fear. What can man do to me? The news sources today, man can do a lot to the body.

Man can do a lot to the body. I mean, trust me. The news got my attention this week. I'm supposed to be teaching in Kiev again in December. And so an airliner shot out of the sky. People sitting in there, just, you know, I've not flown that route.

Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. But I've, last year I flew from Frankfurt to Johannesburg. Covered all of the continent of Africa, while sleeping mainly. And that's not the first thing across your mind, is that in any second, I am going to cease this life.

But it can happen. It can happen. And so is this an attitude of unrealistic bravado? Lord is my helper. I will not fear. What can man do to me? It's not unrealistic bravado. The writer recognizes that man can do all sorts of things to our body.

But the Christian recognizes a level of life that transcends the physical. And this, my friends, is where you and I, we live in a hyper-secularizing society. We are now hearing people directly making statements that come from a fundamentalist secularism, where they detest any belief in anything outside of the material world.

And they are willing to suppress the freedoms of people who do not believe like them. There are more and more of them in the intelligentsia of our land, and even more over in Europe. And we are impacted by that.

We are impacted by that mindset because we live amongst people that are influenced by that mindset to lesser and greater degrees, but it's an increasing degree each and every month. And so you and I are impacted by that.

And so we focus so much more upon the physical, upon our possessions and our freedoms and things like that. The Christians of this era, they didn't have the problem that you and I have there. And so it wasn't a foolish bravado.

What can man do to me? They weren't saying, you can't hurt me. They knew that they could. They knew that they could whip them and put them in prison and deprive them of food and starve them to death and crucify them and everything else.

They knew all of that, but they didn't define me the way we often do. We're really tied to this decaying body, to this decaying and dying world. Oh, the Word says over and over again, look to that which is abiding, look to that which remains.

This world is passing away. Yeah, it says it all the time, but we have to think so differently than the world to really understand that and to really think that way. A sobering thing to recognize that it's our brothers and sisters who experienced persecution who end up having no problem understanding these texts or as they look a little bit odd and strange to us.

So if you want to be able with bravery and courage to say the Lord is my helper, I will not fear. What can man do to me? Then the prerequisite to being able to do that is to recognize I will never leave you nor forsake you is the greatest promise you can hold on to.

There is nothing, remember Romans 8? There's nothing in this world, in this created order that can do what? Can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. Our eyes and our minds have to get together because our eyes only see the natural realm.

We need to have that same kind of experience. Remember when the prophet and his helper and the armies surrounding them and the prophet's calm, cool, and collected and his assistant really isn't. And so the Lord let him see and he opens the man's eyes to be able to see outside just the natural realm.

And he sees the armies of the Lord that have the armies of men surrounded. Really an indication of how rare it is for most of us to really live on a spiritual plane without constantly being dragged down by the physical, by all the distractions that are around us.

And so if you want to be without love of money, there needs to be consentment. Where does consentment come from? It comes from recognition that we have the abiding presence and promises of God. And may I just add in passing, some of you may have seen that recently, the 8th of July, let's put it that way.

So it's a week before last. I had a debate up in Denver, Colorado on the subject of open theism. And I just mentioned in passing that foundational to being able to understand what this text is saying, what is a given for you and I, but can't be a given in false heretical systems of theology is that what's underlying all of this?

The immutability of God. His promises won't change. We're not going to wake up tomorrow and God said, I found a better way. I've made some alterations in how I'm going to pursue things in the future. Covenant faithfulness of God, which we can rejoice in is based upon the fundamental recognition that our God is absolutely good and he cannot change.

That's an important thing to keep in mind. But God's also given us another way to encourage us. Verse seven, remember your leaders, those who spoke through the word of God, consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.

Now, most scholars agree that this is not talking about living leaders right now. This is talking about those initial ones who brought the message. They spoke to you the word of God. They have lived their lives and therefore you can look at their lives and you can consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.

Now, there's everything good and proper and right in looking back and celebrating what God has done in the people of God before us. But there must be balance because sadly, the history of the church illustrates to us over and over and over again where this appropriate analysis of their life and seeing the outcome of their way of life and therefore seeking to imitate their faith being encouraged by recognizing we ain't the first people that have done this.

We're not the first people that have faced persecution. We're not the first people that have faced the hatred of the world. It's important for us to see that we stand in a long line of faithful believers.

I mean, there is such encouragement to be drawn from that to recognize that Christ has been building his church. We are not the first people to tread this path. There is a very well-marked trail for us to go.

That's good. What's bad is when you then seeking to imitate the faith of someone else, elevate them to a point where now you are seeking their intercession or you're seeking them to do something for yourself which they didn't do and would never want you to do and are incapable of doing anything for you in the first place because they've now gone to the presence of the Lord and they're not being forced to look back at all the sin and depravity in this world.

They've left that suffering and it would cause them to suffer more to have to do that kind of stuff. But there have been many who've lost that balance. There's no two ways about that. And as a result, we Protestants have tended to go the other direction and very rarely give much thought.

Yeah, okay. All right, we'll do some bunion and some Spurgeon once in a while. That's okay. They're all right. But other than that, you know, we just, you know. And that's a problem. That's a problem because we are given the very direction.

Now, obviously these are people. They knew these people. They had direct contact with these people. We might think of some of those who have left us for their reward. I still in the Bible over here as one of these super secret message decoder rings that Brother Broyles and I use to remember where in the world we're supposed to be reading from, even though it doesn't always work, as you've noticed.

One of the New Testament marker that we have is the bulletin from Brother Cross's funeral. So there's Don Cross. He's still smiling at us, even from up here. And so we can think of those who we look at their lives and we see their faithfulness.

We consider the fact that they persevered in the faith and we can draw a tremendous amount of encouragement from that. And so we have biblical basis for doing that. This statement, the Lord is my helper, I will not fear what can man do to me becomes even more precious when we find that those were the words on the tongues of martyrs in the past.

Now a martyr, as you know, we tend to use that term only as someone who's given their life. But martyr just simply means a witness or one who gives testimony. All of us, when we give testimony, are martyrs in that sense.

But there have been those who have given the ultimate. And very often those very words were on their lips. And so how many of them had thought of previous generations and had seen the faithfulness in those previous generations and they then gained that strength, gained that ability by God's grace to stand firm against the pressures that were against them.

So it's appropriate for us to consider the outcome of their life, their way of life, and to imitate their faith. That is an appropriate thing to do. And it's in that context then that we have verse eight, which will actually transition us into this evening's study and warnings found in the text.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Now, as I was reading through this, you might have thought, well, it sort of jumps around a bit. A lot of different topics being addressed. And that's not uncommon at the end of an epistle.

You want to try to tie a number of things together, a number of thoughts in your mind. And you may have noticed even as I was reading it, there is somewhat of a bit of a smile toward the end when the writer says, I've written to you briefly.

This isn't the longest New Testament book, but it's one of them. And for some of us, I mean, you could actually sit down and read it in an hour. It'd be easy to do. Most of us even faster than that. So it's actually not all that long.

But as we look at this last little section, we encounter this verse, and it seems to not bear a whole lot of connection to what comes before it or after it. But I would like to suggest there's a connection in both directions.

First of all, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever, has been used as a proof text to say, well, see, here is the immutability of Jesus. And this is a timelessness of Jesus. And there's all sorts of things that are read into it.

But before we get there, we need to hear it in the context in which it was originally stated. The point is, I believe, the way that this text functions as a connection is the same Jesus who proved himself faithful to these others, to their leaders, the same Jesus who guided their lives so that their faith would be worthy of imitation is the same Jesus who abides with you.

And so you can't, unfortunately, there are some people sort of look back at the other times and go, wow, God was, well, he was really working with them. You know, they could do some great stuff as if God has somehow changed or his purposes have changed or his spirit's gotten a little less powerful or Jesus isn't really quite the same.

He's not the same yesterday, today and forever or wherever else it might be. So the same Jesus who empowered these men and women to live their lives in such a way that we can imitate their faith is the same Jesus that we worship today.

And he will be just as strong and just as worthy of worship tomorrow. And then I think it connects us into the next section. Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, et cetera, et cetera.

So the warning is there are gonna be people who come along and they're gonna say, hey, I've got it. No one's ever figured out what I've figured out. Oh, that's the siren call to every generation. But Jesus didn't change.

And if it was so important for Christians to know this, then wouldn't Jesus by his spirit have made sure that the preceding generations of Christians knew this too? Sort of cuts the legs out from underneath all these cult leaders that come along and say, well, no one ever figured it out before me, but now flee, that kind of person.