Are We Contented Christians or Anxious Christians? - Sermon by Ps George, CRC

Discipline of Christian Contentment:
Are We Contented Christians or Anxious Christians?
(Philippians 4:11-20; 1 Timothy 6:6-12)
Introduction
Are we contented Christians or covetous Christians? Are we anxious about our day-to-day affairs in life?
• It is important that we should have care about our financial needs-need for a proper financial planning and stable income.
• It is important that we should have care about our religious needs-need for active involvement and keeping ourselves involved in the affairs of life and calling.
• But what is wrong is that, as the Puritan Thomas Watson put it, sinful care or sinful anxiety-we are worried how we will take care of the burden and cares of life.
• The Bible says, “Be anxious for nothing” or “Do not be anxious for anything” (Phili 4:6).
What Is Contentment?
The word contentment means “to be sufficient, to be enough, to be full, having gratification.”
• Contentment is the confidence of faith in the sufficiency of God’s provision for our needs and it is the confidence of the sufficiency of God’s grace for every circumstance.
• Contentment, therefore, is to experience the peace of God. It is to say, “Have Thine own way.”
• One theologian said, “Contentment is the secret of inward peace. It remembers the stark truth that we brought nothing into the world and we can take nothing out of it. Life, in fact, is a pilgrimage from one moment of nakedness to another. So we should travel light and live simply. Our enemy is not possessions, but excess. Our battle cry is not ‘Nothing!’ but ‘Enough!’ We've got enough. Simplicity says, if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that.”
• It is the belief in God and the confidence in Him that, as Paul says, “my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.”
• Contentment is the opposite of covetousness.
How Can We Be Content? (Philippians 4:11-20)
1. It Is Learned (vv 11-12)
2. By Having our sufficiency in Christ (v 13)
Contentment can be found only when the God of the Bible is our God by His grace.
Isaiah 55:1-3
3. Believing and trusting in the richness of Christ (v 19)
4. A prayerful dependency on God (vv 6-7)
Divine Counsel on Contentment
• Warning against desire to be rich-1 Timothy 6:6-12
• Better is little with the fear of the LORD-Proverbs 15:16-17
• Give me neither poverty nor riches, but the middle ground-Proverbs 30:8-9
• The Golden Rule-Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness-Matthew 6:33
Conclusion/Application
It is Christ alone that we find our eternal contentment!
• Matthew 11:28, “Come unto Me, . . . and I will give you rest.”
• 1 Timothy 6:6, “But godliness with contentment is great gain.”

[@sissymolkoshy277]

Praise God 🙏