Prayer Meeting 6/2/2024
How To Attain Contentment
(Richard Sibbes) - Philippians 4:11-13

Link to sermon Here

Tonight we will again be drawing from the works of Richard Sibbes, who preached the sermons we are looking at in 1637. The proper title at the time was part of a series of sermons called ‘Saint’s Cordials’ - a believer’s stance and conduct; how they live, no matter what – with the favour of God in our mind; content.

Sibbes draws from Philippians 4:11-13 - before we delve in, let me read our puritan prayer, which is from the ‘Valley Of Vison’ pages 234/235 in the small black leather version, or page 129 of the paperback. The prayer is called ‘Resting On God’. I will read half now, and the other half at the end. Let me read it:

God Most High, Most Glorious, The thought of thine infinite serenity cheers me, For I am toiling and moiling, troubled and distressed, but thou art for ever at perfect peace. Thy designs cause thee no fear or care of unfulfillment, they stand fast as the eternal hills, Thy power knows no bond, thy goodness no stint. Thou bringest order out of confusion, and my defeats are thy victories: The Lord God omnipotent reigneth. I come to thee as a sinner with cares and sorrows, to leave every concern entirely to thee, every sin calling for Christ's precious blood; Revive deep spirituality in my heart…

Philippians 4:11-13 (NKJV)

Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

The ESV almost reads better I think:

ESV:

Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

I think the first line in verse 11 tells us of Paul’s humility, and also his journey and experience. When he says ‘I have learned’.

That word ‘contentment’ in Greek is:

αὐτάρκης- autarkas – meaning independent of external circumstances.
 

You have enough strength from within, that you need not seek the world for comfort, regardless of what it is. I’m sure we all have tasted at least some of this contentment. And in a sense, it’s the mark of the sanctifying work of the Lord.

To be content, satisfied, in the same frame of mind, no matter what’s going on in your life, or what you’re experiencing, or facing.

Of course it does seem some of us are slow learners of this contentment in every circumstance.

‘I have learned to act like Christ, and a saint, no matter what’ - Is it something we can define even though we learn to be content? No. Sibbes says like many other things like salvation, repentance etc. that contentment ‘in all conditions is a great mystery’.
 

Isn’t it so? I have no real idea how to teach someone how to be content. It is something that as we walk with God we learn. It becomes us. We become more like Christ.

Nothing, and I mean nothing as a pastor warms my heart more within a brother or sister, when I see them handling things that at one point would destroy them.

I think one of the things that causes lack of contentment is in trying to teach people how to attain it. How to just ‘get over it’, just ‘let it go’, just ‘don’t be so emotionally moved all the time’. Yet if we are all honest, we fail to be able to teach it.

Sibbes says:

All the degrees in the world cannot teach this lesson that Paul has learned, to be content.

He then says:

He (Apostle Paul) learned it from Christ and by blessed experiences in afflictions.

Sibbes adds:

…it’s not something that is easily attained.

Of course we know that through experience, lest we would have attained it, very easily.

Sibbes again on the mystery:

There is a difficulty in this work that I never thought of till I came to it. And so to be content with our condition, whatever the case be, to bring the heart low, it is a mystery. Nature never teacheth this. It is learned in the school of Christ and not without many stripes.

Sometimes, as Sibbes teaches, we feel we have enough, we abound, and sometimes we feel we lack. Sometimes we feel we have all we need, and at others we find ourselves wanting.

All these varieties to our walk and life, is all part of leading us to be of that saintly cordial no matter what.

Sibbes says:

God brings his people to heaven by a variety of conditions.

I would add that he brings us to Christlikeness, which is contentment, through a wide variety of circumstances and events.

Sibbes lists a few at this juncture: ‘God tries our patience and our humility’. How does he try them? Well, he does so as Sibbes says: ‘by a variety of estates and conditions’.

To truly become like Christ, we must understand brothers and sisters, that God tries us in a variety of events and circumstances. If all was well all the time, we wouldn’t be content. We would be complacent. Aren’t you?

Complacency is a product of a lack of variety. It is killer for contentment. Because when things go wrong we have no strength to deal with anything but perfect and good.

God doesn’t change in our circumstances, He remains the same. He is not less faithful. Weren’t Job’s friends truly the enemy to God, as they believed God changed based on circumstances?

God does not change regardless. So these varieties, these various trails, and circumstances are not to teach you to act, or be strong. But the real teaching is that God does not change, and you can rest on Him and whom He is, in all situations.

Hebrews 13:8-9 (ESV)

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.

What do we do when we are not settled? We look to things that don’t work. It’s not worked before; it won’t work now.

Yet at times we are exhausted - trying to feed ourselves love and contentment with the things that never bring contentment.
 

Sometimes I say: “you know Jesus is the answer, He is always the answer.” Yet how often do we look beyond that answer, only to be left discontented, and have even a greater lack than when we first were struggling?

As Sibbes moves through his sermon he says, and I’m not sure it was meant to be a challenge, or even a rebuke, but I think for some it is. And Sibbes writes: ‘God’s children know how to carry themselves’.

Now, as I said, it’s not a rebuke. But for sure for many, it might be sobering, as well as comforting, because let’s face it, we all know how we ought to act, and live, and carry ourselves.

Sibbes says:

There is no condition but a Christian picks good matter of it.
 

Isn’t that so the case? We know when we feel things, go through things, things land in our world. We know not just how we ought to handle it, but truly we know in our souls what lessons and stance we ought to take. Yet we often don’t act on that.

But hey brothers and sisters, do you really know, do you ever consider how blessed that is? To know what we ought to do, and more when we do it, ‘as unto the Lord’, we find ourselves content even in the midst of the situation.

It’s in the wrestle that we lose sight of Christ. We lose sight of His grace that stops us from trusting.

Sibbes says:

Grace is above all conditions. It can manage all rules and estates of life.

Yet ‘we don’t learn it easily’, says Sibbes.

Why? well Sibbes says one of the issues that causes us to be slow learners is a lack of ‘self-denial’.

Sibbes says: ‘self-denial is the first lesson in Christs school’. He adds:

He that has learned self-denial, he has come a great way to learn contentment in any condition.

I suppose then we could conclude that a lack of self-denial is for sure a root, or one of the main roots, to having no contentment.

We need not do anything in our own strength, as Sibbes says:

God in Christ has become a father to us, and carries a fatherly mind to us.

He adds and reminds us:

In whatever condition so ever we are, he is a father still, and intends us well.

Think of it, brothers and sisters. Why would the God who sent His only Son, to suffer so much and die on our behalf, not also sustain us in all things and times? It’s all working for our good.

Okay, let me just bring this in and we will follow on next time.

This deep knowing from Paul, is what allowed him to carry himself and be content in all things.

Those ‘all things’, are affliction. I can be like Christ in all things, in affliction. Why? Because as Sibbes says:

He has a stronger and able spirit than his own.

It’s not in our own strength we can endure, or be content, its drawing solely from the One who is never changing. Who is in all, and over all.

Our ability is not our ability, it’s that He is able. What makes us able is not our spirit but His Spirit working in us, and living in us.

Sibbes says and I close with this:

The spirit of God is the strongest of spirits, indeed the strength of spirits, it makes a Christian in whom it dwells, the ablest man.

Let me close be reading the 2^nd half of the prayer we started with from the ‘Valley of Vision’:

Let me live near to the great Shepherd, hear his voice, know its tones, follow its calls. Keep me from deception by causing me to abide in the truth, from harm by helping me to walk in the power of the Spirit. Give me intenser faith in the eternal verities, burning into me by experience the things I know; Let me never be ashamed of the truth of the gospel, that I may bear its reproach, vindicate it, see Jesus as its essence, know in it the power of the Spirit. Lord, help me, for I am often lukewarm and chill; unbelief mars my confidence, sin makes me forget thee. Let the weeds that grow in my soul be cut at their roots; Grant me to know that I truly live only when I live to thee, that all else is trifling. Thy presence alone can make me holy, devout, strong and happy. Abide in me, gracious God.
 

Amen.