Prayer meeting 20/2/2024

How to Attain Contentment - Part 2

Philippians 4:11-13

(Richard Sibbes)

Link to sermon Here

Richard Sibbes Preached these sermons in 1637. The proper title at the time was part of a series of sermons called ‘The Saint’s Cordials’. The section we are reading and gleaning from is ‘The Art Of Contentment’. Which is a believers stance and conduct, how they live no matter what. Sibbes draws from Philippians 4:11-13. Before we delve in, let me read our puritan prayer, which is from ‘The Valley of Vison’ page 256 in the black bonded leather version and page 140 in the paperback. It is entitled ‘Confidence’:

O God, thou art very great, My lot is to approach thee with godly fear and humble confidence, for thy condescension equals thy grandeur, and thy goodness is thy glory. I am unworthy, but thou dost welcome; guilty, but thou art merciful; indigent, but thy riches are unsearchable. Thou hast shown boundless compassion towards me by not sparing thy Son, and by giving me freely all things in him; This is the foundation of my hope, the refuge of my safety the new and living way to thee, the means of that conviction of sin, brokenness of heart, and self-despair, which will endear to me the gospel. Happy are they who are Christ's, in him at peace with thee, justified from all things, delivered from coming wrath, made heirs of future glory; Give me such deadness to the world, such love to the Saviour, such attachment to his house, such devotedness to his service, as proves me a subject of his salvation. May every part of my character and conduct make a serious and amiable impression on others, and impel them to ask the way to the Master. Let no incident of life, pleasing or painful, injure the prosperity of my soul, but rather increase it. Send me thy help, for thine appointments are not meant to make me independent of thee, and the best means will be vain without super-added blessings.

Let me read the verses:

Philippians 4:11-13

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.

That word content/contentment in Greek is:

Αὐτάρκης- autarkas - Independent of external circumstances.

You have enough strength from within, that you need not seek the world for comfort. Regardless of what it is. As I said last time - 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. Yet this sanctifying work does not come either easily, or quickly.

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

Sibbes states that:

Self-denial is the first lesson in Christ’s school.

He adds:

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

A lack of self-denial is of course also a lack of trust. It’s a lack of letting go.

I think over the years, I would say that those who lack the most contentment, are those that struggle most with self-denial. Those that find letting go of being in control such a hard thing to do.

Ask yourself: when you’re not content, who’s trying to run the show? You? Or God?

Apostle Paul’s strength and contentment, didn’t come from himself. It’s not in his own ‘hold on tight’ to his ideas. It’s in his surrender. It’s in his letting go and trusting. Paul knew that greater was He that was in him than was in the world. He lived what Apostle John said in his first epistle:

1 John 4:4

You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

Sibbes puts it this way in his teaching about a man who is content:

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

Again I say, where does your lack of contentment arise? Is it not in a lack of trust and in your unwillingness to deny yourself and let go?

Okay, let me move on through Sibbes teaching. Sibbes asks, in what things does it make Paul able in? Answer: ‘all things’.

I think we so miss out on the ‘all things’. Why we don’t surrender, or bring God and awaken our spirit to Him in ‘all things’. It’s in the ‘some things’, that causes us such unrest. You surrender some things, sometimes. But not all things, at all times.

Paul didn’t just have that on board automatically, because he himself says he had to learn it:

“I have learned the mystery” - “ the secret”

Sibbes gives the example of a trade. You don’t just talk about what you think you know. You learn it. You work it out, and in that outworking you come to trust.

Slow learners are those that forget quickly how much they are hopeless when they refuse to self-deny. Paul learned that trust is better - in fact he learned that it’s not just the best way, but the only way.

Yet even with this knowledge, this power, often stubbornness, disobedience and our desire to have our flesh satisfied we deny this ‘greater is He that is in us’.

Sibbes challenges the listener/reader when he says:

What a shame is it for a professor of religion to be as worldly, as distracted with cares, as passionate, if he be a little touched, as a man that professeth no religion at all?

He adds:

Where is the power, where is the glory and credit of religion here? I beseech you, let us be ashamed, and know that our profession requireth that we should be able.

Wow. What Sibbes is saying should jar us.

Why as believers, who were once dead in our sins and trespasses but now possess this power of the Spirit that brought us to life and now dwells in us – Why, oh why, do we so quickly succumb to sin, and find it so easy to become infected by worldly things, as quickly and with as little resistance as the world?

Oh how little contentment this reveals. Surely we should not succumb just as weakly and lightly, with the same level of no-resistance as those that are still dead in their sins and trespasses.

Christians who are so, so easily affected, and so easily offended, and so quick to revert back to a carnal mind will always, always only have snippets of contentment. In fact, often they have no contentment at all. They have carnal relief, which they confuse with contentment.

This is why Sibbes says ‘let us be ashamed’. Because we have an exit plan, we have a big sign saying ‘this way to true contentment, put on that new mind’.

Ephesians 4:17-24

So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.

That’s all the world’s ways and the way we were. But from verse 20, what Apostle Paul tells those in Ephesus, which is also what Sibbes is saying in his teaching, is that, due to our new man, the Spirit that is now in us, therefore we should have no reason to fail and struggle like the world, and have such little resistance when trails and temptation come our way.

Verses 20-24

But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard him and have been taught in him, just as truth is in Jesus, that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.

Contentment is the ability to lay aside our desires, our selfish ambition, our offence, our hurts, our wounds, our fears.

Thomas Maton says:

When we are not content with God’s allowance, we need to be cured, not satisfied.

Meaning, we need not continue to pursue our selfish desires, but we need to stop and draw upon God.

Okay, let me wind this teaching in, that we have covered the last two sessions. Of course, as always there is much, much more that Sibbes says on the matter he calls ‘The Art Of Contentment’.

Philippians 4:13

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

Paul makes it clear, that anything he does, does not abide in him himself; he can do ‘all things through Christ’. In whose strength he has alone, or as Sibbes puts it:

His strength is out with himself.

A lack of contentment is a very prideful thing at its core, because the lack of self-denial, says: ‘I can solve this, I can win with my own process. My strength will win through, my stubbornness will win through’. Who is it sets us free? Us? No, not at all.

John 8:36

Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.

That tells us we can’t free ourselves; there in no ‘indeed’, no completeness.

The Greek word is ‘ὄντως’ - it means truly , or in reality.

Man’s freedom, born from self, is not real, it’s a fake freedom, it’s not a reality. When the Son sets us free, its real freedom. The freedom we get from Christ, and in Christ, is not fleeting, it’s a deep sense, of what? - Contentment. Of ‘I can do all things in Christ, who strengthens me’; I can do all things in Christ who frees me.

Sibbes then asks the question:

What is the reason then that a Christian fails?

He then answers:

They think, I had grace yesterday, and before, and here upon they go not for supply of new strength in Christ.

Is it not so that our failings, our lack of contentment, starts when we once again forget who strengthens us in all things?

Sibbes says it’s a skill, it’s an art, to know the necessity of seeking Christ for strength. It’s as he says ‘our trade’.

Brothers and sisters, we are in the holiness business, and to live that way we need to again, as Sibbes says:

Fetch strength from Christ then.

Let me close by reading Sibbes’ close to his sermons:

We shall have strength from him to carry ourselves in all estates. Come what will, he will stand by us; he will not fail us nor forsake us. When did Paul speak these glorious words? In prison. 'I can do all things through Christ,' &c. Did the Spirit of God leave Paul in prison? Was it not better for Paul to have grace than to be freed from the thing? Wicked men may be freed from trouble, only a Christian hath grace to carry himself well in trouble. Come what will, if we be in Christ, either we shall be freed from troubles, or we shall have grace to bear them. Either we shall have that we want, or we shall have contentment without it. Is it not better to have grace without the thing? Is it not better to have a glorious Spirit of glory resting on us? Did not the Spirit of glory rest on Paul? Could not God have freed Paul from prison? Yes. But where had been then the demonstration of a contented spirit, of an heavenly mind? Where had been this example of a Christian bearing the cross comfortably? Paul lost nothing. Here you see how many stars shine in the night of his affliction, what a lustre he had in the dark state of imprisonment. Shall we then be afraid of any condition? No. Get the Spirit of God; get understanding of Christ, and the promises and privileges by him, and then let God cast us into what condition he will, we shall be safe and well.

Amen.