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Current Sunday Sermon Updated:
21 October 2009
The Lords Day Morning
November 1, 2009
Stewardship Sunday
1 Timothy 6:6-8
Godliness with Contentment is Great Gain
Dr. J. Ligon Duncan III
This morning we will look at 1 Timothy chapter 6, verses 6 to 8 this morning.
This is the passage that our deacon-stewardship committee has chosen as
the theme, or to draw the theme, of our stewardship season this year
Godliness with Contentment is Great Gain so were going to consider this
passage. Now, T Dale gave us an
exhortation from this passage last week and Ive read it a couple of times since
then. You can read it in the
First Epistle or you can look at it
on the church website. I would in
fact encourage you to do that. He
draws five particular points of exposition and three points of application, very
specific application, out of this passage that I would commend to you, because I
think most of us are going to have to think about some of these things long and
hard if we are going to get to the level of fighting some of the spiritual
fights that need to be fought in our hearts in the area of stewardship.
And so I commend those five expositions and those three applications that
T gave us last week.
Im not going to repeat those today as tempting as it was for me to do that.
I want to focus your attention on one thing in this passage.
This passage is about contentment and specifically it is about the source
of our contentment. It is the
question of, What is your contentment based on?
That is one of the, if not the most important questions that you
can ask and answer about contentment.
If your contentment is based on the wrong thing, then you will not have
the kind of contentment that God intends His people to have.
You will not have the kind of satisfaction, the kind of joy, the kind of
peace, the kind of confidence, the kind of assurance of security that God
intends His children to have if your contentment is based on the wrong thing.
And if you will notice, especially in verse 7, Paul is trying to draw our
attention to the question of something that our contentment is often misplaced
upon and that is either what we dont have in this life but that which we are
seeking to acquire, or what we have in this life but which we are liable to
lose. And either of those things
are false hopes, uncertain foundations, quicksand for the Christian life.
If our hope, if our confidence, if our contentment are based on those
things, then we will not have contentment.
And so Paul is getting at that issue.
Now that issue is a stewardship issue because those whose contentment is
placed in the right place, are positioned to serve God as stewards in a way in
which those whose contentment is placed in the wrong place are not, and thats
the connection between this section of Scripture and the pursuit of stewardship
that we want to see in our congregation.
So lets look to God in prayer before we read His Word in this great
passage.
Heavenly Father, most of us would give a right answer to the Bibles teaching
about where our contentment ought to be based if we were asked today, but the
rub would be in actually placing our hope and our contentment in the right
place. We can give the right
answer, but where it gets hard is in actually living out the right answer.
And sometimes Lord, were not even aware that our confidence is in the
wrong place. So even as we read the
Word of God today, my prayer is not only that we would understand it, understand
it so well that we can teach it in the Sunday School class, but that we would
believe it and live it out to the extent that, one, we would see where in our
own heart we are not acting on what we say we believe, and two, that we would
actually live the truth out practically in our lives.
Do this by Your Holy Spirit, even as we read the Word.
We pray it in Jesus name.
Amen.
This is Gods Word:
Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment, for we brought nothing
into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world.
But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.
Amen and thus ends this reading of Gods holy, inspired, and inerrant Word.
May He write its eternal truth upon all our hearts.
Less than a month ago I had one of the most encouraging conversations that I had
had in a long time. Back in April,
at the Gospel Coalition Conference in
He grew up in the home of a Word of Faith pastor.
His father is a bi-vocational pastor out of the Word of Faith1
tradition. Now if you know Word of
Faith, that means what we call prosperity gospel if youre a Christian and
you trust God and theres not un-confessed sin in your life, then youre
supposed to be healthy and wealthy and there arent supposed to be problems in
your life and youre supposed to be happy all the time because God wants you to
be blessed. He wants you to be
happy. He wants you to be healthy.
He wants you to have money.
He wants you to have the best things in this world.
Well, this young man grew up in that tradition and when he went to
Now he and his father took her around to crusade after crusade of Word of Faith
preachers. Now let me just identify
for you, thats Benny Hinn, thats Joyce Meyers, that Marilyn Hickey, thats
Kenneth Copeland, thats Kenneth Hagin fill in the blank.
Most of what you see on television is this kind of teaching.
To crusade and crusade and crusade and no one could heal her.
And then finally when she was 23 she died.
And when she died, all of his confidence in this kind of teaching came crashing
down around his ears. He couldnt
believe it anymore. And in the wake
of that tragedy, as he was listening to rap music yes you heard that right
Hip-Hop2,
Christian Hip-Hop, you know, groups like Cross Movement, he began to hear a
theology of suffering and trial that he had never ever heard in the Word of
Faith movement and he wondered where this was coming from and so he looked at
the liner notes of the CDs that he bought of this music that he was listening to
and it directed him to Christian teachers like John MacArthur and John Piper,
who then directed him to the teachings of R.C. Sproul and to the RTS virtual
campus. He has listened to every
course on the RTS virtual campus and is pursuing a degree through Reformed
Theological Seminary right now and he has come to embrace, fully, the doctrines
of grace and to turn his back on the teaching of the prosperity gospel and his
father has now embraced this too, and they together are seeing their
congregation transformed with this new teaching.
Now why do I tell you this story?
Because I think if I were to ask virtually anyone in this room, Is the
confidence of Word of Faith theology and the prosperity gospel misplaced? you
would immediately and instinctively say, Yes, that theology places our
confidence, in the midst of trials, in the wrong place.
It basically says if youve got trials in your life it results from one
of three things (A) Youre not a Christian, because if you were a Christian
God would want you to be blessed, or (B) If you are a Christian, you dont have
enough faith, and if you just had enough faith you wouldnt be sick and you
would have everything you want and you wouldnt have trials in your life, or (C)
Theres un-confessed sin in your life, and if you would just confess that sin
and get right with God and then the blessings would start to flow.
And my friend could look into his sisters eyes, who was a godly woman, in fact
in her death she had a very strong testimony of trust in God that witnessed to
many around her and he knew that the problem was not that this woman didnt have
enough faith. It certainly wasnt
that she wasnt a Christian and he could not conceive of any un-confessed sin in
her life. She was so open in her
relationship with the Lord. He knew
that that theology utterly failed the test of the right placement of confidence
in this life.
And I think just about anyone in this room would say that.
We would recognize that that theology is not only not biblical, but its
not capable of answering the greatest challenges of life when trouble comes.
But, you knew that was coming; we have the same struggles.
We have the same struggles in locating the place of our contentment.
Because the fact of the matter is, most of us rock along either enjoying
the circumstances that we have now and our contentment is inextricably linked to
them, or we think that if our circumstances could just get a little bit better
then we would find contentment.
I know how it is, youre young, youre just starting out, and you think, Just
two hundred and fifty dollars a month, Lord, and Id be content.
My income would match my outgo and things would be better. Or five
hundred or seven hundred fifty or whatever it is.
We think, If I could get just a little bit more of what I have now, but
more than I have now, then I would be okay.
But you see, either of those places, either finding our contentment in
what we have now, or finding our contentment in what we dont have now but what
we think we could acquire, is locating our contentment in the wrong place.
And by the way, its not just money and stuff.
Its not just money and stuff.
Oh, theres a tremendous challenge when it comes to money and stuff and
contentment because it does give you such a false sense of security to have much
and we lived in a land of plenty and we are a people who are affluent the
least of us is more affluent than most of the people who have ever lived in the
world and it can breed a false sense of security.
And striving just after a little bit more can also offer a false solution
to the dilemma of contentment.
But its not just money, it can be relationships.
If I could only have him Id be content.
If I could only have her Id be content.
Or if I could only have this status, if I could only have this success,
if I could only have this popularity, if I could only have this prominence, if I
could only have this power. It can
be all sorts of things other than just material possessions.
Yes it can be material possessions.
Money If I could just have a little more house, Lord.
If I could just have a little more country club, Lord.
If I could just have a little more condo, Lord.
If I could have just a little more hunting club, Lord.
If I could just have a little more golf course, Lord Id be content.
It can be that, but it can also be other things.
And you understand what Paul is saying in this passage is that the kind of
contentment God offers in the Gospel is never found in those places, never found
in those places. Listen to what he
says in verse 7 We brought nothing into the world and we cannot take anything
out of the world. What is Paul
saying? If your contentment is
founded on, is based on, anything that you didnt bring into this world and that
you cant take out of this world, then your contentment is founded on the wrong
place. You know one Christian has
said, There are no U-HAULS behind hearses.
And if your contentment is in either what you have but which you could
lose now and cannot take with you, or if your contentment is in the pursuit of
what you dont have now but what you think you can acquire but you cant take
with you, then your contentment is in the wrong place and you will never ever
know true peace and contentment.
John Piper asked this question If you dropped dead right now, would you take
with you a payload of pleasure in God or would you stand before Him with a
spiritual cavity where covetousness used to be?
Covetousness lets you down just when you need help the most.
And you understand thats what this passage is about.
The word covetousness, or coveting, is never used here, but this passage
is about a battle between contentment and covetousness, and covetousness will
locate for us our hope in either what we have now but which we could lose and
which we cannot take with us, or it will locate for us our contentment and hope
in what we dont have now but which we think we could acquire but which we cant
take with us, and either of those places will let you down.
All you have to do is lose what you have now that gives you your security
to find out that that kind of security cant outlive what you have now.
And all you have to do is obtain that which you thought was going to give
you contentment in this life to find out that it wont be able to give you
contentment because God has made you so that you will never ever be able to be
content until He is your greatest treasure and you prefer Him to anything and
everything else in this world and you locate and base your contentment on the
fact that you have Him because no one and nothing can take Him away from you.
And thats what Paul is talking about in this passage.
There appears to be something like a health and wealth teaching going on
in
Why? Because
when your faith is in Jesus Christ, your
faith perceives Christ as your treasure, and when He is your treasure your
contentment is located on a foundation that cannot be moved, it cannot be taken
away, it cannot be rebuked, it cannot be impaired in any way.
It will not be outlasted by the new heavens and the new earth.
It will go on forever.
John Piper paints this vivid picture of the challenge that is before us in
regard to contentment. He says,
Picture two hundred sixty-nine people entering eternity in a plane crash.
Before the crash, there is noted on this plane, a politician, a
millionaire, a corporate executive, a playboy and his playmate, and a missionary
kid on the way back from visiting his grandparents.
And then after the crash they stand before God utterly stripped of every
MasterCard, every checkbook, every credit line, every image, all the clothes,
all the success, all the books, all the Hilton reservations the politician,
the executive, the playboy, and the missionary kid on level ground with
absolutely nothing in their hands but what they brought with them in their
hearts. Oh, how absurd and tragic the lover of money will seem on that day.
Like a man who spends his whole life collecting train tickets and in the end is
so weighed down by the collection that he misses the last train.
We brought nothing into the world and we can take nothing out of it.
Now does that mean that the missionary kid is saved because of something that he
has done that makes him better that those other people?
No, it just means this: when you put your faith in Jesus Christ, you realize
however dimly at first, however inconsistently at first, that He is your
treasure and everyone who truly trusts in Christ in some measure knows Him as
your treasure. And those who do not
put their faith in Christ try to fill up the void in them with anything else
they can get their hands on and stuff in there.
And when they pass into the new heavens and the new earth, there will be
nothing left.
So heres what Paul is saying,
Christians, precisely because we perceive Christ to be our greatest
treasure, ought to realize that there is
a gain in godliness, there is a gain in trusting Christ our contentment
can never ever be taken away from us because its not based on something that
can be taken away from us.
Now how is that connected to stewardship?
Well, a hundred ways, but heres the way I want to draw the line for you
those who are content with Christ are not spending their lives trying to fill
up an empty hole in themselves and stuffing more and more stuff in there to try
to find contentment. And
consequently, they live for bigger things.
They live for a greater agenda, for a greater cause, than simply trying
to find personal fulfillment, satisfaction, and contentment, and they perceive
that what they have been given ought to be used for Gods glory as much as
possible.
But heres the problem youve perhaps been reading the stewardship statistics
like I have. Theyre pretty grim.
American Christians spend more on dog food than they do on missions.
Now thats pretty hard for a dog lover to say.
American Christians today give less, even with adjusted figures, give
less to the church than our fathers and grandfathers did during the Great
Depression half or less than what they gave during the Great Depression.
Now what does that say?
I think it says this that we have
forgotten where our contentment lies and we have been captured by the spirit of
covetousness. I think its
easy to understand why. We live in
an affluent culture, we are bombarded by advertisements our whole waking hour
used to, you had to be in front of a radio or television, but now, now the
advertisements coxing you to covetousness come right to your iPhone.
You dont have to go anywhere.
They come to you, to your laptop.
You cant even look at your Twitter page without something being
advertised to you. And what does it
teach you? It teaches us that we
are consumers. Thats what we are.
We are consumers, and what do consumers do?
They buy stuff and consume it. And
so what does life consist of?
Buying stuff and consuming it I buy, therefore I am. Its the new
Cartesianism.3
And that tempts even Christians to think about their possessions in a way that
we ought not to.
What can change that? Only the
truth that Paul has stated here that there is great gain in godliness with
contentment, for we brought nothing into this world and we can take nothing out
of it. Its Pauls way of
expounding something that his Lord and Savior once said, You cannot worship God
and stuff. Youll either hate one
and love the other, or youll love the one and hate the other.
You cant do both. And it
is those who have learned contentment in God through the Gospel of the Lord
Jesus Christ who are most ready to give away what God has given to them because
even His bounty, even the bounty that He gives to us, is not the source of our
contentment.
And in the end, we have a new evaluation system an iPod for me, or money
invested in ministry and missions that leads to someone coming to faith in
Christ? So that when you stand
before the throne in the Last Day and youre having the great wrestling match -
that persons everlasting joy or my iPod - it looks kind of stupid, doesnt it?
And thats the freedom that contentment in God brings and its the
freedom that makes stewards out of Christians because they care about bigger
things because Gods already taken care of their contentment.
Lets pray.
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1.
Word of Faith.
The doctrine of Word Faith, sometimes referred to as Word of Faith, is a
teaching promoted by some of the more radical elements of the
Charismatic movement. The term
implies that Christians not only need faith in God, but that they need to have
faith in the power of the words they speak. If they use the "word of faith,"
according to a number of formulas which such teachers believe they have found in
the Bible, they need only search the Bible to find what they consider
"unconditional promises" of God, and then merely "confess" with their mouth
-using the word of faith- that the blessings they seek are theirs, and they
shall have those blessings. Such blessings would include health and prosperity.
One of the typical sayings Word Faith adherents are supposed to internalize is
"What I confess, I possess." A related catch phrase used in many Word Faith
books is "confession brings possession."
2.
Hip-Hop.
Hip-hop began in the 1970s in the Bronx in
3.
Cartesianism.
The philosophical theses of Cartesianism have their origins in the thought of
Ren Descartes (15961650), who sought to replace the dominant Aristotelian
philosophy with a new philosophy that would liberate society from
obedience to authority,
prejudice, and philosophical (and
maybe even theological)
dogma
and contribute to scientific and social progress. The most prominent and perhaps
defining thesis of the Cartesian philosophy is what has come to be called
"mind-body
dualism." Descartes insisted on the
real distinction between mind and matter. Mind (or soul) and matter (or body)
are, according to
Descartes, two essentially and
radically different kinds of substance. His philosophical starting-point is
dangerous to faith. Descartes began by trusting in reason to the exclusion of
revelation (both natural and special). One of his better known propositions
reflecting this dualism was I think therefore I am. The simple meaning of the
phrase is that if someone is wondering whether or not they exist, that is in and
of itself proof that they do exist (because, at the very least, there is an "I"
who is doing the thinking)
First Presbyterian Church,
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