Contentment

Welcome to Gospel in Life. Have you ever wondered what it really means to live a great life? The Bible says the Ten Commandments aren't confining rules, but a framework for building a life of true greatness. Today, Tim Keller takes an in-depth look at the final commandment, "Do not covet," and helps us understand what it means to live a life of true contentment grounded in the saving grace of Jesus Christ. Philippians 4, 10-13. I rejoice greatly in the Lord that at last you have renewed your concern for me. Indeed, you have been concerned, but you have had no opportunity to show it. I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances are. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well-fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength. Here ends the reading of God's Holy Word. We have been going through the Ten Commandments. And today we come to the Ten Commandment, and Paul is talking about the Ten Commandment. Here we have Paul in prison when he wrote the book of Philippians, "Facing and expecting death," and he has the audacity to say, "I have found the secret of being content. I have this inner gyroscope. I have this deep, common equilibrium, no matter what the circumstances. I have learned the secret of being content." This is remarkable. I don't know if any city where contentment is a harder thing to find. You can find almost anything in stores around here. There is a store for anything. And yet why people spend millions of dollars on Elrond Hubbard's dionetics and on S seminars and a hundred dollars a pop for your therapist is because you're after what Paul had. And you know what you're after. You know what we're after? We're struggling. We're reaching. We're stretching out as far as we can to get this inner equilibrium and this inner calm just so we can face our bills, our boss, our date, or our dateless, or our dateless calendar. You see? And it's crushing us and we can't even face that. And what Paul's talking about is a contentment that will enable us to face something. What Paul's talking about is a galaxy beyond that which we are grasping for we can't get. A Christians have had it for years. Not all Christians, but Christians, not just Paul, not just super people like the people who wrote the Bible. Christians over the years have also discovered it. You got that famous picture from the English Reformation when Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, two great leaders in the English church, were being burned to the stake. Remember? Some of you have surely heard about this. Back to back. They were putting the fire to their feet. And I guess it's Latimer that turned around and said in everybody's hearing he says, "Be of good cheer, Master Ridley, and play the man for today by God's grace. We will light a candle in England that will never be put out." And you know, I just get overwhelmed, even quoting it, I keep saying, "How could anybody be in a condition of heart to talk like that at a time like that?" You say, "Man, I can't even face my boss. I can't face my bills. I can't face my date." And look at what he was facing. I have learned the secret of being content. And the amazing thing is in the Bible, this is not some kind of high nirvana that only certain people who sit on the top of flag poles and fast and pray for 30 years can find, the Bible actually does not just say, "This is possible." Do you realize that the Bible says this is commanded? Because that's what the tenth commandment is. "Thou shalt not covet by neighbor's house, for the neighbor's wife, nor his man servant, nor his maid servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything, which is thy neighbors." You know what that's saying? Thou shalt not covet, coveting is this inner grasping. Coventing is not stealing. Coventing is not committing adultery. Coventing is not killing. Those things have been covered. You see, in the earlier commandments, coveting is that inner grasping after things that says, "I've got to have these things, or I'm so empty." Thou shalt not covet means, thou shalt love God enough to be content in all circumstances. That's what the commandment is. The first commandment and the tenth commandment are like bookends, and they summarize the whole. The first commandment was, "Love God with all your heart, put nothing before him, be totally absorbed in him." And the tenth commandment is the result. The first commandment is, "Love God and the tenth commandment is, if you love God enough, so that you'll be content in all circumstances, and then all the rest of the commandments in between, fall in place." If I love God enough to be content in all things, why would I want to steal money? Why would I want to steal sex? Why would I want to steal status? Why would I want to steal revenge? Why would I need these things? These things, pleasure, is nice. Pleasure, is created by God. Money, comfort, sexual, are these things created by God? They're nice. They're marvelous. They're icing on the cake. They stimulate the palate of the soul, but they're not food. They're not food. Can you imagine living on icing? What would happen to you? It's a couple of doctors out there. You just tell me what would happen living on icing? What would that do to your body? What do you think living on icing does to your soul? And a person who's loving God enough to be content is saying these things are nice, but they're not crucial. If I love God enough to be content in all things, then the lifestyle of greatness of the Ten Commandments flows out of that. The life of integrity, the ninth commandment, the life of purity, the seventh commandment, the life of generosity, the eighth commandment, the life of forgiveness, the sixth commandment, and so on. It all flows out. And that's the reason Paul was converted by, it's interesting, Paul, who wrote this passage, Philippians 4, 10, to 13, was converted by the tenth commandment. Paul tells us the story of his conversion in Romans 7. He says, "I was alive apart from the law." In that matter of fact, I think we'll spend time next week on that. But I'll just say this. We'll spend time on Paul's conversion next week. But I'll say this here. Paul said, "I was alive apart from the law." That means, "I felt good about myself. I thought I was godly." And he says, "Until the commandment came, thou shalt not covet." And then sin revived and I died, the commandment he said, "slooming." We'll unwrap that next week. But you know what he's saying? He says, "I thought I was a godly person. Until one day I was meditating on this commandment, thou shalt not covet." And I began to realize what it said. It says, "A godly person will love God enough so that nothing else is necessary so that he will be content in all circumstances in plenty and in want." And suddenly Paul says, "I'm not anything like that." He was deeply convicted of sin. He says, "I can't even come near that. I'm not godly at all. Help me!" And that was the beginning of his conversion. And I don't know where you are this morning, but I would hope. You will start this message as I had started by realizing that you're nowhere near what the Bible commands. The Bible is saying, "God created you, you owe him everything. It's the most natural thing in the world for God to ask you to love him with all your heart, soul and mind." The most natural thing. Why? Because number one, you owe it to him so legally it's natural. Nobody would say it's unjust. But practically it's natural because you need to love him so that no other thing can dominate your life. And these other little things that you have to have, that you covet, that you crack, grasp after, which are never there in the proportions that you want them in. Therefore you're always running around in a state of discontent. It's absolutely natural for God to say, "Love me with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind." Because if you did, you would live like that. You have to start by saying, "I am incapable of that. I am so far from that because until you recognize your incapable of contentment, you are incapable of contentment." You have that? Until you recognize your incapable of it, you'll never be capable of it. It starts when you ditch the self-help books. It starts when you come and say, "Paul, I thought I was alive, but this commandment has slain me. I thought I could make it. I thought I could do it, but now I see how far short I fall. And I have been leveled by this commandment. Help me." And that's the beginning of the path that led to the place That's how Paul started. That was the beginning, saying, "I was slain by this commandment." And that started a journey. They brought Paul to the place where he could write what he wrote in Philippians chapter four, "I have learned the secret." Being content in all things. Now, actually, Paul doesn't leave us completely grasping after the secret. He doesn't leave us saying, "I have learned the secret." And, "Nan, nanan, nanan, you can't have it." Instead, I've been around little boys too much. Yeah, okay. Instead, he says, "Here it is." Because he outlines it for us. He, "Look, there's three things he teaches us, right here. One, two, three. Number one, he shows us why we need it. He shows us what it is, this contentment. And then he shows us basically how to get it. Why, what, and how? Let's do those three. So we can understand the secret too. Why? When Paul uses the word secret, he's using a very important word. He's using a word that shows that this is not something that everybody has. It's something people want to have. The word secret means it's something that is not easy to find. He's not saying it's an easy thing to find. And Paul's pointing to something that we all know and the most thoughtful people in history know. And that is that there is a deep longing in our hearts for something that nothing can satisfy. That's what he's referring to. Now I went digging around and I hope I can refine all my little quotes and things. But for example, in the front of the front, I don't want you to page all around. Mark Twain talks about it. Mark Twain says, "You don't know quite what it is you want. You do not know quite what it is you do want, but it's just fairly, it just fairly makes your heart ache. You want it so." You don't know quite what it is you do want, but you fearfully makes your heart ache. You want it so. I think sometimes we experience that, don't you? You remember something that makes you anxious. And then ten minutes or so later, you get involved in something else. And you stay anxious, but you can't remember what you were anxious about. Do you remember that? You say, "Wait a minute. I know I'm feeling vaguely depressed and anxious. What is it? I can't remember what it is. I know I'm supposed to be feeling bad." And then you say, "Oh, that's right." And you suddenly remember. You know that experience. But it's more cosmic than that. That can happen in the micro level, but in the macro level, it's also true that all of us have something that we really need to have, that we desperately long for, that we always feel like we're on the verge of finding when we meet a new friend or when we go on a new vacation, or when we start a new job, or we fall in love again. And when that happens, you feel like you're on the verge of getting it, but you can never quite remember what it is. That's what Mark Twain is saying. One of my favorite quotes by Leonard Bernstein is where he says about Beethoven's 50. He said this on an omnibus TV broadcast, which I got out of the Museum of Broadcasting of the Day in 1954. And he says there about Beethoven. He says, "The reason he loves Beethoven is this." He says, "When I listen to it, I feel like there is something right in the world. There is something that follows on its own, can laws consistently, consistently, what a day." It's something that checks throughout. There is something that will never let us down. And what he's talking about, he doesn't know. He says, "When I hear the best music, I feel like I'm close to this something, but I can't quite reach it." Wallace Stevens, great poet, at one point says, "What I want, even in contentment, I feel the need of some imperishable bliss." He says, "Whenever I find a perishable bliss, a good job, a great meal, a beautiful boat ride, a marvelous vista." He says, "Even as I'm sitting back in content, I realize this is actually stimulating in me, the desire for something which this object, which is a rouse of desire in me, cannot fulfill." Even in contentment, I feel that the need of some imperishable bliss. Gertr, talked about something that he called Zane's Oof, which meant blissful longing. And of course, our friend, C.S. Lewis, puts it awfully well. Lewis says, "When you stand before a landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life in your hobbies, the secret attraction, often on the verge of breaking through, through the scent of cut wood in the workshop, or the clapp-clap of water against the boat's side, you have never had it. But if it should ever become manifest, you would say, "Here at last is the thing I was made for." It's the thing we desired before we met our wives, or made our friends, or chose our work. While we are this is, if we lose this, we lose all." All the thoughtful people, whether they're Christians or not, all we say, there is a longing for something beautiful, something gorgeous, something satisfying, that we never can quite remember what it is. It's like being anxious, and not remembering what it was that made us anxious. Here, it's being aroused with longing for something we can never quite remember what it is. And when we get near an object that brings us to it, we realize almost instantly that the object cannot satisfy the longing that it aroused. Because you see, contentment is a secret. It's something that we know about, but we don't know about. It's something we all feel, but we don't know the key to it. And all human beings who are thoughtful recognize it. Now, once you realize that, or even if you don't realize that, this fact breaks the human race into three groups. And everybody in this room is in one of them. So listen, and figure out where you are. The first group are people who simply decide that the objects that are arousing the desire must be those things which will satisfy the desire. You just assume it's logical that these things aroused the desire, so therefore they must satisfy the desire. Now, for example, in the commandment, thou shalt not covet. You've got three basic categories. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's possessions. All the other things. And in the book of John, first John, it talks about those things under the same three categories, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. Why is there so much pain and suffering in the world? And how do we handle it in a way that won't destroy us, but could actually make us stronger, wiser, and more hopeful? All month long on Gospel and Life, Tim Keller is teaching from the book of First Peter, and looking at how Peter encouraged early believers who were facing intense suffering in pain. In his book, "Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering," Dr. Keller takes a deeper look at how, with God's help, we can face life's most intense challenges and confront the hard questions on suffering. Through deep pastoral insight and real life stories, Dr. Keller explores how we can face pain and suffering in our own lives. This month, "Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering" is our thank you for your gift to help Gospel and Life share the message of Christ's love and compassion with people all over the world. So request your copy today at gospelandlife.com/give. Now, here's Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. See, some of us find that the objects that most aroused this desire are romantic or sexual objects, by neighbor's wife. And we really believe if we can just get into a relationship with the right one, and a lot of us, a lot of us are totally dominated by that worldview. You may say, "A lot of us are not in a good mood, "but you're not in a good mood, "but you're not in a good mood, or just a certain reference to dust, it just means eventually, you put more weight on that person in that relationship than it can possibly bear. You say, "Now at last, I will find what I need." And after a while, when you find that romance doesn't work, some people finally say, "Well, I'll just settle for sex." At least that will do it. That's the lust of the flesh. It's by neighbor's wife. But then there's a couple other possibilities. There's also people who find that their desire is aroused mainly, not by romance and sexuality, but by possessions, by going after things, by accumulating. That's what makes me, we think. That's what really satisfies that desire. That's what really, really brings the secret of contentment. And then you've got the third category, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the neighbor's wife, the neighbor's possessions, and then the neighbor's house. Power. Status. Celebrity. I can just get there if I can get there. And this is this marvelous quote, and I had to be careful how I put it in the bulletin by Cynthia Heimel, who writes for the village voice. She was writing about three people who live in New York that she knows were very big celebrities, and I had to pull their names out, just because it wasn't fair. But look what she says. The minute a person becomes a celebrity, it's the same minute he or she becomes a monster. When God wants to play a really rotten practical joke on you, he grants your deepest wish and then giggles merrily when you suddenly realize you want to kill yourself. I think an unfair way to put it, but there's a kernel of truth in this. Romans 1 says, "Sometimes the best way God can bring you to your senses is to give you what you think will satisfy you." The night each of them became famous, they wanted to streak with relief. Finally, now they were adored in Vincelble Magic. The morning after the night each of them became famous, they wanted to take an overdose. If they were miserable before, they were twice as miserable now because that giant thing, they were striving for that same thing that was going to make everything okay, that was going to make their lives bearable, that was going to provide them with personal fulfillment, and ha ha ha happiness had happened and nothing changed. They were still them. The disillusionment turned them howling and insufferable. Does it work if you're the first kind of person? To say these objects that arouse my desire, these objects that arouse this desire for contentment and inner strength and fulfillment, must be the source of that inner strength and fulfillment. When you build your life on them, you know what you're like? It's like building a 75 by 75 house on a 35 by 35 foundation. When you first build a house on a foundation far too small for it, the house looks fine and generally speaking the soft earth will keep it up for a while. There's a whole slew of row houses by the way, in northern Philadelphia, that were built about 50 years ago like that, and now they're all sinking into the ground. Not all parts of them, the parts on the foundation is okay, but the house starts to break. It starts to break up because whereas the foundation does not change, all the parts around the foundation do change. If you build your life on your business, what happens if your business hits the skids? If you build your life on a relationship, what happens when you find out gas that that person isn't perfect? That person is doing the same thing to you, wants to build his or her life on you? What happens? What you're doing is your life is bigger than any of these things. Your house is bigger than the foundation. And Ibsen says, "If you take away the life's lie from any man, they lose all their happiness." If you take away the life's lie, Ibsen says, "Everybody's got a life's lie and after a while the house begins to break up." That's the first kind of person. What's the second kind of person? The second kind of person is somebody, and I think there's a lot of those kinds of folks around New York. These are people who have decided to stop building a life on anything. They realized after a couple of relationships or after business, they began to realize, "Why am I so unhappy?" and they went into self-analysis. Now they might have gone into it through therapy or something professional or you just might have gotten into it through books or you may have just done it yourself. But what you do is you get objective and you pull yourself back and you say, "Why am I so unhappy?" and you begin to realize, "Yes, I've built my life too much on this. Yes, I've built my life too much on this. I realize that I thought that these objects were going to bring me happiness and I can't do it and I won't do it anymore." And so you feel happier, right? You know what self-analysis does? All I can show you is why you're unhappy. There's a Harvard psychiatrist, Robert Coles, that says, "I went into analysis because I was so nasty in hostile. When I came out of analysis, I was still nasty in hostile, but now I knew why I was nasty in hostile." And here's a scary one. Ernest Becker, who is a disciple of Freud, and he never embraced the faith, never embraced any religion at all, but he says this, "All the analysis in the world does not allow the person to find out who he is and why he is on earth, why he has to die and how he can make life a triumph. And it is when psychology pretends to do this. When it seeks to offer a full explanation for human unhappiness, it becomes a fraud and makes an impasse from which you cannot escape." He says, "All psychology can do all self-analysis can do is show you what you built your life on, why you're so unhappy, but it cannot. It cannot show you why you're here, why you have to die, how to make life a triumph, all the things you need for contentment." Not only that, Becker also goes ahead and says a real problem with analysis is it'll show you what you feel guilty about. And of course, Freud was into that, but Becker says something fascinating. He says the problem is once you find out what you're guilty about, you can't do anything about your guilt. The only way you can do something about guilt is this, you have to decide if it's true or false. The only way to get rid of true guilt is to say, "I'm guilty, it's wrong," and you repent and you relieve, or you say, "It's false guilt," and then you have to say, "Well, you argue yourself out of it, you shouldn't feel guilty about that." But how do you decide what's true and what's false? And Becker said there's no way to know. In fact, Becker also says the problem with guilt is simply this, no strength can overcome guilt but the strength of a God. What happens to you that are in the second category, that you look around and you say, "Yes, I've been worshipping things, I've been building my life on things that are too small for my life, I've had it, I'm not going to do it anymore." So you worship nothing, you build your life on nothing, you become cynical, you become hard, at least you're not being disappointed. Admittedly, at least you're not going into up and down all the time like it used to be, at least now you're just down here and you stay down there. You see, you're saying, "I used to cry after the moon." But now you just cry. You're a cynic. You're probably less of a nuisance to society, probably less of a nuisance to your friends and your relatives, you're probably less of a nuisance to yourself. You're not crashing all the time but look where you are. Analysis can't tell you anything, you really need to know to be happy. It can't give you the secret. And then there's a third category. And we ought to do what Becker says. He wasn't a Christian, he wasn't a believer in anything. But we ought to do this. We ought to reason. This is how CS Lewis reasons. I get hungry in my stomach and I look around, my goodness, there's food. A little baby duckling wants to swim and sure enough or such a thing as water. And if there are desires in you that nothing on earth can fulfill, it means that you were built for something else. You need to get beyond yourself. And as nice as sex is, as nice as sexuality is, I'd be inventing it. As nice as relationships and friendships are, as nice as money is, as nice as comfort is, as nice as all these things are, they are icing. You can't live on icing. And so the third kind of person says, "I have learned the secret of being content. I will love God with all my heart, soul, strength, and mind." The secret, my dear friends, of contentment is for people not who nibble around the edges of Christianity, not for people who nibble around the edges and live in the suburbs of Christianity, but those people who will go downtown. It's for people who are willing not to say, "I'll be a little bit more religious. I need a little bit of help. I need some moral reformation. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. Put Him in the center of your life." And then, and only then, can you even begin to know what it means not to cover it. They all go together. What is contentment? Contentment, just to pull the little word apart, the word contentment that Paul uses here is a little Greek word out-arch-ay. Archaem means to be full, to be satiated. It's like when you've eaten a terrific meal, a terrific meal, not too much, so you're uncomfortable, but just every bit that you could possibly take in great food. And you find out where it used to be freezing out there. It's not freezing anymore. And you find out where, before you're anxious, you just really want to take a nap. You know, you are satiated, and that's what Paul's talking about, but he's not talking about a physical satiation. He's talking about a soul satiation. And then, that's what Archaem means, but he says, "Out-arch-ay." And the word out means from auto means self. And he doesn't mean you're satisfied with yourself. Contentment is being satisfied by yourself. That doesn't mean by means from. It means all by yourself, not needing plenty, and not needing what. A Christian knows that when you're in trouble, you have to work on your heart to love God enough to stay content, but even when you're in prosperity, you have to work on your heart. Because when you're in prosperity, you have to constantly say, "Hey, this isn't my life." This isn't. The cake, this is the icing. Father, thank you. Today it's here. The success, the relationship, the love, it's here. That's wonderful. But, you know, tomorrow could be a way. It could be gone. I don't need it. You don't have. You're not under any obligation to keep it here. You're all I need. "Out-arch-ay." I learned a secret of being content. What it is? It's the ability to say, "God, you're enough. I love you enough." And so as you are honor, not the acclaim of others, it's your love, not the love of others, which is the most fundamental. That's what it means. That's what contentment is. How do we get it? Well, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And let's just say, it's been an interesting. Ministers are always told you've got to have three points, but sometimes there's only been one point and all three points are different ways of saying the same thing. Christ, who strengthens me, a Christian is somebody who on the one hand has a new self image and also a new attitude toward him or herself and also a new attitude toward God. I can do all things through Christ who is my strength. Paul in 1 Corinthians 3, 1 Corinthians 4, gives us the Christian self image. [BLANK_AUDIO] says, "It is a small thing whether I'm judged by you or any human court." "Yeah, I judge not my own cell. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It's God who judges me." Did you hear all that? Let me translate. What he says is, "I don't care what you think of me." He says, "It's a small matter whether I'm judged by any human court." And a lot of people, especially the number two, remember those three categories, the number two category, a lot of people can get to the place where they don't care what anybody else says. "I don't care what people think about me. I'm not building my life on anything." A cynic can get rid of that. But then Paul says, "I don't care what you think of me." And then he says, "I don't even care what I think of me." It's not just that he says, "I don't care what other people think of me and their standards." It's a small thing whether I'm judged by you or any human court. He says, "Yay, I judge not my own cell. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent." He says, "I feel innocent right now, but that doesn't matter because you see I am not taking my self-image from what you say, but I'm not even taking it from what I say. I'm not taking it from your standards, but I'm not even taking it from my standards. I'm free. It's God who judges me. I've got a God who loves me. I've got a God who accepts me in Jesus Christ. I hold on to that. With that new self-image, why do you think Paul is so steady? Why do you think he's such a steady-edding? Why do you think, on the one hand, a Christian therefore, is not just able to handle troubles, but he's also able to handle plenty? Because the plenty doesn't give him a big head. It doesn't turn the person into a howling monster. Can't. Because the self-image is so unique. Let me close by asking you this. Some of you say, "I wish I could believe like that. I wish I had faith like that. I wish I had enough faith in Jesus in God to give my life and begin to know the secret of being content. But I just don't have enough faith. I wish I could." And so you shrug. You put yourself off a hook. I won't let you off a hook that easily. It's not a matter that you can't trust in Christ. It's a matter of you refusing to distrust yourself. You say, "Who says, I can't trust in God?" Acting as if, "Well, faith is beyond me. You're refusing to see the fact that right now you are living a life of faith in yourself." That's the reason why everything else is let you down. You've turned into a cynic. You say, "I'm not going to let--I am not going to trust anything. I'm not going to trust anything. I'm not going to trust the God. I'm not going to trust some preacher telling me who I've got to give my life to. I'm not going to trust--relationship is not going to trust anything from now on. Yes, you are. You're trusting your own judgment. You're trusting yourself. You're saying you're the one that can make up your mind about what's right and wrong, what's good and bad. You see, you still are facing your life on faith, faith in your own confidence to run your life. And my friends, that is a loop in the dark against evidence. Don't tell me. I can't know the secret because I just don't have enough faith. Don't have the power to look at yourself and admit that you are not competent to run your own life. That you've made plenty of decisions that have been bad, that even now you do not know what to do with it." My friends, Paul says, "I've learned the secret. What is the secret? Christ who is my strength. Christ who strengthens me through him, I can do anything." That's why Paul is able to say, "This commandment that slew me actually gave me life." And the commandment that slays you today could give you life. You could say, "Lord, because I see I'm not content, I see I'll never get there. I need to give my life to you," the way Paul did. So I can someday say, "I know what it is like to be in need." No, not someday. Today, you can say, "I can do everything through him who gives me strength." All of us need this. Some of us need to do it for the first time. Let's bow. Let's take a moment of silence. And let's go to him and say, "I put my life squarely on you. Give me the contentment that comes only from your throne." Let's pray. Thanks for joining us here on the Gospel Unlife Podcast. If you are encouraged by today's teaching, you can help others discover this podcast by reigning and reviewing it and to find more great Gospel-centered content by Tim Keller, visit gospelunlife.com. Today's sermon was recorded in 1990. The sermon's in talks you hear on the Gospel Unlife Podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017, while Dr. Keller was seen your pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.