Philippians 4:14-23 | Contentment in Community

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Please take your Bible with me to the Book of Philippians.

We've been in Philippians for a few months now.

We're going to conclude it this morning at the end of chapter 4 of the Book of Philippians.

Next week, going to start about five or six weeks of Jonah.

So I invite you to come back next week.

It is not a fish story, just in case you were wondering.

It is not even a story about a fearful runaway prophet.

It's about something entirely different.

So hopefully that's enough bait to get you to come back next week.

That's the best I can do.

Sorry, Philippians chapter 4.

Philippians 4 · chapter mention

A couple of weeks ago we traced the theme of contentment through scripture, from God's provision of daily manna in the wilderness, to the shepherd of Psalm 23, causing the sheep to not want or to not lack, to Agur's prayer in Proverbs chapter 30, to not have more than enough and not have less than enough.

Proverbs 30 · chapter mention

Then to the New Testament, to Paul's thorn in the flesh, where Christ promised that his grace would be sufficient.

We concluded there that true contentment rests in God's covenant faithfulness.

That we, as relations to God, that is, children of God, who are related to him by the new birth, can trust in his covenant faithfulness and his provision of enough.

Last week we moved from that theological foundation to the personal testimony of the Apostle Paul in Philippians chapter 4.

Philippians 4 · chapter mention

We saw in verse 11 of Philippians 4 that the Apostle Paul said that he learned to be content.

He didn't receive it even when Christ grabbed hold of him on the Damascus road.

He says he learned it in a kind of school.

He went through a curriculum that ran from lack to abundance, from want to plenty, and all the way in between.

And he came out of that school with something formed in him that wasn't there at the beginning.

Contentment is learned in the school of Christ's sufficient grace.

And what we discover now at the end of the letter to the Philippian church is that contentment is not always learned alone.

God met the Apostle Paul's needs, and through that, teaching Paul to be content through the Philippian church.

Their partnership with him was part of God's curriculum to teach Paul to be content.

Now, put very specifically, an application of that is that our partnership with our missionaries is part of God's curriculum to teach them to be content.

And as we move out from there, it's that God's people coming together learn contentment together.

What Paul says here in chapter 4, verses 14 through the end of the chapter is really one of the most personal parts of the letter.

But it comes in the context of this theme of contentment.

It relates to how the Philippian church gave a financial gift to meet Paul's needs while he was in prison, and all of that is wrapped up in this theme of contentment.

And so his response to their generosity is not what we might expect.

He doesn't simply send a thank you note saying, hey, thank you for the gift.

I really appreciate it.

He doesn't do that.

He says, What you did was worship.

What you did was worship.

Their financial gift to the Apostle Paul while he sat in a Roman prison was an act of worship.

That's the central point of the conclusion to this letter.

Contentment is practiced not simply alone, but also in community as an act of worship.

And that act of worship is a response to God's faithful supply for our needs.

We're going to see this truth in Paul's partnership with the church in Philippi, as well as his refocus on financial participation in God's work and how that fits into what we might call God's divine economy and how he works out all the things for his people's needs.

Look with me.

Philippians chapter 4, beginning in verse 14.

Philippians 4 · chapter mention

I'll read through the end of the chapter.

If you have your own Bible or device, you can follow along.

It says in verse 13, I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

And you remember, we found that that was a reference to being content.

Christ strengthens for contentment.

Yet it was kind of you to share my affliction or my trouble, my pressures.

And you Philippians yourselves know that in the beginning of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church entered into partnership with me in giving and receiving except you only.

Even in Thessalonica you sent me help for my needs once and again.

Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the fruit that increases to your credit.

I have received full payment, and more, I am well supplied, having received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God.

And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

To God our Father be glory for ever and ever.

Amen.

Greet every saint in Christ Jesus.

The brothers who are with me greet you.

All the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar's household.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

I love the end of this because it says that preachers can keep on preaching after we say amen.

Here at the end of the letter, the Apostle Paul recounts his partnership with the Philippian church.

This has probably been a few years of partnership at least.

And as he begins this reminder of how they've served Christ together, it's a change in direction in verse 14.

He's just established that their contentment, our contentment, is not dependent on what we receive.

His contentment as a prisoner in Rome was not dependent on the Philippians' gift.

He's content whether they support him financially or whether they don't.

That wasn't a false humility.

It was a real claim, and he meant it.

But he doesn't leave it there.

He goes on to commend them and says, I don't need your gift, but you did really well in sending it.

That single word in verse 14, yet, or nevertheless, some translations have, tells us, I think, something important.

The Apostle Paul is holding two truths at once without letting either one cancel out the other.

His contentment is genuine.

He's speaking the truth.

He has learned in whatever situation to be content.

At the same time, their gift was genuinely good and it genuinely mattered.

Those two things are not in competition.

In fact, that's what makes contentment possible.

Because it's the person who isn't held hostage by discontent who can receive a gift with free gladness.

That freedom is contentment at work in this community relationship between Paul and the Philippians.

And it's the same kind of grace that Paul learned in prison, now showing up in how a church gives and receives back and forth between an apostle and themselves.

Paul isn't faking niceness.

He's not just following etiquette.

He's free to rejoice in a gift that he didn't need because his contentment doesn't depend on their giving in the first place.

But their giving was a kind partnership with Paul.

They didn't do that.

They joined with him in his affliction.

The word for partnership in verse 15, no church entered into partnership.

That word partnership is the word for fellowship.

They joined in his affliction, in his pressures, in his ministry, fellowshipping with him.

So their giving was a way of saying to him, We are with you in this.

Journey of probably a week at the least, a couple of weeks at the most.

But the way this is related is pretty striking.

When Paul first left Macedonia, no other church was partnering with him.

Just one.

Just the church in Philippi.

And he frames it very interestingly.

He frames it in terms of a partnership in a gospel enterprise, giving and receiving.

This is an accounting description.

It's two sides of the ledger, a debit and a credit.

Both parties are invested in the work, and no other church opened this kind of an account with the Apostle Paul.

Only the Philippians, and they didn't do it just once.

He said, one time and again and again.

So he's honoring that consistent, repeated partnership in gospel work.

That's a different thing from an occasional kind of generosity from a gospel appeal.

So this isn't the Apostle Paul coming to a church and saying, you know, I'd really appreciate it if you'd send me on my way with a check or with an offering.

Because, no, I didn't even ask of anything, and yet you partnered with me again and again and again.

This is a church in Philippi shaped by gospel partnership as a way of life.

And that community exists because they have all learned together and individually that their security doesn't rest in what they hold on to.

They are secure whether they hold on to things or whether they give it up for Paul.

And that's what contentment in community looks like at the ground level.

It's not a community that practices contentment at home, but not together.

Instead, it's a community that's learned through the pressures of life.

I can be content whatever situation I'm in, and we can come together and be content together.

That means they're not unmoved by one another's pressures and struggles.

But they bear one another's burdens as their own because contentment has freed them to do it.

That's an important thought.

How do we come together with one another and support one another if we can't be content ourselves?

That doesn't happen.

We give of ourselves to others as we learn to be content.

And that leads us to a significant refocus of giving in light of contentment.

I know some of our guests this morning are thinking, great, I showed up on a sermon about giving.

No, you showed up at a sermon about Philippians.

This is the end of Philippians.

We've been walking our way through this.

And the Apostle Paul is centering contentment on this gift.

And his centering is a kind of refocus or a reframing of how we think about this gospel partnership.

What he does next is very unexpected.

He first commends their generosity and their history of giving.

And then he refocuses their entire perspective on their participation in this work.

He says, I'm not seeking the gift, verse 17.

I am seeking the fruit that multiplies to your account.

Hear that carefully.

Their giving produces something in themselves.

They benefit from their own giving.

I not that I seek the gift, but I seek the fruit that increases to your credit.

So he's continuing this accounting theme and saying, you have an account before God.

And when you give, it's not something that I get primarily, it's that you deposit something in your account before God, and it produces fruit.

This is a complete reorientation about how most people think about giving.

Most of us think about giving as a transaction that moves a resource from one person to another.

Or from one person who has to another person who needs.

Or maybe we could say of ownership.

Somebody who gives with contentment has settled the question of who owns what I give.

Am I sovereign over it?

Or is God?

Someone who can give with contentment understands that everything they have already belongs to God.

This is the person that can give in this kind of way freely and repeatedly because they've already let go of the illusion that what they hold on to is ultimately theirs.

Then he gives them a receipt for their giving.

This is the language used in ancient commercial documents for paid in full.

It's like a stamp that says, here's your receipt.

It's paid in full.

But he helps us understand it with the second sentence.

He says, I am well supplied.

I'm filled up completely.

You don't need to send me anything more.

Understand that.

He says, I'm thankful.

You don't need to send me anything more.

I've been paid in full.

You don't owe me anything.

The account is settled.

And then having issued that business receipt, he immediately uses completely different vocabulary.

He shifts from the business realm or the commercial realm to the religious realm.

He says, I've received the gifts you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God.

These are temple terms.

These are Old Testament sacrificial terms.

It's the language.

Used in the Old Testament to describe a gift brought to the temple, given to God as a burnt offering that is burned and smoked, goes up to the sky, ascending to God becomes a sweet smelling sacrifice to him.

So the Apostle Paul says, your gift to me wasn't simply something to meet my needs, it was worship.

It was bringing something to God.

On a very practical basis, that helps us understand why churches do what they do today, right?

We receive collections, and through that we send support to missionaries, and we classify all of that in the category of worship.

Our giving is worship.

But understand that worship component.

He says, your gift didn't just go from your hands to Epaphroditus' hands to my hands.

That's a horizontal relationship between one individual or a group of individuals, a community, a church, to an apostle.

He says, that's not all that happened.

It went up, too.

There's a vertical component.

What began as a horizontal relationship between a generous church and an apostle became an act of worship before God, which God receives as a fragrant offering.

I think that's an enormous theological component.

Because it refocuses how we think about our giving.

When you give sacrificially to gospel work, you're not just funding ministry.

You're worshiping.

Every act of giving to gospel partnership is worship.

Let that transform how you think.

But friends, in the context of what this of this section, that can only happen as people learn to be content.

Whether you're on the receiving end or the giving end.

And when you're content on the receiving end, you can receive a gift without it turning ugly in you.

You can be content whether you receive it or not and be thankful and free.

If you're content as a giver, you can give and not expect anything in return because it wasn't yours in the first place.

You can give it to God and trust that He will receive it as a fragrant offering.

Knowing that the gift doesn't stop when it leaves our hands, it ascends.

It goes to God as an offering, a sweet-smelling, fragrant, acceptable, pleasing offering.

And that changes our concept of giving entirely.

Because giving to a church, giving to a mission organization, giving to a specific missionary isn't merely a transaction.

It is that.

And the difference between the two postures, that is, one being a posture of a transaction and the other being a posture of worship is the difference between feeling an obligation and worshiping through giving.

And the community that understands this way of giving gives differently.

It gives without an anxious internal accounting that most of us do.

Am I going to get a receipt?

Am I going to get a thank you card?

Am I going to get what am I going to get back for it?

Is Paul going to come and visit me first when he comes out of prison?

The sacrifice from a contented heart can be offered freely because the hand that offers it is held by someone else whose resources are inexhaustible.

We know, at least intellectually, that all things belong to our Father, as Mark prayed.

We know that God owns everything and to give them back for his use is an act of worship.

But it's the contented heart, it's the heart that has learned to be content that says, I can give this freely without any expectation.

I can give this sacrificially, even, because I trust my Father to meet my needs even as I give it.

That's what's happening here in this end of this letter.

And that points us directly to an understanding of how God works in his world, or what we might call God's divine economy.

This works because God's supply is inexhaustible.

Verse 19.

And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches and glory in Christ Jesus.

Verses 19 and 20 point us to the direct connection to contentment.

The Philippians gave sacrificially to meet Paul's needs.

He's thankful.

He wants them to know I received it.

I'm really, really looking forward to seeing the fruit that comes in your life as a result of giving.

And I know that you don't need to worry about anything because my God will supply every need of yours.

Now their giving was the way God met Paul's needs.

He's in prison.

Can he make tents while he's in prison?

We don't know, but probably not.

At most, he's limited, and so resources are very helpful for him.

What you may not understand is that prison in ancient Rome was not something where every need of yours was provided.

You had to have help to eat.

Their giving met Paul's needs.

They gave according to what they had.

And now Paul's saying, God gives according to what he has.

Their giving was generous but limited.

God's supply is measured by his own inexhaustible wealth.

Now, what all of God's people need to understand is that the community that gives sacrificially is not drawing down, not withdrawing from a limited reserve.

It may feel like there's a limited amount in the bank.

And every time we take something out, it reduces what's there.

But gospel partnership is framed differently.

The Apostle Paul says that when we are brought into a gospel partnership, we are drawn into God's economy.

And our giving in gospel partnership draws on God's reserves, not our own.

And when we give from that perspective, it enables a contented giving.

But notice what he doesn't say.

That's an important question to ask when you're reading your Bible.

What doesn't it say?

Because that will often tell us more about what it does say than looking for what it does say.

What Paul doesn't say is that God will supply only some of their needs.

Or only their spiritual needs.

Or their needs in proportion to what they give.

So if you give a little, God's gonna give a little.

If you give a lot, God's gonna give.

No, that's prosperity preaching.

That's not what Paul preaches.

Look at it.

And my God will supply which needs every need of yours.

He says, every need.

This is not a prosperity promise.

It's not a guarantee that generous Christians will never face hardship or want.

That's why we started a couple of weeks ago with the overview of how Scripture talks about contentment.

Because the whole of Scripture shows us that we can have contented hearts.

But having contented hearts doesn't mean we don't walk in the desert.

Having contented hearts doesn't mean that we don't just have one day's worth of manna.

Contented hearts means we're still gonna walk through the deep dark valleys.

We're just gonna do it with the shepherd there.

It doesn't mean that there's not gonna be pain and agony because Paul had to keep going with a thorn in his flesh.

True contentment rests in God's covenant faithfulness.

And here's what that looks like in practice.

A church that gives because it trusts the covenant God gives because they trust God supplies enough.

Every need.

And that word need isn't a human definition of need.

The promise to supply every need means that God will supply what is enough for what He has called you to.

Now that doesn't mean that it's enough to supply what you need comfortably, or at your or my level of expectation.

It's what God knows we need.

Because we're functioning in God's economy.

It's what he knows is enough.

And this is a God who covenants to be sufficient, not stingy.

Now, again, we might feel he's being stingy, but it's from his perspective, right?

And he's drawing from an unlimited reserve.

This is the theological foundation that makes sacrificial generosity possible for ordinary people.

The Philippians didn't have some heroic mental detachment from money so that they could give without ever thinking about how they would meet their needs.

No, they're in being encouraged to have a settled confidence in a supply that does not depend on what you stash away.

It's a confidence built through an accumulated trust in the God who has never failed to provide what you need for the moment, for the day.

But this is in a community context.

The church that has gone through that school together has entered into one another's hardships and pressures and suffering, and has given sacrificially and has watched God's supply be enough.

And that community that has learned that contentment together can give again and again and again because they know from experience that God's gracious supply never runs dry.

Let me give you a kind of example.

We don't typically budget for our benevolence fund.

Our benevolence fund is primarily directed towards our fellowship of people so that we can meet the needs of our people.

So we don't we don't put more funds into that each year.

But you know what I've seen?

It never runs dry.

And if it looks like it's getting close, we let you know, and it never runs dry.

Because God's people worship through contentment as they give to meet needs.

And God's supply is always enough.

Now, if that feels to you like something far out, nah, I'm not sure about that.

Test God and see.

Test him.

If you're struggling to be content, ask him to direct your heart to give to meet needs of ministry as an act of worship.

And see his hand of provision to provide enough.

This isn't a community of people who are indifferent to needs.

This is a community of people who have learned in the school of Christ's sufficient grace that the Father's economy is not governed by the same rules as our own.

And it's a community that's been drawn together to see and to trust in God's sufficient grace.

Now, there's only one sufficient, genuine response when Paul describes a supply that is driven by the inexhaustible riches of God in Christ.

And that's the doxology.

Verse 20.

To our God be glory forever and ever.

Amen.

Notice the word hour.

Normally we don't notice those little pronouns that much.

But it's important here because it's a shift from verse 19.

In verse 19, the apostle Paul says, My God will supply every need of yours.

He's saying, The God that I know, that I have seen, supply my need over and over again, my same God will supply your needs.

And now he draws them all into worship together to say, To our God and Father be glory forever and ever.

The doxology of verse 20 is not a closing statement tacked onto the end of a thank you note.

It's the only justified conclusion to what he's just described.

To our God be glory forever and ever, because he supplies our needs in Christ Jesus.

He is enough.

This is a shift from individual worship to corporate, communal worship.

The community that is content together and gives together worships together.

So the contentment is learned individually as we go through the school of contentment that Christ takes us through, and then we're drawn together to be content as a community together.

And as it comes together in sacrificial community together, at the only place that it comes together, it turns upward to offering worship and ultimately praise to the only God who can supply out of his inexhaustible riches.

So the church that is shaped by God's continual supply of enough is ultimately a praising community because it knows by experience that everything that it has given and everything it has received comes from the hands of a God who provides enough.

And so there's nothing left to do but to worship.

Except that's not the end.

I can say amen and keep preaching.

He closes his letter with some greetings, and let me show you very briefly how that works in here.

Among these greetings to the Philippian believers are some greetings from Christians in Caesar's household.

Caesar's household doesn't just mean his family, it's the entire group organization of supporting people in the emperor's entourage.

Everywhere from the person who's meeting his personal needs down to the cook who's meeting the needs of his family.

So it's very vast.

But these people are connected to the imperial administration and they send greetings to a church in a Roman colony in Macedonia.

So the community that Paul has just described, the one that enters into hardship together, that gives sacrificially as worship, that trusts the inexhaustible supply of God, that community has now crossed the most significant social and political boundary in the Roman world.

Caesar's household and these insignificant Christians in a small Roman community are now brothers and sisters, part of the same family.

They've probably never met and wouldn't meet until heaven.

But they're brought together as a family.

God's gracious work produces a community the empire cannot explain and cannot contain.

And so it ends where it began with a prayer of grace.

The Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

The grace that opened in the first verse closes the end.

And it's grace that holds everybody together.

So two weeks ago, we asked where the human heart finds true satisfaction.

And here is the whole answer the Bible gives, and that this letter really embodies.

You only find your true satisfaction in the God who covenants to be enough.

You seek your satisfaction anywhere else.

Whether it's in your position in Caesar's household or your position as a son or daughter of God, you find your satisfaction anywhere else than in God Himself.

You'll be dissatisfied and discontent.

We find satisfaction in the Christ whose grace is sufficient for every circumstance the curriculum of life brings.

Because the good work that God has begun in us in chapter one will be completed.

He'll take us through the school to teach us to trust the inexhaustible supply of the God who has never once failed his people.

And we'll arrive together at the only conclusion the gospel allows.

The praise of his glorious grace.

Let's pray together.

Lord Jesus, we lift our hearts and our minds and our voices now to you, giving you thanks for your provision again and again.

First and foremost in yourself, giving yourself to us.

And for always being enough for every need we have.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

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