Godly Gains

Amen.

Well, good morning, Sacred Mission.

My name is Justin.

I'm one of the pastors here, and it's my joy and honor to be able to bring God's word to you.

I think one of the things that we desire to do here at Sacred Mission is truly create a worldview within us, to create a reality within our hearts that Jesus is sufficient.

Right?

And what we mean by that is an all-encompassing reality, in everything in this life, Jesus is sufficient, and he alone is sufficient.

That we need nothing but him.

So this morning we're going to be looking at the sufficiency of Christ, uh, really paralleled or seen in the mirror of our own discontentment.

There was one of the wealthiest men in American history.

His name was John D.

Rockefeller, and he was once asked in a very uh uh subtle, kind of tongue-in-cheek interview, how much money it takes to make a man happy?

And Rockefeller's famous reply was, just a little bit more.

Just a little bit more.

Now, Rockefeller's response to this question was really the quiet part of our heart said out loud.

It's the reality of a people who seem unable to be content, to delight in enough, to rest in a state of satisfaction.

You see, greed, it grips the heart of all of us in some form or fashion.

All of us in this room, if we're honest with ourselves, we live a life of radical abundance, of more than enough.

We each live in this uncommon prosperity that is unmatched to the rest of the world.

Yet all of our hearts whisper within our chests, just a little bit more.

You see, the most profound thing about Rockefeller's reply really is the inherent insatiability within it.

It's unable to be satisfied.

At the end of the day, for a person who nurtures the discontent heart, enough will never, ever be enough.

You see, we surrender to the voice of greed and discontentment in diverse ways.

Everybody in this room has something that we continually surrender our greed to in this discontent fashion.

Whether it's this desire to have a larger home with more rooms than we have people in our family, a better car, as if the one we currently have somehow doesn't get us from point A to point B to advance our children academically.

A 4.0 is not enough.

We really need 5.0 so that you can get into these colleges and universities, or maybe it's athletically.

It's not enough to play, say, sports anymore.

You have to play select sports.

And in fact, if you're not playing select sports, you're looked at as if you have some disability for why you're not.

To have the latest and greatest product, or even something so frivolous as to put that next bottle of bourbon on your shelf next to all the rest that you already have.

In different ways and for different reasons, we all surrender to the lying whisper hey, just a little bit more.

And for some of us, giving into that whisper, if we're honest with ourselves, has taken us to places and caused us to become people that we never imagined that we would be.

This is the caution that Paul gives to young Pastor Timothy in Ephesus.

Paul charges Timothy to warn and instruct the church of the dangers that greed and discontentment produce within us.

That this world is calling out for us to gain, right?

The world is screaming to us, there is gain to be had if you just have more.

But the pursuit of that gain, what Paul helps us understand, it's ultimate loss.

It is ultimate loss, that there is a true and eternal gain to be obtained, not discovered within this world, but discovered in Christ for us as his people who strive to love and to follow after him.

So let's dive into the text this morning.

In verses 2b through 5, we see Paul is actually raising the seriousness of the issues at hand here in this part of the letter.

He refers to the doctrine that has been taught in the words of Jesus that have been passed down to the church as sound.

Sound.

Now, this language of sound means healthy.

So when we've heard the phrase, potentially within the church world of sound doctrine, what it's referring to is a teaching that produces health in the hearer.

So when we talk about the importance of teaching, the importance of biblical sound doctrine, what we're really communicating is that this teaching is to produce health in its listener so that we can live rightly in a pleasing way to God.

And Paul says that the sound, healthy teaching that has been transferred to Timothy and transferred to the church, this accords with godliness.

It accords with godliness.

Now, I actually prefer how the NASB translation of the Bible uh uh phrases this passage.

It says in verse 3, 1 Timothy 6 3, this is the NASB.

If anyone advocates a different doctrine and does not agree with sound words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the doctrine conforming to godliness.

So, what is this sound teaching?

How do we understand that it's producing health with inside the listener?

It's conforming that person to godliness.

That's what true, faithful, biblical, sound teaching should do.

Healthy teaching conforms us to godliness.

Now, what is godliness, right?

And we might have these kind of preconceptions of what godliness is, but I think this is a helpful definition.

It's a personal attitude toward God that results in actions that are pleasing to him.

A personal attitude toward God that results in actions that are pleasing to him.

That is what healthy teaching brings us into conformity to.

There's a reality that healthy teaching establishes a true contentment with God, and then we orient our lives to please him in response to that.

Think about that.

Healthy teaching actually establishes a true contentment with God, and then in response, we orient our lives to please him.

Right?

We we talk about this a lot.

We don't work to earn our salvation, we don't work to earn God's affection and blessing and favor.

We work from it because in Christ we have received by his grace God's blessing, affection, adoption, favor, inheritance, we then joyfully, when we when we understand that rightly, we joyfully orient our lives to be able to live in a way that's pleasing to him as a response to the gospel of which has saved us.

So what Paul is addressing here is that if anyone is teaching something different than this, different than the healthy, sound doctrine that he has delivered to the church and has been handed down to us by Christ Himself, then he is conceited and ignorant.

That's what Paul says.

He's conceited and ignorant.

Now, a person like this, there's a tremendous amount of unhealth within them.

Paul helps us understand this.

False teaching, unhealthy doctrine, it does something.

But Paul links this to feeding an insatiable craving within us.

That this unhealthy teaching actually fosters discontentment within us.

That's what Paul's saying.

If such a person is going about spreading false teaching, he has an unhealthy craving.

He is sickly discontent.

And it's going to flesh itself out in certain ways.

He lists out the things that this person's trying to satisfy their discontentment with, right?

If he's going around spreading these things, he he is both conceited and ignorant.

He has an unhealthy craving for controversy, quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth.

Here's what Paul's saying: false teaching is like gasoline on the fire of our discontentment.

It causes these insatiable cravings to rise up within us, and we desire to consume on all sorts of sinful depravity.

It feeds it, and it causes it to grow into rage because it carries us away from something.

What does false teaching ultimately do?

It carries us away from the beauty, truth, and goodness of Jesus.

It postures him in a way that is insufficient rather than all sufficient, bringing us to a sense of contentment.

When Paul reveals the delusion of this person's conceit and ignorance, he says this here's the delusion.

Imagining that godliness is a means of gain.

Imagining that godliness is a means of gain.

Now, we don't really know what these false teachers were profiting off of.

With their unhealthy words, with their false teaching, we we don't understand how they were seeing it necessarily as a means of gain.

There's a possibility where they actually could have been uh charging a discipleship fee, right?

If you want to follow us and follow our teaching, it was very normal practice actually to charge some type of discipleship fee so that that you would kind of gain from uh your teaching.

Maybe it was an early form of the prosperity gospel, right?

Because what what's the problem with the prosperity gospel in its essence?

The prosperity gospel teaches that Christ alone is not sufficient, and that we need to use him as a means to gain that which our discontent heart truly desires, which is the treasures of this world rather than the internal, unfading treasures of heaven.

And so it puts fire on this, it's like gasoline on this fire of this discontentment.

That's the fundamental issue with the prosperity gospel.

Jesus is not sufficient.

He's a means, he's a cosmic claw machine that if you dump enough good works and prayer and tithe money into, it's gonna drop down and get you what you really want.

But we have to see Jesus as the end, not the means.

He's the end.

It's obtaining him, he's the gain.

And only that is gonna actually bring contentment within our hearts.

Now we might not know what their false teaching actually caused them to gain or the means of which they gained, but what we do know is this it fed people's depravity and it increased their deprivation.

It fed people's depravity and it increased their deprivation.

Here's what he said among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, that right there is a formula for soul disaster.

Depraved in mind, deprived of the truth, to feed our depravity, our sinfulness, so that it grows.

And to starve ourselves of healthy truth will only lead to an uncontrollable discontentment.

That's that's gonna be the outcome of our lives.

You see, their hearts desired gain, but in the end, Paul's helping this understand, they were only experiencing tragic loss.

They wanted gain, they thought that this was gonna be the avenue toward it, but in reality, they're experiencing this tragic loss.

And what we soon discover in the text is that that uncontrollable discontentment, the pursuit of worldly gain, is actually able to bring us to our ultimate destruction, an ultimate loss of ourself.

These false teachers were circulating their unhealthy doctrine, their diseased words were making them miserable, and the people who were following them were miserable also.

Miserable because their discontentment was only proving itself to be self-destructive.

Yet, Paul, right, like a medic for the soul, he comes delivering healthy truth, a remedy to our discontentment.

This brings us to verse six through eight.

I'll read it for us to remind us of its content.

But godliness with contentment is great gain.

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.

So here's our main idea this morning.

Our gain is discovered in the complementary harmony of godliness and contentment.

Our gain, right, is discovered in the complementary harmony of godliness and contentment.

And that gain, that gain that Paul is putting forward, right?

Because he said they they they thought somehow that godliness was going to accomplish a gain for them.

And then he immediately says, but let me tell you something.

Godliness with contentment actually is great gain.

And that gain surpasses all that the world is actually able to offer us.

In fact, the language that Paul uses of great gain, it communicates something that surprises us.

It's as if we were unable to even imagine or think up what we could gain in Christ.

This great gain is something that surprises the human heart of what we discover in him.

We we couldn't even dream this up.

It's so beautiful and good.

This is the gain offered to us through a life of godliness, a life of godliness that's bolstered, that's supported by contentment.

Now, we've already worked through and defined godliness, right?

A personal attitude toward God that results in actions that are pleasing to him.

And here in verse 7 and 8, Paul unpacks for us the meaning of contentment.

Let's look at it together.

1 Timothy 6, 7 through 8.

For we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world.

That's the framework of our worldview, right there.

Right?

That's the foundation of which a content heart has to start from.

We didn't bring anything in, we're not taking anything out with us.

But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.

So, what does Paul do first?

I think it again, in beautiful uh Paul fashion, he addresses the reality of our end first.

We're unable to take anything out of this world with us.

All of our earthly gains are ultimately tragic losses at the moment of our death.

At the moment your heart stops beating, breath stops filling up your lungs, everything that you've tried to gain in this world is at that moment an ultimate loss.

You're not taking any of this with you.

So, what we have to do is work to allow that reality right there to develop and frame our understanding of contentment.

All striving for worldly gain is ultimately foolish vanity.

This is the foundational awareness of a content heart.

Because if you don't have that right, you and I all the time, we we operate in the today.

We have our head down, focused on the work at hand, focused on the things we're trying to accomplish, focused on the things that we don't have but want to have, and all these, and we rarely lift up our eyes to look toward heaven to have an eternal mindset about us.

What am I doing in this moment that's affecting eternity?

What am I doing here in my work?

What am I doing at this purchase?

What am I doing borrowing this money?

What am I doing here in this place that actually impacts eternity?

We would live radically different lives if we had our heads picked up, looking toward heaven with this anxious, uh eager expectation of the kingdom that's coming, rather than head down the soil of this earth just seeing what work we can cultivate fruitfulness that ultimately is vanity in our efforts at the end of our life.

We've got to do something about this.

You can't just live for today.

You have to live for forever.

That's what Christ calls us to.

And then Paul points us to something.

He points us to realize our true necessities: food, clothing, and shelter.

Now, today for us, if we were to list our necessities, it'd be like food, clothing, shelter, Wi-Fi, Starbucks, Target, uh uh apps, uh, DoorDash.

Like, I if I don't have these things, right?

Do you remember like two years ago we tried to figure out what essential was?

Do you remember that?

Y'all got mad.

What is essential?

Well, if I don't have all these things, then how in the world am I gonna ever live?

Well, I don't know.

You made it, you know.

I'm glad you're here.

I don't have my Stanley uh mug.

Okay.

Check your pulse or y'all you're oh no, you're living.

All right.

Paul's like, look, if you have food, clothing, shelter, what else do you need?

Really, what else do you need?

You see, we we we we make luxuries essentials.

You want to know how wealthy you are?

You view luxuries as essentials.

That's how wealthy you are.

And you get mad when they're they're jeopardized.

You sense the discontentment welling up in your heart when they're jeopardized.

You see, Paul points us to the things we need in this life to survive, to sustain our living.

These are our essentials.

And if we have them, we have enough.

We can be content.

You see, if we're in possession of these things, we can declare we sufficiently have enough.

Now in the text, Paul points us to food and clothing.

That's what he says in the text.

But the word that Paul actually uses for clothing is referring to this cloak that shepherds would wear.

It was something that they wore as they were herding their flocks, and it would be both their clothing and their tent.

It would be something that they actually dwelt under.

It was more like a portable house.

That's what Paul's talking about here when he talks about contentment in verse 8.

Now, we could even go on a tangent of mission.

Is your house portable enough to spread the gospel?

But we won't go there.

That's fine.

We're going somewhere else.

But here's what he's saying: if we have food, clothing, shelter, we we can be content.

Now, if we're to understand to work ourselves rightly in view of the Bible, right?

This is something that's so challenging for us.

Because we do things, culture progresses, the the context of which we live in causes us to add things to the scriptures in the way that we understand ourselves.

So, for instance, the the Bible knows two states of a person within the context of relationship.

You are either single or you're married, right?

And then we have all these other kinds of contexts that we try to incorporate into our understanding of that.

And when we look at society, we understand society like uh working class, uh, white collar, blue collar, uh, all these kind of different things, right?

Here's what the Bible understands.

If we want to understand ourselves rightly in accordance with Scripture, the Bible classifies three states that people can be in in regard to their possessions.

The first one is this they can be destitute.

They can be destitute.

These are people without food, clothing, or shelter.

These are people who do not have these essentials.

To live a healthy life, right?

So you can be a destitute person.

I don't think anyone, I'm open to the probability, but I don't think anyone in this room is destitute.

We then have sufficient.

Sufficient.

Those with their basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter met.

They may be poor, but they have what they need.

They are sufficient in this life.

And then we have abundance.

Those who have more than enough, right?

If you have more than one Stanley bottle, raise your hand.

No, don't.

But if you have more than more than one pair of red wings, raise your hand.

Yeah.

There you go.

Thanks.

Thank you, brother.

You are.

Every person in this room, you are in the state of abundance.

Right?

So I want to help us frame our understanding of ourselves in light of scripture.

You are in a state of abundance.

We're entrenched in a world of more than enough.

The levels of wealth that is represented in this room, the standard of living for the average American today, it was unimaginable to the first century mind.

What we have access to, what we can have in a given moment, that was unthinkable.

We live in an uncommon prosperity that is alien to the majority of the rest of the world.

And being a people of abundance, the scripture places an obligation upon us.

If we want to understand ourselves in light of our possessions, in light of God's words, it places this obligation to care for and to relieve the burdens of the destitute among us.

Can I help us understand something?

Nowhere within the scriptures does God in this oppressive nature tell the destitute to be content.

Those without food, water, and clothing, he does not call them to be content in that way.

What does he do though?

He calls those with abundance to care for them, to provide for them, to live generously for their good.

Right?

Is our lives, and I mean, this is again, I can't tell you how much we I talk about, I mean, I come up here first and foremost, preach to myself, right?

Are our lives oriented in such a way that we understand our abundance and our prosperity and our luxuries that they can be shifted to work toward the good of the people around us?

Is that the mind frame of which we operate in our lives?

You see, Christ calls us to bear one another's burdens, to relieve one another's burdens.

This is the godly duty of the prosperous.

Even Paul himself said, I was eager to bring to them who were in the council of Jerusalem the doctrine of which I teach.

And even as they affirmed it, they charged me, remember the poor.

And he said, That was the very thing I was eager to do.

Paul, who was one of the greatest teachers, greatest writers, greatest theologians that ever lived, what was he so eager to do in his traveling and preaching of the gospel to remember the poor?

Remember them in a physical, literal way of which he would give to their good.

His possessions, his effort, his life would be oriented to work for the good of the destitute around him.

You see, this is the godly duty of the prosperous, but if carrying others' burdens isn't a burden to us, then let me just submit to this morning, to you this morning.

We're not being obedient to Jesus.

If our carrying of one another's burdens is not a burden to us, we don't see the fullness of the kingdom of heaven.

We're not simply called to give out of our abundance.

We're not simply called to give out of our comfortability, but to give in such a way that it hurts our abundance.

We see this as the true heart of generosity in the story of the widow's might in Luke 24.

Luke 24, 1 through 4 says this Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the offering box, and he saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins, and he said, Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them, for they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all that she had to live on.

So you can imagine, there were dudes given, who knows how generous of offerings.

But even their generosity did not hurt their abundance.

This widow's generosity of two copper coins, it even caused her poverty to ache.

And Jesus says she gave more than anybody here.

Because she gave in a way that it burdened her.

You see, our generosity, it should burden us.

It should cause our discontentment to ache.

And to continuously have our hearts calibrated to the sufficiency that we possess in Christ.

Jonathan Edwards, who pastored in Massachusetts in the first half of the 18th century, he persisted in meeting with people who said to him, Well, I can't afford to give.

And after enough of these conversations, he concluded that what they really meant was, I can't afford to give without greatly inconveniencing myself.

If your generosity does not burden you, or if it doesn't cut into your lifestyle in any way, then we have to honestly ask ourselves if we are living out the sacrificial, other-oriented life Jesus has called us to.

What is the fulfillment of the law?

To love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.

Yet to many of us, the needs of our neighbors, the burdens of our neighbors are too much of an inconvenience for us to bear.

The only way that we'll be able to live this kind of life that Jesus, I believe, calls us to, the only way we're going to be able to do this is actually through contentment.

Contentment.

This is what Paul's talking about in Philippians 4.

Philippians 4, 11 through 13.

Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I'm able 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.

And I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

Notice how Paul doesn't just reference contentment in regards to the low of his life.

I've I've learned when when I'm broke, I've learned when I'm in poverty, I've learned with when I'm without to be content.

He doesn't just qualify it through the lows of his life, but he qualifies it also through the highs of his life.

Whether I have plenty, whether I have abundance, whether I'm living on top of the mountaintop, I've still understood contentment within this heart.

Why?

Because of Christ.

It is because of him.

I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

Strengthens me not only in the weakness of this world, of when I'm experiencing poverty and lack, but experiencing his strength in the weakness of this world in regards to my own delusion of self-sufficiency in enough.

I can do all things.

I can be rich, I can be broke.

Because I have Christ.

You see, Paul can face the abundance and the absence.

He can face prosperity and poverty because he has found the strength to do so in his contentment in Christ.

Remember, the foundation that shapes our understanding of contentment is that we cannot take anything out of this world.

What you're building, what you're striving to obtain, what you're working to possess, it's gone.

And a content heart is one that accepts that truth.

It accepts it.

And for some of us really hard.

But if we accept that truth and we place our hope in the great gain that awaits us on the other side of that empty-handed poverty.

Can I just paint a picture for us for a moment?

In this world, you might have everything.

And if God, if Jesus is merciful and gracious to us, we're going to die.

We're going to be buried.

And you know what you're going to stand before Him with a bankrupt poverty.

Empty-handed, nothing to the table.

And if he is merciful and gracious, in that moment you'll see riches that surprise your very mind and heart.

Possessing him.

You want to know what the beauty of the gospel is?

That even in our discontentment, in Christ, through his grace and mercy, as we stand before him in eternity with empty hands, he fills them with the fullness of his self, and that eternally satisfies us.

Do we get that?

Can we grab hold of that?

I thought that was just such an amazing portrait of how good Jesus is to his people.

See, the fullness of Christ, of being his and having him is the eternal treasure of glory.

Verses 9 through 10.

But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.

It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.

Here's our story.

Our discontentment can destroy us.

Your discontentment has the ability and capacity to utterly destroy you.

This is what Paul means when he says that we have fallen not just to temptation, right?

The desire to do something, but a snare also.

We've been entrapped by the very thing that we desire.

And we've talked about this in idolatry, right?

The thing that we thought was going to serve us, the thing that we work toward to obtain, ultimately we discover in its wickedness, in false idols, and false gods, it actually enslaves us.

And it makes us serve it.

So here's what Paul's saying.

You desire to be rich, you're going to fall into temptation, you're going to desire that thing more, but it's all ultimately it's going to be a snare.

It's going to be something that enslaves you, entraps you.

But Paul doesn't just stop there.

He continues to show just how devastating the situation is.

He says that the desire to be rich causes us to pursue many senseless and harmful desires.

Notice what Paul's doing here.

He understands that the one desire, right?

The one desire to be rich does what?

It causes us to actually pursue or be involved in many senseless and harmful desires.

So that one desire to be rich is the root cause, he says, of many senseless and harmful ones.

One desire being the propagator of many, right?

We're going to have all of these different many desires, senseless and harmful ones.

It is from this one desire that unimaginable other desires come.

That's what I want us to hear this morning.

From this one, unimaginable others follow it.

And those desires plunge people into ruin and destruction.

Ruin, the decay and collapse of this life.

Man, if we love money, imagine the amount of relationships that have been broken, marriages that have ended, children that have been forsaken, right?

Adultery that's been committed, uh thievery.

I mean, go down the list, let's go down the list, right?

And it's brought many people in this life to a place of ruin.

But he doesn't just say ruin, but destruction.

Here's what I think Paul means.

And I'll help us understand why I think this: destruction, the ultimate loss of the life to come.

Ruin isn't the love of money, the pursuit, the desire to be rich, it doesn't just bring ruin to this life, it brings destruction to the life to come.

This is what Paul says of the ultimate end of a heart that is discontent and desires to gain the things of this world.

It is through this craving.

What craving?

It is through this craving to be rich that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.

They've abandoned Jesus.

And it might have looked in different ways.

It might have expressed itself through many senseless and harmful desires.

But Paul's driving all of it back to the root of they loved money.

They loved money.

That's the reason he makes clear.

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.

Now we might have to ask ourselves, how does money do that, right?

How does the love of money do it?

You might think of all kinds of other things in your mind of which we could put here as the root of all evil, but I think Paul's being extremely intentional.

Not only the context of the passage, but I think he sees, he wants us to see something here, right?

If we're honest, money is no value in and of itself.

What is the dollar?

We've put some value on it that allows us to trade and obtain things, but it doesn't have value.

It means nothing.

What is cryptocurrency?

Somebody, please, stay after, help me understand.

I don't get it.

It's uh it's uh there's computers that mine fake things, and you can buy stuff with it.

That sounds great.

Why is money desirable?

Money is desirable because it can be used in this world to purchase the many desires we have.

It's an economy of this world, it's a finite economy that's able to purchase for us the many senseless and harmful desires that loving it with our affections fosters within us.

That's why money has any value to us at all.

But money cannot do one thing.

Money cannot buy what we truly need.

God and godliness.

Why is the root of money, why is the love of money the root of all evil?

Because it alone communicates, I don't need you, God.

I can purchase all of my desires with this, and it's absent of you.

You see, the love of money in Paul's mind equates to the root longing for the things that money can buy.

Everything but God.

God's desires, good desires, they don't destroy his people.

Only desires for anything minus God destroys us.

This is what the love of money represents.

This is why the love of money is the root of all evil that men commit, because all evil comes from that root desire.

Everything and anything except God.

And ultimately, Paul shows us this is how our discontentment can destroy us.

It can cause us to walk away from Jesus, it can cause us to pierce ourselves with many sorrows.

Because when ultimately, it causes us to see no real need for Him.

Money can buy the world, but it cannot save your soul.

Jesus taught this in Matthew 16, 26.

For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world?

Gains, right?

Gains the whole world and forfeits his soul.

Or what shall a man give, exchange, have a currency of in return for his soul?

Nothing.

Nothing.

But we have a hope this morning.

Jesus became poor that through his poverty we might become rich.

Jesus became poor that through his poverty we might become rich.

This is the statement of 2 Corinthians chapter 8, verse 9.

2 Corinthians 8:9

And what is this saying to us today?

That if Jesus had remained on his throne of glory and had refused to go to Calvary, we would surely be poor, helpless, blind beggars.

We would be completely destitute of our true need, absent of our eternal essentials.

If he would have remained in heaven and not humbled himself to climb upon the cross, we would have been destitute.

For Jesus to become poor means that he gave us his perfection in place of our sin, his righteousness in place of our guilt, his grace in place of our condemnation, his life in place of our death.

In this, through his willful loss, church, we have surprising great gain.

I love the way that the famous London pastor Charles Spurgeon framed this thought.

He said, as the wealthy believer cannot be true in his fellowship with his poor brethren, unless from his wealth he ministers to their needs, so it is impossible that our divine Lord could have had fellowship with us unless he had given to us from his own abounding wealth and had become poor so as to make us rich.

When God gave, it hurt his abundance.

When God saw us in our state of destitute, he was willing to pay whatever price to give whatever it took to see that we had our essentials met.

The righteousness of Christ, his perfect obedience to the Father, the fulfillment of the law, and an adoption of being purchased orphans through his blood thought ransom.

That's the foundation of our contentment.

Your destitute state has been reckoned eternally by the radical, abundant generosity of God through Christ.

And in that, we have everything we could ever need.

This is why I should be able to live a life of contentment and food, water, and clothing.

But I don't have a big enough picture of the gospel.

I don't have a daily reminder in such a way that it reorients everything in my life, the decisions that I make, the way I spend my money, my time, it doesn't have the effect that I am painfully aware of in my life.

You see, I want to grasp hold of this healthy truth.

Because this healthy truth, this sound doctrine is the remedy to sin sick discontentment.

This sound word enables us to live generously, to live a joy filled life of loss because of the great gain of having Him.

Close with this short section, verses 17 through 19.

As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy.

They, the rich, the abundance, right?

Us, they are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.

When John Rockefeller's died, his assistant was famously asked, How much money did he leave behind?

And his assistant wisely answered, All of it.

All of it.

You see, to the watching world, it seemed though Rockefeller had the fullness of life.

But they were wrong.

His striving for worldly wealth caused him to grasp hold of death.

We, in response to the gospel, are called to take hold of that which is truly life.

And so, how should we be living in response to this beautiful truth?

Church, let us be ready to share in our abundance.

Listen to that language that Paul's using.

Ready to share.

We talked about this a little bit in our mission group this week, but are we in a place where we're ready to share?

Is our spending or our saving preventing our giving?

If the opportunity arised for a need to be met, a burden to be shared by a brother or sister in Christ or by the destitute among us within culture, are we even in a place where we're ready to share?

Not just physically, literally, either, but like, is our heart in a place where we're ready to share?

Being in a state whether by disciplining our spending or by loosening our savings, that we work to be a people ready to be generous and charitable.

Whether we are unhealthy spenders or we're unhealthy savers, both of those flow from a heart that is ultimately discontent.

Church, our remedy is not more, but less.

It is not a worldly gain, but it's a godly gain.

It is in the relentless pursuit of contentment.

The world's gonna keep whispering just a little bit more.

But the reality of the kingdom is that our contentment is found in less.

Less of this world, more of Jesus, less of the lies of culture, more of the truth of the kingdom.

And so here's three questions for self-reflection as we close.

First one is this Where am I currently at in my generosity and readiness to share?

This is a like self-diagnostic, right?

Where am I at in my generosity and ready to share?

And readiness to share.

Second question, where is God calling me to be?

So you have your current state, then you have where God might be calling you to be in light of your generosity and readiness to share.

Third, what do I need to start doing to get from where I'm at to where I'm called?

What do I need to start doing today to get from where I'm at to where I'm called?

Our heart is that you would find your sufficiency and be satisfied in Jesus alone.

I want to be an individual person when I see needs around me.

I don't just view them as this inconvenience, but I view them as an ability to express the contentment of my heart in the gospel to share the burden of those around me, and that I'm in a place in my bank account where I'm ready to make that happen now.

That's where I want to be.