Holy Contentment

Now, on to our sermon.

We're on 1 Timothy 6, like I said.

Now, there's a lot here.

We're going to be covering verses 1 through 16.

So if I stick to my notes a little bit more than normal, give me a little bit of grace.

I'm going to try and make sure we cover it without me doing like a marathon sermon, right?

Because we all got to get to lunch and all this other fun stuff happening on Sunday.

But we're going to be looking at 1 through 16 of 1 Timothy 6.

And the kind of theme that we're going to be looking at is holy contentment.

So I'm going to read the word first.

It says this let all who are under a yoke as bondservants regard their own masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may not be reviled.

Those who have believing masters must not be disrespectful on the ground that they are brothers.

Rather, they must serve all the better, since those who benefit by their good service are believers and beloved.

Teach and urge these things.

If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing.

He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissensions, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain.

But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of the world.

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

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 evils.

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

But as for you, O man of God, flee these things.

Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness, fight the good fight of the faith.

Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called, and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach unto the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will display at the proper time.

He who is the blessed and only sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of Lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can seen, to him be honor and eternal dominion.

Amen.

This is the word of the Lord.

May God bless the reading and the proclamation of his promises.

So we're gonna be talking about holy content.

And this is interesting because I'm a super discontent person.

That's probably one of the biggest things I struggle with.

I love to just get new stuff because, right?

Like my Instagram saved profile is just new stuff I'm going to get at some time.

And I already have things of this stuff, right?

Whether it be shoes or like uh bags, like not like purse bags, but like man bags, like a satchel or something a man would obviously carry in hunting or something of that nature.

Um, but uh uh it could be shirts, sunglasses, it could be all kinds of things.

It's just saved with all this stuff I'm going to get one day when I already have really awesome stuff just like it already.

Right?

I am so discontent.

I love new experiences just for the sake of new experiences.

I love change just for the sake of change.

And my heart wrestles constantly with discontentment.

And sometimes this can be funny and kind of something you can poke a jab at, and sometimes it's terrifying.

Because sometimes I even fear that my pursuit of something new might take me from the very thing of which I truly love.

Just for the sake of discontentment.

And so Paul here is admonishing for uh Timothy, who he's writing the letter to, to be content, and he's addressing contentment on a few different ways.

In verse one, we see this let all who are under your yoke as bondservants or slaves regard their own masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and teaching may not be reviled.

Those who have believing masters must not be disrespectful on the ground that they are brothers, rather they must serve all the better, since those who benefit by their good service are believers and beloved.

So the focus on this portion of the scripture and of this text is on slaves who are believers.

So it's focusing on slaves who are believers.

Their conduct, the way in which they lived their lives, was crucial to the name of the God they served and to the gospel.

Through rebellion, disobedience, poor work, they could have actually distorted the God that they serve in the image of their masters in the message that they were keepers of.

A few things I want to talk about this because the thrust of this passage of scripture is not about slavery.

We can talk about slavery all day long, but that's not the thrust of this passage.

But I don't want to just skip over it because of its certain implications.

So a few things that I want to point out is this that number one, the New Testament cannot ever be used to promote or condone slavery or human inferiority.

It can't.

In fact, the gospel and the message of Christ in his kingdom is stands in stark contradiction to slavery and human inferiority.

Because what it does is the gospel speaks to whom those they counted as inferior, those who were not Jews by blood, those who were not God's chosen people by birthright, and it spoke to those of whom they counted as less than human.

Some would equate them to animals if they were of mixed blood.

And it says, You are elevated to a place of son and daughter now because of Christ Jesus.

So it flips inferiority on its head and actually exalts mankind to a place where we are seated at the right hand of Jesus because of his finished work.

And Christ Himself, and He's entering into the temple in the first part of His ministry, opens the scroll of Isaiah and He declaims this that I have come to set the captive free.

The gospel is about breaking the chains of our slavery to sin and death so that we might be free and alive to Christ Jesus.

And so the gospel stands in stark contradiction to both slavery and human inferiority.

It cannot be used to condone it, it cannot be used to propagate it.

But here's the thing that we have to understand as well.

The New Testament does not make a call for a change of life unless that life was perpetuating sin, once it's met with gospel conviction.

Constantly, what we see in the New Testament is stay where you are.

You've encountered the risen resurrected Lord.

You have been saved and made new again because of the Spirit's power in your life.

Stay where you are.

If you're a slave, stay a slave.

Stay faithful, stay obedient.

Why?

Because what our position is, once we've met Jesus, the gospel does not serve us empty promises of change of circumstance.

Instead, we'll see an overwhelming continual call to stay faithful where we are so that God's name and his message might not be profaned.

Contentment.

Holy contentment.

You see, when we come to the gospel, we think that God is going to give us everything we've ever wanted, and we think that he's going to get us out of every situation we've ever hated or had disdain for.

In fact, that's the opposite.

But it yet it's also eternally true.

We just don't have the right perspective of what we're trying to get out of.

You see, God does miraculously, supernaturally, and eternally get us out of our current situation.

But we don't see our current situation as a slave to sin.

No, we see our current situation as a slave to our circumstance, our earthly, temporal, finite circumstance.

And here, Paul, among these slaves who are believing people, says, stay put and stay faithful.

Because our circumstance is not about our gain.

Ultimately, as believers and laborers in the kingdom of God, our circumstance is about the gain of those around us, that they might see and know Christ the way that we have been permitted to.

And so Paul is addressing holy contentment.

Far removed from trying to approach this text on the premise of slavery, we should approach this text on the premise of contentment in kingdom.

You see, the promises of God for this life are to rescue you from spiritual slavery and to reposition you as a child of God where you were once an enemy.

Some of us might taste the goodness of God in changing our earthly circumstances.

But the theme we see in the scripture is that God calls us to stay faithfully content so that the gospel might advance the kingdom.

Some of us might taste and see, and we're going to talk about this a little bit.

I'm not preaching a gospel that says God is far removed and disinterested from your physical and current circumstance.

I'm not saying that.

But I'm saying if he leaves you where you are, he is still eternally good, loving, and gracious to us, because he has removed us from the pit of our own sin and condemnation.

At the end of verse 2, kicking into verse 3, it says, Teach and urge these things.

If anyone teaches a different doctrine, does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing.

He has an unhealthy craving for controversy, for 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, imagining that godliness is a means of gain.

What does Paul say when he says these things, preach these things?

He means two things.

Number one, he's talking about sound doctrine that produces the fruit of godliness.

And so he's coupling things that he's already taught Timothy, included with things that he's telling him now.

And so sound doctrine that will produce the fruit of godliness in the hearers.

And of course, like I said, he's incorporating the instructions that he has included in this letter as well.

You see, pure doctrine is expounded from the revealed word of God.

It points to and magnifies the person of Jesus, and it produces in its hearers the fruit of godliness.

We can know that different doctrine, removed from God's word, pointing to a different hero, and producing the fruit of sin is damnable and a bringer of death to its hearers.

You see, the teaching of sound doctrine is absolutely vital to the health and the flourishing of the Christian, the health of the church and the expansion of the kingdom.

The way that Paul uses the word sound when he's referring to doctrine in this text is actually a medical term.

It's actually a term that means health and prosperous.

You see, we have to understand that when he's saying sound doctrine, he is literally binding the revelation of who Jesus is to the health of the one who is receiving it.

Sound doctrine is a healing bomb to the stem sick soul.

We need the word of God, for it is life to us.

It is life to the hearer, it is life to the one who puts his faith in Jesus.

And we don't just get saved and move on.

We don't just hear the gospel, believe in the finished work of Christ, and move on.

No, there's this process of sanctification or this kind of perpetual or progressive holiness that has to take place in our lives.

And godliness is a fruit of studying, knowing, seeing, savoring Jesus for who He has said that He is.

The fruit of false teaching is discontentment, and the root of it is greed.

It's greed to be perceived as intelligent, right?

A thought leader, as some would say today.

Someone who is pushing the bounds of what could be while completely removing themselves from the anchor of orthodoxy.

Greed to obtain power and influence.

Greed to have possessions.

These false teachings, rooted in greed, produce the fruit of discontentment in the hearers, because they lead ultimately the hearer to a God who can never satisfy them.

It is an act and discipline of humility to exposite the scriptures, to preach the Bible, so that we might see and savor Jesus alone.

But this is the fruit of false teaching.

It's discontentment.

We want more.

We want to be higher status in society.

We want to have the better job.

We want to have more possessions and more stuff.

We want to have what more recognition or whatever it is, we want more and more and more in Jesus and God are promised like some type of cosmic giant claw machines.

That if we just do enough and we put the right prayers in the slot or the right devotionals in the slot or the right confessions out of our mouth in the coin slot, we can drop the claw and pick up the things and gifts of God so that we can have them rejecting the God and giver of those gifts in the very first place.

False teaching breeds discontentment.

Faithful, expositional gospel preaching should breed holy contentment because we have Christ and He is enough.

Verse 6 says, 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 things, we will be content.

You see, we seek gain from things that can never truly satisfy.

So our pursuit leaves us in a cycle of insatiable thirst.

We don't believe that in knowing Jesus intimately and in being conformed to his image, that we can actually find satisfaction.

We don't want Jesus, we want his stuff.

You see, Paul understood contentment in spite of his physical circumstances.

Let's look at Philippians chapter 4, verses 11-13.

Philippians 4:11–13

This is a commonly quoted passage of scripture, but I want to look at it in the light of contentment.

He says this, not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am 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.

I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

You see, Paul is talking about holy contentment.

We don't take the scripture and apply it to anything.

Through Christ, I can do anything and everything I could ever imagine or desire to do, right?

It's this c it's become a self-help quote for those who are failing to accomplish what they hoped and dreamed for.

And so you wake up and say, Through Christ I can do all things while constantly wrestling with discontent, that you are not where you desire to be.

And so you look for God as this person who can get us there, rather than as a God who satisfies us in the circumstance we're currently in.

How is Paul able to say this?

That no matter the circumstance, he could be content because he had Jesus and because he could make Jesus known.

That is enough.

Nothing earthly could be taken from him nor be given to him, that he would not be content with having Jesus and making him known.

There was nothing that could have been stripped from Paul.

There was nothing that could be added to Paul's life that would bring any sense of distress or ultimate joy, because he understood that this stuff, whether taken from me or given to me, will decay and I will not be able to take it with me in the grave.

But no matter what, if I'm in chains in prison, or if I'm sitting in palaces, if I have abundance or if I'm scraping for food, it doesn't matter because I have Jesus and because I can make Jesus known.

Therefore I am wholly content.

This world has nothing for us.

Nothing for us.

We came in with nothing, and even the deteriorating things that we have accumulated will not be able to be taken with us.

We must treasure treasure Jesus.

For only he and his kingdom will never cease.

Only him.

And this is, I'm preaching this to myself.

A person who constantly feels like they have to have more.

To be recognized, to be thought of as cool.

Am I wearing the right clothes?

Am I buying the right shoes?

Do I have the right stuff?

Am I listening to the right music?

Am I doing the right things?

Am I drinking the right things?

Am I eating the right things?

What diet should I be on this week?

Right?

Because we're so discontent.

And I'm trying to please every single person around me, playing a chameleon in micro situations where I keep adapting and changing and losing myself in the process.

Where do I just see Jesus and savor that?

I need to hear the word, the words, that this world has nothing for me.

And through him I can do all things.

Now, this is not to say that God's not interested or concerned in our physical needs at all.

By no means.

You see, God is a present and powerful helper, even in our physical state.

Paul actually recites the teachings of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount, where he talks about why do you worry about what you will wear?

What do you worry about what you will eat?

Do not the birds, they don't work or labor or gather in barns, but God feeds them.

Do not the flowers of the field look are adorned in beauty, but they don't contribute to that.

Paul says, if I have food and I have covering, isn't that enough for me?

And so look at where Paul is not uh uh creating something out of God's promises that was never there.

Like we can do in the church.

We can make these promises of God, we can shift them and manipulate them and distort them to where they never really say what they actually said in the first place.

But Christ, uh Paul leans on the promises of Christ, that he truly is present, that he truly is a powerful helper, even in our physical state.

Verse 9 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.

You see, we are so caught up with desire to get out of our situations that we will even prostitute the gospel for greedy gain.

We will leverage God's word for consumption so that we might be made rich, so that we might be made known.

Whatever the greed in our heart is expressing itself as, whether it's for recognition, for wealth, for prominence, for power, we will prostitute the very gospel that we might gain.

And we, church, in America and throughout the world have a problem with pimps in the pulpit.

Using the word of God for their own gain.

You see, you'll find a common thread that runs through these types of preachers.

These other so-called preachers will make much of themselves, or worse, they'll make much of you.

They will exalt your name and they will exalt your position.

They will point you to the stuff of the Savior, or at worst, the savior of yourself.

They will make you your own God.

If you so desire it to be.

What do we desire?

We desire to make him known, not to be known ourselves.

We desire to be content with him, not to chase down his possession or his things.

And you'll find a common thread that runs through what we believe and strive to be as gospel faithful preachers.

And the thread is humility.

Humility to make much of Jesus.

Humility to exalt his name and his word.

And humility to point people to the only one who can truly save.

You see, false teachers do the exact opposite of this because ultimately they have a greater love for money, a greater love for recognition, fame, power than they do for you.

And they will plunge you into the same pit that no amount of their own striving can even free them from.

You see, it's important to pause and walk carefully through this statement on money that Paul makes to Timothy.

It does not say that money is inherently evil.

Nowhere in the scriptures does it say that.

That intrinsically there's some type of evil within money.

No, it says that the love of money produces all types of evil.

So not only does it not say that money is inherently evil, but it does not say that money produces all evil.

It says that the love of money produces all types of evil.

In regards to this passage of scripture, John Stott, an English Anglican priest and author, who in 2005, he was actually ranked by Time magazine among the most 100 most influential people in the world.

He says this about this passage.

That it's not for poverty against wealth, but for contentment against covetousness.

It is not for poverty against wealth, but for contentment against covetousness.

You see, having money is not wrong.

The Bible is not calling us to answer in an opposite direction to pursue poverty.

No, he's warning us about the love of money, the coveting of other things, that we would forsake Christ and forsake godliness to have them.

Verse 11 But as for you, O man of God, flee these things, pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness, fight the good fight of the faith, take hold of the eternal life to which you were called, and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

Paul charges Timothy to flee these things: covetousness, greed, self-gain, discontentment.

We're challenged in the scriptures to run away from one thing and run toward another.

Fundamentally, at its core, this is repentance.

This is the Christian life.

That God not only establishes for us what we should run away from, but he establishes for us what we should run toward.

We are challenged to run away from one thing and run toward another.

This is repentance.

He saved us so that we might run from sin and run toward our Savior, that we'll be conformed to his image, that we might produce godliness where there was once godlessness.

And the preaching and teaching of sound doctrine is a fight.

Sound doctrine does not preserve or contend for itself.

We must be a people who preserve it, contend of it, and proclaim it so that the church might be built up into health.

Here's a great example of this.

I love the Reformation.

I love studying the Reformation.

And they have this phrase that they would use that was post-tenebras lux, which means out of darkness came light.

And here's what they discovered: that the word of God was hidden from them for so long.

It was only written in Latin, and it was only the educated who could read it, who could uh study and exegete it for themselves, who could have devotion to understand who God was and who he revealed himself to be.

It was only for the educated, it was only for the priests, it was only for those who could conduct public worship, and so worship became a spectator sport where people came and watched others worship for them.

They were removed from the word of God, having no access to it, either by education or physical access or the teaching of the church.

And when the Bible was let loose so that the average person could read it and digest it and see and savor Christ and his reveal word as he intended them to, they declared, post tenebras lux, out of darkness we have found light.

Because the word of God is light and life for the believer.

We cannot have health in the church if we continue to conceal and hide God's word.

We cannot have health in the church if we continue to leverage God's word for personal gain.

We cannot have health in the church until we fully pursue submitting to the revelation of Christ in all of Scripture.

Verse 13, I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will display at the proper time.

He who is the blessed and only sovereign, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see.

To him be honor and eternal dominion.

Amen.

We need to be a people who are committed to teaching and proclaiming sound doctrine.

Not for pride or contention, but because it is necessary to truly know and savor Jesus.

A love for Jesus and a love for his people must be the reason that we fight, church.

It is not to puff ourselves up, it is not to win the debate, it is not to be proven right.

It is because we know two things that we are called to deeply love the church, and the church deeply needs God's word preached to them.

I love this doxological or worshipful utterance of Paul at the end.

And speaking of the love he has for Jesus and the love he has for his word, his only response is to declare his praise.

He's charging Timothy to fight for sound doctrine, he's charging him to preach the word, he's charging him to flee from sin and run toward godliness, he's charging him to be content.

And at the end of this, Paul is so overwhelmed with the joy and satisfaction and holy contentment that he has in Christ that he has no other further response than to utter and declare his praise.

You see, our life as Christians should be so much so that we are filled to overflowing with the presence of God because we are submerged in his word, because we are people of prayer, because we are people who are in community of gospel witness to one another, that when our mouths open up, it is filled with the praises of Christ.

We should work out of the overflow of the work of the Spirit in us.

What's the main idea for this text?

It's this that a fruit, a fruit of sound doctrine, is godliness that produces holy contentment.

A fruit of sound doctrine is godliness that produces holy contentment.

Sound doctrine informs and cultivates godliness in our lives.

What is godliness?

Godliness is discovered at the cross section of the knowledge of God and the holiness of life.

Godliness is discovered at the cross section of the knowledge of who God is and of holiness of life.

Holiness is obedience and conformity to King Jesus.

And we can only obey and conform to a Jesus that we know intimately through his word.

Without sound doctrine, at best, we toil in speculation, and at worst, we become our own gods.

If we're left to say who God is, if we're left to say who we think he is or how we feel he should be, and when you navigate this Christian culture in America, you'll discover this.

It's not just in America, it's humans in nature.

They want to speculate about who God is, or they want to dictate who God should be or how he should love or how he should act or how his character should be demonstrated.

And he they don't give space to allow God be God.

Ultimately, what they're trying to do is be God themselves and they dictate who God should be.

But the God that we serve did not leave us in speculation.

We don't have to guess anymore who he is.

We don't have to guess anymore how he should be worshipped or how he desires to have relationship with his image bearers because his word is sufficient and efficient for us to be able to have joyous, life-giving, eternal relationship with the Father.

Praise God for revelation and a God who reveals himself to his people, and that we are not left to our own speculation, where our best guess is the only thing we have to grasp for.

Godliness produces a holy contentment.

The more we obey and conform, the more we'll delight in the person of Jesus rather than in the circumstances of our lives.

To behold and to cherish Christ is to know that in Him we have already obtained the greatest treasures that we could ever pursue.

If we really asked ourselves about discontentment in our lives, is it not because we continue to drink from wells that leave us thirsty?

Right now I can go get the next thing on my Instagram saved list.

And you know what?

In the blink of an eye, there's something else that I'm gonna want that's gonna take its place.

Because I'm looking for contentment in things that will only leave me abandoned and this sense of emptiness that I'm trying to shove material things into.

How do we often approach this, though, as people who are broken and in this process of sanctification or in continued rebellion against Jesus?

Here's two ways I see it.

Some of us appear to have godliness, but we deny the power of God's word to produce obedience and conformity.

Some of us have appear to have godliness, but we deny the power of God's word to produce obedience and conformity.

We know enough of the Bible and we do enough good to not get in trouble.

Living in an American culture that is predominantly Christian, that's pretty easy to come by.

We are the people in 2 Timothy 3 who can only front for so long.

Paul says to Timothy in his second letter that he writes him in this passage of uh verse of chapter 3, he says that there are those who who have a form of godliness but deny the power thereof.

And then he lists all these different sins that will come to the surface if life continues in this way.

Ultimately, what Paul says is one day you'll get God.

You will be found out.

Who you really are will surface.

Playing Christian will only keep you above water so long in the depths that you are treading in.

Our soul longs to grasp hold of satisfaction and joy, and it will either find it in Jesus or it's going to find it in idols and sin.

We can only play Christian for so long, and there are many of us, even here, who have a form of godliness, an appearance of godliness, but just beneath the surface, there's a rebellion and denial of the power of God's word to truly produce obedience and conformity to the Son.

Others of us, though, some of us, we chase down contentment in things and circumstances rather than in God Himself.

Our thirst can't be quenched because we keep drinking from dry wells.

Like trying to lap up salt water to quench our thirst, we pursue corruptible finite things to satisfy our soul.

Imagine that, right?

You're on the banks of the ocean, and it's not even like you've got a giant straw that you're trying to gulp out of.

When we make these decisions of discontentment, when we're trying to fill ourselves with the things of God rather than God Himself, not only are we drinking bitter water that can never truly quench our thirst, but we're just sitting there lapping it up in these tiny amounts in our hand, these things that we think will be these life-changing, big circumstance shifts in our lives that'll ultimately bring me what I've been looking for, ultimately bring me the happiness that I've longed for.

We discover so quickly how minute and minuscule and pathetic that they really are.

Because in the blink of an eye, at the snap of a finger, we just want something else.

We're called to drink from the depths of Christ so that we might be filled with the living water that overflows from us for the good of the world around us.

You see, that's what Christ promised.

Christ promised holy contentment if we drink from him that would produce fruit and life for the people around us.

That's why the slave could be called to stay where he was, because his circumstance didn't need to change for the life-giving water of Christ to fill him by the power of the Spirit and for the overflow of that life-giving water to come forth from him like a fountain that would bless and prosper and give life to even his slave master.

That's contentment.

When we drink from Christ who promises we will never thirst again.

What's the gospel in this whole thing?

What's this?

Jesus is the word made flesh, who in holy contentment fulfilled godliness for the ungodly.

Jesus is the word made flesh, who in holy contentment fulfilled godliness for the ungodly.

Jesus was holy content.

At any given time, he could have asked the Father for anything.

And even the devil and the wandering through the desert for 40 days and nights, as he was fasting and he was on this spiritual journey, being filled with the Spirit, the devil comes in, he tries to give him earthly power, earthly respect, earthly resource.

He tried to give them the kingdoms of all the earth.

And Christ, in holy contentment, proclaimed God's word, and he was able to produce godliness.

And ultimately, the ungodly called for God's Son to be murdered on a cross.

And he stood in their place and he bore their punishment so that we might be made godly in the eyes of the Father.

That's the beauty of the gospel.

That's the beauty of Christ.

That we are now godly where we were once ungodly, that we are now people who are made righteous because of Christ's righteousness, because he didn't ask for more, because he didn't feel entitled to things, because he was so committed to being submitted to the will of the Father that he would even endure the most heinous cosmic act where the Father Himself would turn his back on the Son so that the Father would never turn his back on sons and daughters who are yet to be born.

Christ was content to suffer and die so that we might be made holy.

How beautiful is the gospel! How much do we take this for granted when our discontentment is boiling up inside of us?

Who do we not just treasure and see the beauty of Christ?

So, how do we live this out?

I've got four things.

Number one, be a good theologian.

You are all theologians.

It doesn't matter.

If you read, you don't read, I don't care.

Every single person from child to adult, from crib to grave, is a theologian.

The question is not that.

The question is, are you a good one?

You all have thoughts about God.

You all have thoughts about who he is, who Jesus is, how we relate to him and worship him.

We all have those thoughts.

The question is not, are you a theologian?

The question is, are you a good one?

We can only truly know Jesus from truly knowing his word.

Because it is in his word that he has fully revealed himself to us.

And so we have to be people who aren't scared of the text, who aren't timid at reading, who don't push this aside for an Instagram feed, who don't push this aside for whatever else is beckoning and calling for your attention.

And and that's the thing, it happens, it happens to me.

I can't tell you, here I'll tell you, last week I got up at six in the morning to read and pray and be with God, and I got down on the couch, my beautiful wife made me coffee the night before.

It brewed at 5 50, so that when I got up, I went downstairs, it was ready and hot and black and beautiful, and I got downstairs, I sat on my couch, and I got my Bible and I got my devotional, I got my journal, and I got my phone.

Boom.

For a half hour.

I went through Instagram and Facebook.

I drank from wells that were dry.

You need this word.

And we need to be good theologians when studying it.

Number two, practice obedience.

Practice it.

Literally put it into practice in your life.

If we read and study God's word and we see the places that He commands us to be obedient, practice that obedience.

Practice loving your spouse.

Practice loving your neighbor.

Practice submitting to God.

Practice obedience because you have been filled with the Spirit.

You no longer are slaves to sin.

We are not people who, like dogs, should continue to run back to eat our vomit.

We should be ones who pursue righteousness because we've been empowered with the Spirit to do so that we can actually obey Christ.

You have the power to do it.

You just reject it.

I reject it.

I reject the fact that I am filled with the same Spirit who raised Christ from the dead, and I act like a dead man still stuck in a tomb.

Christ raised us from the dead that we might be obedient to him.

Number three, seek conformity.

The scriptures revealed to us in Romans 8 that we were saved that we might be conformed to the image of his son.

This is a grand plan of salvation, is conformity, where that image of God was marred and perverted because of our sin and fallenness.

Christ and his spirit comes to reshape and redeem and reform that image so that we might reflect him properly.

It is the grand plan of salvation for his children to bear his image rightly and holy once again.

Seek conformity.

I'm not talking about some uh woven bracelet with WWJD on it.

I'm talking about true conformity to the image of Christ.

Where we are submitted to his word, where we pursue living life in step with the Spirit, where we pursue the accomplishment of the good works of which he has laid for us for the foundations of the earth, where we pursue being submitted to the will of God.

You want to know the will of God?

The will of God is to conform to the image of Jesus.

What is the image of Jesus?

Read the Bible because that's where we're going to discover it.

So be a good theologian, practice obedience, seek conformity, and forth and finally be satisfied.

Be satisfied in Jesus.

Be satisfied in drinking from the well who guarantees us that we will never thirst again.

Be satisfied in having the greatest treasure that could ever be afforded to you.

You want to chase after that which is glittering gold, you will discover that it is rust and rot when you get to it.

But Christ is the endless faceted diamond of whose depths we can never exhaust.

Be satisfied in Jesus.