Trust God for Contentment | More Wisdom, More Life | Pastor Zach Weihrauch

We are spending the summer going through the Book of Proverbs, a book of ancient wisdom that God gives us to lead us to the fulfilling and flourishing life that he wants us to have, that God made us to live flourishing and fulfilling lives. And he shares his wisdom with us to give us the path to move towards those lives.

And so we're looking each week at a different proverb, seeking God's wisdom in order to live the life that God has designed for us to live. This week we'll continue that looking at Proverbs chapter 14, verse 30. If you have a Bible you want to follow along, you can open it to that. Otherwise it'll be on the screen here above me.

Proverbs 14:30

Here's what it says. A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot. Three things I want to use as an outline to unpack that proverb about contentment. And they are coming from the Christian writer Martin Lloyd-Jones, who has one of the great quotes I think of all time when he says the key to spiritual health is to stop listening to yourself and to start talking to yourself.

So I'm going to steal that and use it as my outline. Here we talk about contentment. Three points. They go like this. Stop listening to yourself, start talking to yourself, and give yourself something to say. Let's start with the first one. Stop talking to yourself. You know, envy is one of those words we all kind of know. And there's a danger, I guess, on giving a talk on envy, because we all might be operating with a different definition.

So let me just start with a definition of envy. I think envy is wanting anything so bad it becomes the only thing which ruins everything. Envy is wanting anything so bad it becomes the only thing which ruins everything. You know, the Bible never says that it is bad to want things. It's not bad to want to get married, to want to have children, to want to have a flourishing career, a fulfilling life, great friends.

It isn't bad to want your marriage, to be healthy, to want your career to be successful. It's not bad to want things. That's part of being human. That's part of of growing in life, is being driven towards the things that we want. Those things become bad for us when they become the only thing. One of the tests of that is you'll find yourself saying, if only, if only I were married, if only I had children, if only I were married to someone else.

If only I had someone else's children. I can't be the only one who's thought that if only is a dramatic shift from wanting because it's saying if. If only I had this, I would be happy. And after a while, if you think that and you feel that long enough, if only will become only if you'll start telling yourself, only if I were married, could I be happy only if my marriage was better or to a different person could I be happy only if I had her money, or his life, or her career, or his golf handicap.

And as a consequence, the only if part of envy will make it so that whatever you do have is no longer good enough. You know, the writer says that envy makes the bones rot. It's a great poetic phrase because what he's saying is for a while, envy is killing you and you don't know it. Your marriage looks fine on the outside.

Your career looks fine on the outside, but inside, the rot of only if is spreading and it's only a matter of time before everything comes apart. This makes me think of something that's happening in my life right now. This upcoming week, construction begins on a new deck at my house. You know, this is the kind of thing I hate spending money on because I have a deck.

I'll spend a lot of money, and I'll have a deck right back where I started. Right. But I have to build a deck. And let me tell you why. I had someone over for a barbecue, and it was a family. Husband and wife and kids. And I'm talking to the husband, to the dad, and all of a sudden he disappears.

And I looked down and he has fallen through my deck. Now I don't have a deck on the ground. My deck is on my second level, so one leg, only one leg has fallen completely through my deck. And I don't know who's more surprised him or me. And what makes that story even more complicated is that man just happens to be the head of our human resources department.

So that was in my annual review. I guess my point is, look, my house was built in the early 80s. I've known for some time things are going to start to need to be replaced. But I didn't know my deck was bad. You couldn't look at it from the outside and tell it wasn't safe to walk on. I didn't know I had a problem until someone fell through it.

That's how envy works. Your marriage can look fine. Your career can look fine. Your family can look fine. But envy that only if rot is spreading. And it's just a matter of time until someone, maybe you, falls through your life to all of a sudden, your feelings towards your spouse, towards your children, towards your career have so soured that you cannot find any joy in anything because you've made one thing, the only thing, and it's ruined everything.

Do you know this feeling? Maybe you're here this weekend. And your marriage, your career, your family is less satisfying than it once was, and you never thought to connect it to envy. But can you and I be honest enough to say we're longing for something and that something is ruining everything? So how do we get out of envy?

Well, that's actually my second point. You have to stop listening to yourself about that one thing and start talking to yourself. But of course, that begs the question, what? What would I tell myself? The writer of Proverbs 1430 says that the opposite of envy is a tranquil heart. A tranquil heart restores life. He means a peaceful heart. I think what he has in mind here is contentment.

Contentment is the opposite of envy, right? Contentment is being so satisfied with what you have that you actually can celebrate what other people have that you don't. That's because you have enough. Contentment is the opposite of envy. Contentment is saying, I'm so glad for what I have that I don't need what he or she has. You know, when I think about contentment, I think about my family on Christmas morning.

You know, when we open presents as a family, we do it the right way. So if you don't do it this way, change. We circle around the living room and each kid gets a turn to open a gift. And when it's that kid's turn to open a gift, we all sit and watch and celebrate with them. We don't tear into our presence like we're animals, okay?

There's order, there's structure. And when that kid is opening a gift, this weird phenomenon happens. You know, kids are not known for patients, and they're not really known for celebrating the good things that other people have that they don't. But on Christmas morning, all my kids sit there patiently. They watch their siblings open presents, and they are genuinely happy for them.

I mean, they say things like, oh wow, you you really wanted that? Or oh, that's going to look so great on you or I'm so happy you have that. And they mean it. They mean it. You know why? Because there's a present sitting in front of them, right? So they're able to say good, good for you because they know their turn is coming.

That's contentment. Believe it or not, contentment is saying, I have a gift that is so good and so great that I'm actually okay, that someone else has won. I do not. I wonder if you and I could get there. I wonder if we could get to the point where there's something so great in our lives that we say this is enough and good for him.

Good for her. You know, for some of us, that's hard, right? Because our lives have been hard. And when we think about even that Christmas morning metaphor, we might find ourselves thinking, well, I feel like the kid in the family circle that doesn't have a gift. I'm watching everybody else open one. But. But there's nothing in front of me.

So what do I do? Well, that's why I made my outline the way I made it. Because I can tell you, stop listening to yourself. That one thing isn't the only thing. Stop letting it ruin everything. And I can say, start talking to yourself. Focus on the gift you have. But if you don't feel like you have one, how do you do that?

That's why my third point is this. You got to give yourself something to say. You got to give yourself something to say. What could we give ourselves to say? Well, let me ask you this. Is it not true that envy tends to go in two directions? We envy other people's relationships, or we envy their stuff. You know, we envy relationships because deep in our hearts, we desire to be loved.

And from the outside in we see other families, other marriages, other friendships, and it looks to us as though they are loved and we want to be loved. So we start to tell ourselves, if I had that, maybe I would have love. Of course we envy stuff. We like people's cars, people's houses, the experiences that people get to have, right?

We want that for ourselves. So I think the only way out of envy would be to find a gift that speaks to those two needs. A gift so great that I knew I was loved and I knew I had stuff. Well, friends, I'm here to tell you that that's exactly the gift that God has given us in Jesus Christ Jesus, God's Son, who came to earth to live righteously in our place, who lived a life of perfect obedience, so that when he went to the cross it would be my sin, your sin, the sin of all of God's people.

He could carry so that God the Father could pour out his anger and wrath in judgment unto Jesus, who would willingly come up under that, so that his dying words could be it is finished. Meaning God's anger, God's judgment, God's wrath for our sin is gone, so that three days later he could rise from the dead. And tell us, if you will trust me, my life and my death and my resurrection.

You can be forgiven, you can be accepted, and you can enjoy relationship with God forever. Friends, this life is but a moment. Eternity is forever. And God has said to us that the gift in front of us through Jesus is a relationship with him that will last forever. You, you are loved in Jesus. You have love, but believe it or not, you also have stuff.

Listen to how Peter describes this in First Peter. Here's what he says. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope. Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time, Peter says.

Of course, God has forgiven us and accepted us in Christ. We have the promise of eternal life with him, but we also have an inheritance. Friends, when the Bible talks about heaven, it doesn't talk about floating in a diaper, playing the harp in the clouds, if that's what you're excited about. Sorry. The Bible says that God will make the earth new.

He will cleanse it of all the damage we will have done, he will give it back to us. He will live with us on the earth. And he will say, now let's spend eternity building and shaping and creating the way I always intended. In other words, friends, whatever you don't have in this life, there's a universe waiting for you.

A world to shape, to create, to cultivate. Let me drive this home for you. Last week, I was in Sandusky with a friend. We were eating lunch at a restaurant right there. That kind of is over Lake Erie. And we saw a sailboat out in the lake. And my friend asked me, hey, have you ever been sailing? And I said, no, it looks great.

I've never done it. And then I said this, you know, I'm 42, and the amount of time and energy it would take to learn how to sail is probably that that stage is over. I will never sail. That's the hard part about getting older is doors close right there, experiences you'll never have there. There are things you'll never get to do, things you'll never possess.

And then I said this, I think because I was working on this sermon, I said, Maybe I'll take a decade in heaven to learn how to sail.

You see, friends, there's life waiting for us. Everything that God has for you doesn't have to be crammed into this life. There's an eternity of exploration and joy and purpose and satisfaction waiting for you. And it's yours through Jesus Christ. Maybe the way out of envy is by seeing that the gift that we have in Christ, the love and the stuff now and waiting for us is sufficient.

And then we can truly find joy in the blessings that he gives to other people. Let me pray for you, Father God. The truth is, many of us are sitting near this weekend, and whether we know it or not, our bones are rotting with envy. Our marriages, our families, our careers are lacking a structural integrity. It's a matter of time before someone or something falls through.

My prayer is in your mercy. You would awaken us to the envy in our hearts and lead us to contentment through Jesus before that happens. But even for those who are coming this weekend saying things have fallen through, my marriage, my career, and my family are in disrepair, that you would show them the mercy of forgiveness and of restoration available through Jesus and His name we pray.

Amen.