Better #9 - Contentment
Message Description
Dr. Kurt Bjorklund looks through the book of Proverbs at how we can know if we envy and how we can find contentment in our lives.
Message Transcript
Well, good evening and welcome. It's great to be together. It's really fun sometimes just to get a little snapshot of some of the things that have happened here over the years. And obviously when you see a video like that, you're just getting a few of the highlights. And I really believe that the best days of Orchard Hill are still in front of us. That what can be and what will be will ultimately be even stronger in terms of reaching people than what has been in the past. And so we're so thankful that so many of you have been a part of Orchard Hill for so long and have helped to make it what it is. And as you heard, we're asking for a few people to make a change to either 8:15 or Saturday night. Obviously if you're here on Saturday night, you're good. But the 8:15, the pancake breakfast is pure bribery, unapologetic, come, get pancakes, go to the early service in order to make that all work.
Hey, one other thing, tonight when we sang, we did three songs. I don't know if you noticed, but two of those songs are original Orchard Hill songs, one by David Bowens, one by Susan Randall, and that's just kind of a fun thing that's happening here right now as well as our worship team is in many ways cultivating a voice that is uniquely Orchard Hill, by writing some of their own music. And so I'm really just excited about what that means and not just that the space will be new, but as God continues just to birth some things here that there will be a lot of just great things that will happen in this space in the years ahead. Let's pray together and we'll jump into the teaching.
Father, thank you for just each person who's gathered this weekend. And Lord, I pray that you would do what we hope would happen in these days ahead. In fact, I pray that you'd do more than we can ask or think and that the future days of Orchard Hill would be greater than the past. That there would be more people, more life change than we can even dream of right now. And Father as we're gathered today, I pray that you would speak to each of us, that my words would reflect your word in content and in tone and emphasis. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
Well, today we're going to conclude the series that we have been in since the start of the year that we've called Better. And we're doing this series. We've been doing it in Butler County, in the strip district and in Wexford. And I said at the beginning that I had a concern about this series and my concern was that the title Better would leave some of us thinking that the message of Christianity is to do better, to try harder to improve yourself. And certainly when you study the Proverbs, there are calls to improvement. There's a call to say it's better to do one thing than another. That can improve your life. But the ultimate message of Christianity is not about self improvement, it's about trusting Jesus Christ and recognizing our shortcomings so that our improvements are becoming better in response to that, not in order to earn favor from God.
But having said that, what we've seen as we've worked our way through some of the themes of Proverbs, and again, this has been maybe a different series because we've been looking at some of the topics of Proverbs rather than just working straight through a text. What we've seen, is that in each instance that one thing is stated to be better than another, and the things themselves are typically fairly obvious. Today we come to this topic of contentment or envy, that contentment is better than envy. And so let me just begin by asking a couple of questions. If you were to categorize yourself, would you say that you're a content person today? Would you, as you look at your life say, "I am content with where I am." And if you are content, is that a good thing? Because you could argue that being content might mean that you don't strive and push yourself to be all that you want to be or could be.
And then secondly, do you find that you envy people who have it better than you, who have more than you, who have more gifts or talents than you? And is this a negative thing in your life? Well, Proverbs says something, and although we may say envy isn't good, I would guess that many of us would say, "Well, I know it's not great, but is it really that bad?" And Proverbs chapter 14, verse 30 which was read just a few moments ago, says that envy rots the bones. That's a pretty strong statement to say that envy rots your bones. And what that's saying in essence is that it may not be obvious from the outside, but internally there's something happening when you envy that will cause decay from the inside out and will ultimately mean that you don't thrive, that you're not vibrant. That's what it means.
And then Proverbs 29, which you also heard read says this in verse 1 and 2, "Whoever remains stiff necked after many rebukes will suddenly be destroyed and without remedy." When, excuse me, 24 not 29, that's the wrong verse. Proverbs 24, 1 and 2 says, "Do not envy the wicked, do not desire their company for their hearts plot violence and their lips talk about making trouble." And so he says here, very simply, "I don't want you to envy people who seem to have everything going their way. People who don't follow the ways of God."
Now, just before we jump into talking about this, I want to talk for just a moment about emotions. And the reason I wanted to talk about emotions is because if you take the proverb seriously that says, "Do not envy," one of the things that that would have to occur to us is can we command our emotions? Isn't it just that our emotions are what our emotions are? In other words, you go on a drive through a neighborhood that's substantially nicer than yours, and if you happen to envy some of the houses, would you say that you can control that? Or is it just something that is? If you see somebody who's significantly more talented than you and you think, wow, would I like to have that talent? Is that just something that is? Or can you control it? And in our day and age, it seems as if people by and large think that our emotions are just something that are.
In other words, we don't control them. We get angry, we get happy, we get sad. It's just how we are. But I would suggest that in the Bible we are commanded to have certain emotions and because we're commanded to have certain emotions, what that seems to imply is that we can actually choose our emotional state, at least in part. For example, the Bible commands us to be joyful. It tells us not to be anxious. It tells us at different points how to obey with a sense of joy. And so what the Bible does several times is it tells us that we are to command our emotions. And what that means is that when you tend to think, or I tend to think that the only way to change my emotions is to change my circumstances, is that that isn't really true. And so some of us may come to the topic of contentment or envy and we may say, "Well, the only way to envy less is to have more."
But what Proverbs chapter 14, verse 13 says, is this, it says, "Even in laughter, the heart may ache and rejoicing may end in grief." And what that's saying is even when something appears to be satisfying in a certain way, that the end of it may be different. In other words, your laughter, your joy may not last. And so what that's pointing to is that changing circumstances ultimately doesn't answer the question of our emotions. It might be a little bit like this, if a mom or a dad is with a child, a small child in a store, and the small child wants something, and the mom or the dad says no, and the child has a meltdown. This would always be somebody else's child. You know how this is. It's never your child. It's always somebody else's. And if the child has a meltdown and the child says they're unhappy, it's okay to be unhappy, but the mother or father will usually say, "But you're not allowed to throw a fit and throw other grocery items at me in the store because you have to control your emotions."
And here's why this matters. Because when it comes to this topic of contentment, if you don't find yourself content, it would be easy just to say, "Well, it's just what it is." Rather than saying that this is an emotion that I can actually address. And so let's look at contentment through the lens of these proverbs. And here's the first question that I want to ask. And that is why does envy rot the bones? Why does Proverbs 14:30 say envy rots the bones? And what does it mean to say that envy rots the bones? Why is it not good for us? And here's what Paul David Tripp wrote years ago about this. He said, "The driven watchful envy of a horizontal pleasure oriented heart will make us crazy. It will not only rob us of our satisfaction and joy, but it will make us more like brutes than friends. It will eat our hearts and consume our souls."
And what he's talking about here is that this idea of envy rotting the bones because what envy does is it wants other people's lives. It wants what other people have because we presume that if we have what other people have, that it will somehow make us happy. And when that's our assumption, what happens is we end up becoming dissatisfied with our own lives. Maybe you've heard this phrase, but I've heard this and that is that comparison is the thief of joy. The more times that you compare yourself to somebody else, it tends to rob us of joy. I remember seeing this in action years ago when my oldest son Drew was probably about two or three years old. We went to a birthday party. If you've ever taken little kids to a birthday party, it's always a bit of a roll of the dice in terms of how it will go because you load these kids up with sugar and presents and all of these things and then you wonder why they have meltdowns.
Well, my son was at this party and the party host gave out balloons, helium balloons, and he got a helium balloon and he was so happy with this helium balloon. He was walking around like, I have a balloon, I have a balloon, and he's playing with his balloon and he's just so happy with his balloon. Until he saw one of the other kids coming with two balloons. And you could see his little face just go from contentment to I want two balloons because one is not enough. Now that's a really simple illustration of a two year old, but here's what happens. We get older and we may get more sophisticated, we may not point and say, "I want two balloons." But what happens is we become dissatisfied with the balloon that we have because else has two, and we think my life would be better if I had two. When before that we were perfectly happy with one.
That's what envy does and that's why it rots the bones. But not only that, envy resents other people's lives. It doesn't just want other people's lives, it resents other people's lives. In Psalm 73 which also deals with the subject of envy, we see this in verse 3 it says, "For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They have no struggles, their bodies are healthy and strong, they are free from the common human burdens, they're not plagued by human ills." And what was happening here is the Psalmist was looking around at other people's lives and was saying, "They have success and I resent the success that they have. They don't have the physical trials or the trials that I have and we resent it or they have better physical prowess than I have and I resent it." And whenever we find ourselves in a place of resentment, what happens again is it starts to put us into a place where our lives, the lives that we live in, can be content with, all of a sudden, we don't feel very content.
Cornelius Plantinga writes about this and he says it this way. What the envier wants is not first of all, what another has. What an envier wants is for another not to have it. To covet, is to want somebody else's goods so strongly that you're tempted to steal it. To envy is to resent somebody else's good so much that you're attempted to destroy it. The coveter has empty hands and wants to fill them with somebody else's goods. The envier has empty hands, therefore wants to empty the hands of the envied. Envy moreover, carries overtones of personal resentment. An envier resents not only somebody else's blessings, but also the one who has been blessed.
You see what happens if you allow envy to have place in your life, if I allow envy to have place in my life is sooner or later I won't be able to enjoy other people's success and I will secretly maybe want them to experience some kind of a misfortune so that I feel better about where I'm at. This is one of those things that we rarely admit because it's so ugly, but this is where envy leads us and then envy ultimately becomes happy at other people's unhappiness. And it's really the opposite of what the Bible calls us to do. In Romans 12:5, we're told that we're all of one body and we're told in another place in the New Testament to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn. But what happens when we envy is we rejoice when somebody else mourns and we mourn when somebody rejoices because we want something for ourselves.
Now, it's easy to pick on people who have a lot, but this illustration just works here. I don't know if you've followed professional sports contracts ever, but I always find it amazing how somebody who's paid millions of dollars to play a game and is perfectly content with their contract one year, a year later will say, "My contract's no good," even though they're making millions of dollars, because now somebody else has a bigger contract and they feel devalued or disrespected because they're no longer the highest paid or among the highest paid in their profession. Now, to a certain degree, I get it. They're saying this is a sign of respect, but to another degree what they're doing is they're saying, "I can't be happy making millions of dollars playing a game that I love because somebody else is making a little bit more than me." You see, what envy does is it rots the bones because it makes us unable to be happy or content with what we have, and it makes us resent what other people have and it makes us unhappy when other people succeed and it makes us happy at other people's unhappiness.
Here's another question. How do we know if we envy? Well again, Proverbs 24 says this, "Do not envy the wicked. Do not desire their company for their hearts plot violence and their lips talk about making trouble." And what this shows us ultimately is that there's a lack of contentment and there's a willingness to compromise. Certainly we can talk about this unhappiness that we just talked about in general. Sometimes unhappiness though shows itself more as restlessness than unhappiness. Meaning there's a constant sense of saying, "I want something different." If you find yourself in a place where you're constantly saying, "I need something, I need to go on a trip, I need to buy something, I need a new role, a new job, I need a new spouse, I need a new house, I need something different than what I have," what that is is it is restlessness caused by an inner world of envy.
And then I would add that there's a critical spirit that's part of this. Sometimes the way that envy shows itself is not by saying, "I want this," but by just simply picking at things that other people do. Warren Wiersbe wrote about this years ago, he said this, "Envy causes inward pain when we see others succeed and malice produces inward satisfaction when we see others fail. Envy and malice usually generates slander and unwarranted criticism. And when these two sins hide behind the veil of righteous zeal and self righteousness, the poison they produce is even more deadly."
What he's talking about here is that a lot of times what happens when we envy is we don't say, "I want what they have." What we do instead is we just simply critique and criticize until we've knocked down whatever somebody else has so that we feel better about where we're at. And this is one of those things that when this happens, you don't even a lot of times realize it's happening. And what I'm suggesting is follow the things that you're critical of in others. And what you may find is that you're actually envious or lacking contentment in your own life. And that's why you're so critical.
And then finally I would just say resentment or the willingness to compromise to get ahead, are part of the indicators of this. How do we find contentment? It's one thing to say that we are to be aware of our envy, but how do we find contentment? Proverbs 23, verses 7 and 8 puts it this way. It says, "For he is kind to the person who's always thinking about the cost, eat and drink he says to you, but his heart is not with you. You will vomit up the little you have eaten and you," boy, I did it again. 17 and 18 not 7 and 8. "Do not let your heart envy sinners, but always be zealous for the fear of the Lord. There is surely a future hope for you and your hope will not be cut off."
He says this, he says, "Don't let your heart envy sinners. Always be zealous for the fear of the Lord. There is surely a future hope for you and your hope will not be cut off." Derek Kidner who wrote a great little commentary on Proverbs, says, "An undue preoccupation with oneself and with the present is what envy is." In other words, envy by definition is an unhealthy or an undue preoccupation with oneself and with the present. And so here in verse 17 and 18 we see what the answer is in my estimation. And that is to look up and to look ahead. When I say look up, what I'm referring to here in verse 17 is this thing that says, "Do not let your heart envy sinners always be zealous for the fear of the Lord."
By tying this command to say, "Do not let your heart envy sinners and always be zealous for the fear of the Lord," what the author is doing is they're showing us that simply saying, "I'm going to be content or I'm not going to envy," may not be enough, but we need to fear the Lord or be zealous for the fear of the Lord, which is saying that we need to look beyond ourselves, look up and understand who God is. And so what this is saying ultimately is that we end up making God our object.
You see, a lot of times what happens in our lives is we forget the blessings God has already given us. And even if you don't feel like you're a person of faith or feel like God has blessed you in any way, there are a multitude of blessings that God has given you. Most people have experienced a great deal of health in their lives. There are some who don't have health from a very early age. But what happens is at some point you run into something where your health is challenged. That's part of aging. But as soon as your health is challenged, what happens is you look back and you say, "I wish I hadn't taken for granted all of my good health for all of the years that I had it."
And what that is is it's forgetting some of the blessings that God has already given us and what happens when we don't live with a sense of the fear of the Lord or an understanding that God is the giver of good things, is we start to say, "I don't have as many good things as I wish I had because we're not seeing the blessings or the good things that God has already given us." And then sometimes we misunderstand the blessings that God gives us because we don't have a long enough view. We don't understand that sometimes things that feel like they are against us can actually work for our good.
There's an old story about a man who lived in a ancient village and he had a horse and his horse ran away and all the neighbors and villagers commented and said, "How unfortunate, how unlucky you are?" And the man said, "Well, we'll see." Few days later the horse came back and brought with him some other horses that were running with him that he had found and came back into the pen and all of a sudden he had three horses where he had had none and all of his neighbors gathered and said, "How fortunate, how lucky you are." And the man said, "Well, we'll see." And then a few weeks later his son was out training these horses and was thrown from one of the horses and he broke his leg. And again, the neighbors came and said, "How unfortunate, how unlucky?" And he said, "Well, we'll see."
About a week later, some of the men from the emperor's army came through the town taking all of the young men that were able to go off to battle. And again, the neighbors gathered because his son couldn't go because of the broken leg and said, "How fortunate." And the man said, "We'll see." And the point of that, although it's not a biblical tale, the point of that is to say that sometimes the healthiest perspective is to say, "If I look up, God is working behind the scenes in ways that I can't understand so sometimes when I'm not content or when I'm envious, what I need to do is I need to be able to say that there's a God who I fear, who's in charge of some of the, not just some, but the details of my life in such a way that even when it doesn't seem like it, God may be working for very good."
But without that, what happens is I start to say, "Well, I know what's best, and if it doesn't happen the way that I think it should happen, then God has let me down and I need God to do something in my life." But what happens when we look up is we are able to look and to say that God is the object and the God who sent Jesus to die on the cross is worthy of my trust in an ultimate sense therefore, He can be worthy of my trust in the day to day details of my life. And if you don't have what you want right now, what you think you need, the real question is, can you trust God? Can you trust God?
I remember years ago just taking our kids on a vacation and as we were driving to the location, our kids were at the ages where they were squirrely and they started to complain about being in the car for all the time that we were on the vacation. And I remember continuing to say to them, "Listen, just hang in there. It will be worth it when we get there. It will be worth it." And what my kids had to do in that moment is the same thing that you and I have to do and that is sometimes when it feels like nothing is happening or it's not coming to be, what we need to do is say, "There will come a time and if I can trust my Heavenly Father, then I can wait in the car even while things aren't happening the way that I think they should."
We need to look up. But I think we also need to look ahead. And this is verse 18, for there is surely a future hope for you and a hope that will not be cut off. And what that's referring to is this idea of saying, "I will look ahead, God will work. God will bring about change." Again, in Psalm 73 that talks about envy, verse 13 says, "Surely in vain, I have kept my heart pure. I have washed my hands in innocence." Here's the juxtaposition. In Psalm 73 the Psalmist says, "Why have I done right? Because what good is it?" But in Proverbs we hear the reassuring words that say that change will come, that God will work, that God will bring about what we need. What we need to do is just resolve to be patient, to not play games to get ahead and to say, "I can trust that God is at work even if it doesn't seem like it right now."
In Proverbs 22, verse 29 it says this, "Do you see someone skilled in their work? They will serve before kings. They will not serve before officials of low rank." And what that is pointing to is it's saying that if you're somebody who says, "I can do more than I'm currently being asked to do, I have skills that haven't been been utilized yet, I've been underutilized." It says don't resent the obscurity that you have today because if you're skilled in your work and you don't play games, it says that there will come a time when it will be recognized and so sometimes what we need to do is look ahead and say, "God is still at work."
Now coveting, envy is actually one of the 10 Commandments. Exodus 20:17 says, "Do not covet." And if you're here today and you're hearing this and you say, "Well, okay, is it really that big a deal to want something I don't have? To envy something?" There are probably few commands in the Bible that are as hard to keep as this command. In fact, when I was talking just a few moments ago about how do you know if you envy? I was going to start by saying, well, if you're an American, you envy. If you're a human, you probably envy because it's hard not to look at how other people have things and say, "I wish I had that. I want that." And by definition, in a sense that's envy.
Here's what envy helps us to see and that is it helps us to see how desperately we need a Savior. Yes, if you continue to let envy go unchecked in your life, it will rot your bones. It will destroy your real happiness. Contentment is something that you can choose to do by saying, "I look up, I look ahead and I can look up and look ahead because I know what Jesus has done therefore I know God's heart for me so I can trust it in the present." But it also tells us how desperately we need a substitute, a Savior, because envy reminds us that our heart is not right and not set to the right things unless God does a work in it. And therefore we need to have Jesus Christ as our Savior. And He's the one who fulfills our desire. He fulfills the law and gives us what we ultimately need and want, but He does fulfill the law by going to the cross as a perfect sacrifice on your behalf and on mine.
And when we get that, when we understand that, then what happens when we come to envy is we can look at it and we can say, "Even when I find myself starting to want things, I can look back and say, because of what Jesus has done, I can look up and look ahead and say, I know that He's worthy of my trust. Even in the places where I find myself wanting something different."
I don't know what is your area of envy. I would guess that some of us, it's material things, but for more of us, it's family. It's seeing people's health or ease of life. It's seeing people have a position or recognition that we wish we had. Maybe it's somebody else's physical prowess as it was for the Psalmist and whenever we find that in our lives, if we don't deal with it, first by acknowledging our need for a Savior and secondly by saying, "This will rot my bones." It will slowly decay your inner world to a point where without recognizing it, you will lose your vitality. In the New Testament, we're told that godliness with contentment is great gain. Meaning when you or I say, "I am going to seek God and choose to be content. I'm not going to just say my emotions are my emotions, but I'm going to choose to say that I can be content in what God has given me, the place He's given me, the things He's given me," that your life will actually be characterized by greater gain than if you don't live with that reality.
Maybe you're here and you're just saying, "Well, I don't know that I care what the Bible says about any of this because I'm not sure I'm a follower of Jesus. And what does it hurt to just envy a little?" And what I hope you see is that this isn't just a spiritual Christian issue. This is a human issue and the Bible is giving us a prescription for living a life now that will ultimately be better than the life we would live if we don't surrender this to Jesus Christ. But that you can't just simply say, "I want to stop envying." The only way that you can really do that is to say, "I'm assured of what my future is because I know who Jesus is and what He's done for me." And when that happens, then you can say, "I don't have to have all of my fulfillment in this life because I know that there's a good God who has promised me something beyond this world." And that's where contentment will really take root in your heart and in mine.
Father, thank you for just again, just how clearly your word speaks to the situations and the places that we find ourselves day after day. And God, I pray for myself and for each person who's part of Orchard Hill this week and in Butler County, in the strip district, Wexford and The Chapel, online listening maybe in another part of the country or world. And God, I pray that you would help us to recognize envy, but more than that to see your goodness toward us and learn to be content so that we don't have our bones rotted because of our own envious hearts. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
Thanks for being here. Have a great week.
