Dr M.J. du Plessis Reformed Church Bellville 7 September 2003 (morning).

Reformed Church, Bellville: Sunday 7 September 2003 Morning Service

Our help is in the Name of the Lord who made heaven and earth.
Beloved, grace and peace be with you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ through the mighty working of God the Holy Spirit. Amen

Psalm of praise: 18:1+6
Confession of faith
Commandments
Psalm 106:2
Prayer
Psalm 4:1
Scripture reading: Luke 3:1-22

Text:Luke 3:14

"Then some soldiers asked him, "And what should we do?" He replied, "Don't extort money and don't accuse people falsely - be content with your pay."

Where do our desires lead us to? Sometimes they lead us to overspending and wasting of money. On other occasions to avarice. Or they lead us to gambling dens with the hope of great wealth!

To the soldiers the Lord said "Be content with what you have! Do not wish to increase your pay by extorting money from others. Actually - do not rob! Do not extort! Do not look to gaining money (or anything else) in a manner not acceptable to God. Be content with what you have."

Let us examine the issue of contentment with life:

1.What is discontentment with life?
2.Does the Lord give me things - and why?
3.How much does God give?

1.What is discontentment with life?

We all know people who are always complaining about their poverty.

There can never be enough trouble in their lives because they live on their troubles so that they can go through life ever complaining.
They always want to be flattered and their morale must always be uplifted otherwise they are incapable of putting one foot before the other to go forward.
And often they are in reality so conceited that it is impossible to achieve anything with them.

These grousers are not unknown and the phenomenon is also not strange. The Holy Spirit also writes of them in the Bible:

JUDE 16: "These men are grumblers and fault-finders; they follow their own evil desires; they boast about themselves and flatter others for their own advantage."

This text clearly deals with malcontents with life who in addition exploit other people for their own advantage.

By His grace God provides us with property and things which we must manage to His greater glory.

The Lord can also take these things away from us at any moment.
He can do so for various reasons:
We manage them so badly that we can no longer be entrusted with them.
Or he may want to try us - as with Job - and take it all from us.

With it we are by nature blind to God's grace.

We seldom arrive at the point where we humbly ask: "Lord what do You want that I should now do?"
We seldom arrive at the point where we dutifully seek advice from the Lord about how we should manage our finances or our marriages or education of our children.
When we do it, we do so often because at the bottom there lies a personal desire we wish to satisfy - for example, what can I do to increase my wealth?

LUKE 12:18 "Then he said: "This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods."

So we find people who will make their children do anything so that everybody can see that their children are the most intelligent or the best. The Lord tells us of these people:

2 TIMOTHY 3:2: "People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy ..."

Unfortunately these are the painful truths of this life.

To want more than that which God entrusted me with.
And in particular - to want it in order to satisfy my own selfishness.

Once we have fallen into this sin nothing will satisfy us.

Then our house is not in the right area.
Our motor car is not of the right quality.
Our clothing must be of the very best.
Often my wife/husband must go so that I can find a new one more befitting my needs.

This is discontent with life, not to want that which the Lord has given you, to be unfit to manage that which God has given you, to be like the devil and to question in satisfaction of your own desires the Will of God.

Discontent with life often is accompanied by some deep inability in the malcontent person's life:

An example is found in the parable of the ten virgins.
The foolish virgins lacked foresight. They did not want to take oil with them and then wanted to have of the oil the wise ones had brought with them when the bridegroom arrived.

MATTHEW 25:8 "The foolish ones said to the wise, "Give us some of your oil, our lamps are going out."

The result was inevitable and predictable, rejection by the Lord.

A good example of someone discontent with life but who pretended that he followed the Lord was the rich young man.

It sounded as if everything in his spiritual life was in order - until the Lord disclosed his true values, "go, sell your possessions ... then come, follow me."
The Bible tells us in Matthew 19:22 how the moment of truth struck the man: "When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth."
He could not find peace - also not with God - because despite his pious face all his wealth stood between him and the Lord.

No wonder that the Lord tells us that contentment with life is an attitude to life with which we want to serve Him and Him alone:

LUKE 14:23 "In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple."

One of the things which makes people discontent with life and which is mentioned often in the Bible, is avarice.

That occurs when one over-values money.
On the one hand you are not willing to pay the price but on the other hand you want to get the most you can.

1 TIMOTHY 3:3 "See in what company the Holy Spirit places the miser; hear the list: "not given to drunkeness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money."

Why would the Lord have such abhorrence of avarice?
He gives the answer in

1 Timothy 6:10 "For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs."

Avarice makes people unbelieving!
Once we understand this we understand why the Lord writes to the Christians who came out of Jewry in Hebrews 13:5: "Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said 'Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you'."

It is not without reason that the Lord says this, because avarice makes you think that the Lord is blind, and then you steal thinking that the Lord won't see. An example is the sin of Achan:

JOSHUA 7:21 "When I saw in the plunder a beautiful robe from Babylonia, two hundred shekels of silver and a wedge of gold weighing fifty shekels, I coveted them and took them. They are hidden in the ground inside my tent, with the silver underneath."

The end of this story was that the Lord's wrath came over the whole of Israel.
And Achan himself was killed.
Joshua and all Israel took Achan together with the silver, the gold and the robe and his sons and daughters and their cattle and donkeys and sheep, his tent and all his possessions to the valley of Achor. There all Israel stoned him and his family and the rest and they were burned and a pile of rocks heaped on them. JOSHUA 7:20-26

Achan was not the only one. Violence and fraud entered God's people. Remember what is written in

MICAH 2:2 "They covet fields and seize them and houses and take them. They defraud a man of his home, a fellowman of his inheritance."

That is why the Lord warns us and says - be content with what you have, because the Lord provides for you and He will never forsake you so that you will not be destroyed.

2. Does God give me things - and why?

God determines what we should have.

He alone determines and commands us what to do with it - because He alone has the right to do so.
Everything in creation belongs to Him - but He put us in control.
He does this by giving us what He wants us to have to manage and improve it in His Name.

It all turns on responsibility.

Yes, there is only one Donor - the Lord.
And He gives it so that we, to whom He gave it, should manage it responsibly.

The command the Lord gave Adam was to cultivate and rule the earth.

Put simply, the Lord commanded him to protect that with which the Lord entrusted him.
The Lord knew that in creation there would be a power that would cunningly try to defile the values we have.
Also our values concerning our possessions and the way in which we would seek to provide for ourselves.
Adam was to know that there would be an attack on our values concerning ownership, possessions and the evil desires which could arise therefrom. Against this he and his offspring were to guard.
After the Fall we are indeed not entitled to anything. Yet the Lord blesses us with a livelihood.

The Fall placed us in an entirely new relationship with God. He created us to be His stewards.

After the Fall there was no possibility of stewardship left.
Someone who takes out God and becomes God in his own right -because he wants to be like God - can no longer remain a steward of God.

Yet it is God's providence that He still entrusts His possession on earth to us. But we must then be like the overseer in

TITUS 1:7 "Since an overseer is entrusted with God's work, he must be blameless - not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not give to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain."

A steward is somebody who is appointed to care for and manage another's house. There are things which are entrusted to him but also things placed outside his control.

Whenever we coveted something beyond that which the Lord had entrusted us with it went wrong. Remember the Fall by Adam and Eve. They coveted what God had forbidden them. Their desires led them astray.

GENESIS 3:6 "When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her and he ate it."

Eventually this matter of desire expanded and included more things. our social life was beset by more and more evils, until God set His commandments:

EXODUS 20:17 "You shall not covet your neighbour's house, you shall not covet your neighbour's wife, or his manservant or his maidservant, his ox or donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbour."

3. How much does God give?

God does not give all people the same. There are differences in sex, in age, in knowledge, in physical strength, place to live. Abraham was rich whereas Lazarus was poor.

1 SAMUEL 2:7 "The Lord sends poverty and wealth, he humbles and he exalts."

One person the Lord gives the grace of an easy life whereas another is given a life of pain and suffering - and so we can enumerate a long list.

Hear the following excerpts from the Bible which show this clearly:

JOB 13:26 "For you write down bitter things against me and make me inherit the sins of my youth."

JONAH 4:6-8 "Then the Lord God provided a vine and made it grow up over Jonah to given shade for his head to ease his discomfort and Jonah was very happy about the vine. But at dawn the next day God provided a worm which chewed the vine so that it withered. When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind and the sun blazed on Jonah's head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die and said 'It would be better for me to die than to live."

The Lord thus gives the one wealth. The other poverty. On the one He allows the sun to blaze. For the other He provides shade. The Lord does not give possessions and blessings according to man's values.

What makes it difficult for a sinner to accept the Lord's way of doing is the fact that because of our sins we do not wish to abide by God's providence.

There are many people who want things to be different from that which the Lord has provided for them.

People become dissatisfied with their spouses and suddenly want their freedom or somebody else.
Others become dissatisfied with their houses or income and then try to get wealth and possessions in a dishonest way.

Accordingly the Lord gave his negative commandments concerning possessions and property.

God forbids theft.
He forbids not only theft and robbery as defined by our laws but He also considers all forms of deviousness and trickery whereby we try to obtain our neighbour's property to be theft.
This form of theft can be committed in various ways:

by force
with an appearance of right
with dishonest and improper values or any way God forbids
He forbids us to be avaricious
He also forbids the squandering and abuse of His gifts for example by gambling it away.

The Lord also gave positive commandments concerning possessions and property.

God commands us to further our neighbour's wellbeing where we can and may do so.
We must respect another's possessions and should he have less than me I must still treat him with respect as I would want him to treat me.
We must not only increase our wealth. We must also share it with others. We must do our work conscientiously so that we can help those in need.

For us these commandments are difficult because they go against our nature.

Usually our view is "my property is mine alone".
We are inclined to only want more. As to what is sufficient we have different views.
To some all on earth is still not enough
To others poor food, barely sufficient clothing and a shelter is already cause for deep gratitude

People who are discontent with what God has provided for them are not true believers.

In their conceit they rebel against the Lord
Their own desire is to them higher than God's will
In our confession (Belgic Confession, Article 29) we confess, "The false church assigns more authority to itself and its ordinances than to the Word of God. It does not want to submit itself to the yoke of Christ. ... but adds ... and subtracts ... as it pleases."

Discontent with life compels me to reflect seriously.

How content am I with the little or much God has given me?
How conscientious am I in my management of all that which God has entrusted to me?
Am I still honest with God? Are my possessions and my desires not moving me towards other sins?

Do we not demand too much? What do we want to be satisfied? When does one have enough provisions?

Consider: Jesus was God who came from heaven to assume a human body. He did not have a TV set.
Those of us who are dissatisfied with our spouses and now want our freedom - what is it that you really want?
What freedom do you have if you despise God's grace and make yourself a slave to sin and selfishness? What do you expect to achieve in the long run?

How does the merit of Christ make me content? Indeed, we must ask does the merit of the Lord Jesus Christ make me content?

We read in the Bible and underline everything until we are called upon to put it into practise.
Then the difficulties arising from our discontent with life come out.

Look at the following:

The writer of Psalm 27 speaks for us all when he says
"One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek Him in His temple." (PSALM 27:4)

Beautiful! But is it true that I seek the beauty of the Lord when I break my covenants with Him and go against His will?

We know that with our redemption from sin and the eternal death we were "in Him enriched in every way, in all (y)our speaking and all (y)our knowledge" (1 Corinthians 1:5).
We know of the suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ for us. Hear how strongly the Bible put it. 2 Corinthians 8:9: "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich."

There are many of us sitting in the pews for whom this revelation by the Lord is nothing but empty words.

When many of us think (believe?) that the Redeemer did not give us enough money and status according to our sinful desire then we become discontent with life.
Or my sin breaks up my values in life and now I want to go to the divorce court to serve my own desires.
What does this revelation avail me if I cannot appropriate it? Am I then a true believer?

The truth is that the effect that the redemption by the Lord Jesus Christ has on a true believer is that such person does not devote himself to his own self and love of money but devotes himself to service to his fellow man.

The Lord Jesus Christ's atonement for us means that "you will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God." (2 Corinthians 9:11)
We must not see how much we gain for ourselves - we must learn to reach out to our fellow man so that our gratitude to God can become visible thereby.
This is not the only place where the Bible teaches us this. It is also written in 1 Thessalonians 3:12 "May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else."

Let us reflect seriously on this matter and let us see to it that we, through repentance and remorse over that in which we sin can put our case with God right and keep it in order.

We must live content with what we have!

AMEN

Closing prayer

Closing Psalm: 131:1+2

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen

Dr M.J. du Plessis
Reformed Church Bellville
7 September 2003
Scripture quoted from NIV