Take Your Savior's Advice for daily Christian Living!

19th Sunday after Pentecost, 10/3/10
1 Timothy 6:6-16


Take Your Savior’s Advice for Daily Christian Living!
I. Be content.
II. Fight for the faith.


Would you agree or disagree with this statement: “Intelligent people listen to expert advice.”? Without much thinking you probably agree and one of the reasons for that is that the alternatives aren’t pleasant or flattering. Would you disagree with the word “intelligent”? That wouldn’t say much for yourself, would it? Would you disagree with the word “expert”? If so, an alternative word would be “foolish” and, again, that doesn’t say much for yourself. So, without much thought it’s likely that all of us gathered here this morning would agree that intelligent people listen to expert advice.

With that being the case, you should be all ears this morning. Recall the investment firm TV commercial from more than a decade ago. There’s a crowded room filled with noisy chatter, but when one person says, “My broker is EF Hutton and he says…” and all the people stop talking and crane their necks toward the person who is speaking.

We should be all ears this morning. But it’s not EF Hutton speaking. And it’s not just the opinion of a sinful human preacher. This morning we have the gracious opportunity to listen to some advice for our daily lives from our Savior himself. Yes, Paul wrote these words of our text to the young pastor Timothy, but these are the words of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and they’re immensely practical for our daily Christian lives. So listen and then take your Savior’s advice for daily Christian living. And as we do so, may the Holy Spirit fill us with his power to live according to it.

Part I.

Paul opens our text this morning by speaking to us about contentment. We all know the word, but just what is contentment? Some of the definitions I read included the word “happiness” but contentment and happiness aren’t the same thing, are they? Happiness is a fleeting emotion while contentment is a lasting way of life. Other definitions included the word “satisfaction” but that doesn’t quite hit the mark either, does it? Maybe contentment is one of those words that are hard to define but we all know it is when we reach it.

But that’s precisely the problem—how to reach it. It’s kind of like that itch in the middle of your back. You just can’t seem to get to it. But that isn’t due to a lack of information. You see, there are all sorts of people out there just like you who want to achieve contentment in their lives and that means there are all sorts of sources of information on the subject. Sadly, not much of it is very good at all. I happened to Google “finding contentment” and in 1/10 of a second I had 128,000 websites listed. One “expert” named Jason Osborn runs seminars on the subject. And his first bit of advice to achieving content is to find and pursue your greatness. That might sound good at first, but his first sentence on the subject reads, “You will never be content in life if you know that you have something greater to do in it.” I don’t know about you, but that statement only loads me up with more discontentment. It haunts me to think that once I achieve something great there will always be something greater out there.

Paul has some advice, not only for Timothy, but for us as well and the source for his advice is our Lord Jesus. He says, “But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” Paul has much to say and we’d agree with every word of it. But almost all of what Paul says is negative. He warns us about the serious dangers of being discontented, about materialism, about always wanting more. If left unchecked, they easily lead to eternal death in hell. And we know the dangers. We’re God’s people. We know that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. But we still struggle daily to be content. So how do we find it?

In Christ. The solution to finding contentment isn’t out there. It’s right here. And it starts with a brutally honest spiritual evaluation, not material evaluation. The brutally honest spiritual evaluation is what we confessed when we began our worship. We’re altogether sinful from birth. We’ve sinned in countless ways. We don’t deserve to be God’s children; we deserve punishment in hell. That’s the source of our misery in life—our sin. In fact, sin is the sole source of discontentment in life.

And the answer to sin—the solution sin, the only solution to sin—is Christ. He is your greatest treasure and he won for you eternal treasure by paying for your sins—for the world’s sins—with his life and his death. He has made you his own so that he could share an eternally blissful and contented life with you. Jesus has an eternal goal, an eternal pursuit, in mind for you and he accomplished it for you. It’s all yours by faith in him. No matter what you’re facing in this life, nothing can change that. That’s the source of true contentment.

Take your Savior’s advice for daily Christian living. Be content and find that contentment in him and in him alone.

But that’s not easy. We work hard for long hours to attain the things that make up our lives. And once we’ve covered the bare necessities, then we work long and hard to attain the extras. But even a few of the extras don’t seem to be enough. We see and hear what others have and they seem to be happy. So we conclude that if we can get what they have, we’ll be happy too. But it’s just chasing after the wind. There’s always one more thing out there to get. And then we come face-to-face with the shocking reality that everything we work so hard for will one day be gone. We won’t have it anymore. Someone else will. And that’s true for everything we have accept one thing—your relationship with Jesus Christ. You have that relationship now by faith in him. That trust in Jesus receives the gifts of forgiveness and eternal life—true eternal riches. Those gifts can’t be purchased with all the money in the world, but they’re yours by faith in Christ. Knowing and believing that is the only thing that brings true contentment. Take your Savior’s advice for daily Christian living and be content in Christ.

Part II.

When we’re content we’re not struggling for more things. Experiencing contentment and struggling or fighting seem to be mutually exclusive. And yet look again at the advice the Lord gives through Paul to Timothy and you and me. He spends several sentences encouraging contentment and then a few sentences later he encourages us to fight when he says, “Fight the good fight of the faith.” Just what does that mean?

Is he telling us to fight for our faith? If so, how do we do that? After all, we confess as Lutherans that our faith in Jesus is not by our own thinking or choosing. Rather, it’s the work of God the Holy Spirit. It’s something that God works in us. So how can we fight for it?

And even if we knew how to do that, we’re not particularly fond of fighting. We try to avoid fighting, not encourage it. Shouldn’t we seek to resolve conflict, not encourage others to it?

Those are all good questions and they’re answered by understanding exactly what Paul is saying here. He’s talking about what your faith believes. In other words, he’s talking about the truths or the doctrines that your faith holds to. That’s what makes this a “good” fight. If your faith believes lies, it’s no good. So this is Paul’s way of encouraging us to hold onto the truths of our faith. Struggle—fight even—to hold onto them.

And as you do so, realize what you’re up against. Realize what you’re fighting. The
first enemy you’ll face is the greatest liar this world has ever seen. He’s
literally duped billions of people with his lies. He’s even succeeded in getting us to believe his lies more than a few times. I’m talking about Satan. And on our own, we’re no match for him.

Another enemy you face in holding on to the truths of your faith is the world in which we live. Not a day goes by in which a powerful force in our world opposes the truth of our God. Sometimes it’s a blatant attack on what our God says in his world. At other times the attack is warmly wrapped in words such as this is what’s loving toward others, or toleration or acceptance or respect. What we believe gets blasted every day.

Finally, we’re our own worst enemy. You heard me correctly. We battle daily with a sinful flesh that can’t stand being told what to do by the holy God. The sinful flesh is constantly whispering its mantra in our ear, “It’s all about me and what I want and what will make me happy.” And when we try to avoid it, it starts screaming in our ears, demanding that we trash what our God says is true.

So how do we fight these foes and win? With the weapon God himself gives us—his holy word. Fighting the good fight of the faith against the unholy trinity of the devil, the world and our sinful flesh is only done with the weapon God himself has given. It’s no accident that in the Bible he refers to his word as the sharp, double-edge sword of the Spirit. When we’re carrying the sword of God’s word, we’re packing his almighty heat, the very same weapon Jesus used to overcome Satan’s temptations.

Take your Savior’s advice for daily Christian living and fight for the faith.

If only we’d take that advice every day! Instead, we fail to use God’s word to check our thoughts and words and actions and slowly our lives become a mess. We begin justifying our sins instead of confessing them. Instead, fight for the faith! Let the sword of the word do its work of exposing our sins and then let the powerful comfort of that word assure us of God’s forgiveness through Christ. See his death on the cross as his payment for your sins and his love for you as the power for godly living.

Without a doubt, there’s no higher expert on any subject than your Savior-God. So take his advice for daily Christian living and experience the blessings he has in store for you. Amen.