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The promise of God's faithful and unending presence is the basis for our contentment. If God has promised to never leave or forsake us, we can rest in that provision and fight the covetousness that unsettles our souls. An exposition of Hebrews 13:5-6.
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What is Kootenai Church: Hebrews?
The book of Hebrews argues for the superiority of Jesus Christ over all the forms and shadows of the Old Testament. All the symbols of the old covenant find their fulfillment in the new covenant. Jesus is a better priest, shedding a better blood, with a better sacrifice to inaugurate a better covenant.
This series of messages was part of an exposition of the book of Hebrews by Jim Osman, a pastor at Kootenai Community Church.
Well, Scripture says that we have been granted precious and magnificent promises. Second Peter 1:3–4 says that
3 His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.
4 For by these [that is, by His glory and His excellence] He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them [that is, by the promises] you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. (NASB)
It would take us the rest of our time here and probably the rest of the day to simply recite the promises that God has made to those who are His. But let me give you some categories in which some of those promises might fall.
God has promised us things concerning our sin and whether or not we will ever face judgment or punishment for that sin, His wrath. He has made promises regarding our holiness and our progress in holiness, promises about our security and the state of our soul, about our future, about the kingdom that is to come, about the resurrection of the body, the just and the unjust, about His provision for us daily, about our vindication ultimately. He has made promises about our death and about comfort for us. He has made promises regarding our service, His love for us, our love for one another. He has made promises concerning the nations and things that will happen to and in the nations, promises about the judgment that is to come, the destruction on the wicked, and the punishment of God's wrath upon those who are impenitent.
Now, faith, which is a major theme of the book of Hebrews, lays hold of these promises as if they were substance even though there are many of them just in promise form and not yet fully realized by the people of God. Faith regards the word of God concerning an issue as if it were substantive and something that we could lay hold of, and faith is the mind's eye that grabs hold of that thing and treats it as if it is already delivered and already paid upon.
And Hebrews calls us to treat the promises of God as if they have been already secured and delivered to us even though many of these promises concerning the future have not yet been realized by us. We are to treat God's promises as legitimate, as secured, as delivered, as certain. And if we fail to do so, it is to question His integrity because that is to call God a liar. It is to suggest that He cannot be trusted. It is to suggest, at least in our minds and in our hearts and in our soul, as if He might fail to deliver because of some lack or want in Him, as if He were lacking power or knowledge or wisdom or benevolence or kindness or goodness. The only way that God could fail to deliver on any of His promises is if He lacked one of those qualities, and God lacks none of them. And therefore our response to God's promises is telling. It reveals what we in the moment think about God and His Word. So when we doubt, when we waver in unbelief, when we refuse to bank our lives upon that promise and to treat it as substantive, we are in that moment setting ourselves up as judges and we are looking down upon God and His commandments and His promises and His plan and we are rendering in that moment a judgment upon His validity, the validity of His Word, His integrity. When we doubt the promise of God, we are saying something about our view of Him and we are rendering a judgment upon Him and we are saying that I deem You as unable or unwilling to fulfill these promises. And that is a scary thing because there is no promise of God that is too magnificent for Him to keep.
And what is then the perfect promise for a persecuted people? There are a lot of p’s in that sentence. But what is the perfect promise for a persecuted people who are discouraged and distraught and tempted and afflicted and suffering and shaken? It is the promise that we find in Hebrews 13:5–6. Let's read that passage together. Verse 5–6, Hebrews 13: “Make sure that your character is free from the love of money, being content with what you have; for He Himself has said, ‘I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you,’ so that we confidently say, ‘The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid. What will man do to me?’”
We have already looked at the beginning of verse 5 over two consecutive Sundays and looked at the vice of covetousness, which is described there as the love of money—that’s one of the expressions of covetousness—and that is a vice that we are to cast off. Then we looked at the virtue of contentment last week and the fullness of what we are given there in contentment. This is a virtue that we are to cultivate. And today we are looking at this companionship that God has promised us in verse 5, and that is something that we are to cherish.
Now I want to offer a clarification from something I said last week because immediately a couple people came up and started asking questions about the application of some of those things, and I realized that there was something that I should have said that I left unsaid and this might be very confusing. So maybe some of you were not confused at all, but once I bring this issue up you'll be like, oh yeah, I wish I had been thoughtful enough to be confused by that. I should have been, but I wasn't. And here was the confusion or the question that was asked. Last week I mentioned covetousness and contentment and that contentment is us bringing our desires or expectations down to the level of our provision so that we can then be content. It's not adding to what we have, it's subtracting from our desires. So I mentioned that last week, and then somebody asked this question: does that mean that we should have no desires then? That's a thoughtful question. That's not a stupid question. If the secret to contentment is to bring my desires down into conformity with what God has provided so that I may regard what God has provided as sufficient, does that mean then that we should have no desires at all? And that's not what that means. What I mean by that is that covetousness is a disordered desire.
See, desires are not sinful in and of themselves. It's something we have to remember. I desire to sleep in a warm bed—in a dry, warm bed. So if my window is broken and my roof is leaking, it is not sinful for me to desire to be warm and dry. It is not sinful for me to desire to be fed and to drink water if I'm thirsty. It is not a sinful desire to desire a spouse if you don't have one, or to desire children if God has not given you children. Those are not sinful desires.
So the issue is not whether we have desires. The issue is what we do with the desires. The issue is, does my desire then become an idol and am I obsessed by this desire? And does this desire then make me discontent? Does this desire become an idol in that I am willing to sin to serve that idol? So when the desire—the legitimate desire, whatever it is—then takes center stage, it becomes an idol. And then the question is, am I willing to sin to get that, to fulfill that desire? Or am I willing to do something foolish in order to have that desire served? So you might have a desire for a better job or to improve your station in life or to have certain things. Those are not sinful desires, but when those sinful desires become central, they become disordered desires. And it is the difference between the legitimate desire, when it is elevated to a position of being an idol, that legitimate desire—the difference between that and the idol—is where discontentment comes in, and that is where bitterness and anxiety and restlessness and frustration and worry, all of that breeds inside of that zone of discontent.
So the answer is to bring the desires, though they may be legitimate, down into conformity with what God has given to me. And we can be honest and say I have a desire for this, but God has not given me that fulfillment for that desire, and then we can be content with that. But when the desire becomes disordered, then it becomes an idol. And that's when it becomes sinful and discontentment comes in.
Now, verses 5 and 6 (enough with the clarification) contain for us a truth that we are to cherish: He will never leave us and He will never forsake us. That's in verse 5. Verse 6 is one of the applications of that truth. The author obviously intends for us to apply that principle to the subject of contentment since it is in the very sentence that he raises that issue of God's presence with us. So it applies to the issue of contentment and covetousness, but there is another application given in verse 6, and that is that we will not fear what man shall do to us. And that's contentment, as you will see, to a whole new level.
Now let's look in verse 5 at the first quotation. You'll notice in your translation that they're set aside in some way, either italics or all caps. It indicates to you that this is a quotation or intended to be a quotation from the Old Testament. We have one quotation in verse 5 and one in verse 6, and we will handle them separately, though I promise you, be encouraged, do not lose heart, we will get to both of these quotations today.
The first quotation in verse 5, it’s a little uncertain where the author is pulling that from since it's not a direct quotation of any one specific promise like that in the Old Testament. So there are five different places that the author could have had in mind when he quoted this—when he cited this. Here are the five places. The first two, which I think is what the author had in mind, is Genesis 28—this is the first one—verse 15. “Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” Then Deuteronomy—the second place is Deuteronomy 31:6 and 8, where we read, “Be strong and courageous, do not be afraid or tremble at them, for the Lord your God is the one who goes with you. He will not fail you or forsake you” (v. 6). And you notice that language is a little more in keeping with what we read in Hebrews 13 than the previous one. And then Deuteronomy 31:8: “The Lord is the one who goes ahead of you; He will be with you. He will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.”
The third possibility is Joshua 1:5: “No man will be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I have been with Moses, I will be with you; I will not fail you or forsake you.” That one's really close. And in 1 Chronicles 28:20 is David's statement to his son Solomon. First Chronicles 28:20: “Then David said to his son Solomon, ‘Be strong and courageous, and act; do not fear nor be dismayed, for the Lord God, my God, is with you. He will not fail you nor forsake you until all the work for the service of the house of the Lord is finished.” And then the fifth place is Isaiah 41:10: “Do not fear, for I am with you; do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, surely I will help you, surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.”
Now those are five different passages from the Old Testament. Two of them are very similar, Deuteronomy and Joshua. And then you have Isaiah, and David to Solomon, and then God to Jacob. Those are the five places. Now here's the thing. There's not just one of those passages which is actually just a word-for-word quotation that the author is citing there. So the author may have in mind any two or all five of those passages, and he may be, by quoting the Old Testament, giving us the summation and the summary of those promises all the way through the old covenant. And the author may not be just quoting one of those, but he may be trying to sort of sum up, “Here's what the Old Testament says,” and be quoting this promise of God's presence and His promise to never forsake us.
Now I think that the author probably has in mind—and this is my speculation since I'm not able to ask him—I think that the author probably has in mind the first two that I mentioned, Genesis 28 and Deuteronomy 31. Now here's the context for both of those, and I'll show you the similarity between that Old Testament context and our modern—or even what was back then their modern—context.
Genesis 28:15, “Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” Now here's the context of that promise. That's God speaking to Jacob. This was after Jacob had secured the blessing from Esau through his trickery and his deception. Esau had a lust for blood, and Esau had said, “I am going to kill my brother Jacob as soon as my father dies.” And so Isaac's wife, Rebecca, sent Jacob away from the land of promise to her own homeland, and this meant that Jacob was leaving the land that had been promised to his father and to his grandfather. Jacob was leaving the land that had been promised to him by virtue of not only the birthright, but also the blessing that was given to him. So he had secured that in word only, and he has to apprehend this or receive this by faith, but he has not yet received those promises. And now he is leaving the land that God has promised to him, and so the question in the back of his mind as his brother hates him, he's leaving his family, and he's walking away from the land that God has promised to him—the question then would be, is God going to keep these promises to me? I've secured it in the blessing. I have secured it in the birthright. But here I am leaving the land. So then God appears to him in Genesis 28:13–14:
13 And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie, I will give it to you and to your descendants.
14 Your descendants will also be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and in you and in your descendants shall all the families of the earth be blessed. (Gen. 28:13–14 NASB)
That is a reiteration of everything God promised to Abraham and then to Isaac. And now God is giving it to Jacob as Jacob is wandering away and leaving the land that he was promised. Spurgeon said this:
He was now flying away from his father's house, leaving the over-fondness of a mother's attachment, abhorred by his eldest brother, who sought his blood. He lies down to sleep, with a stone for his pillow, with the hedges for his curtains, with the earth for his bed, and the heaven for his canopy; and as he sleeps thus friendless, solitary, and alone, God saith to him “I will never, never leave thee.”
So verse 15 says, “Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” So there is God pledging to Jacob to fulfill the word that He gave to Abraham and then to Isaac, and pledging to him, “Even though you're leaving the land, I will bring you back here, I will multiply your descendants, and they will be a blessing to all the families of the earth.” God's presence with Jacob was the fulfillment, partial fulfillment—I should say it this way: God's presence with Jacob was the guarantee of God's fulfillment of those promises. God gives him all those promises and then says, “Yeah, the promises are still there. You are still the recipient of these promises. Here's the guarantee that you will receive those promises: I will never leave you and I will never forsake you until I do everything that I have pledged that I will do for you.” That is a pledge to never leave him. God would not leave him, God would be with him, and therefore God would bring to pass all the promises regarding Jacob.
The second place that I think the author has in mind is Deuteronomy 31:6, and the context is similar because now when we get to Deuteronomy 31, we've got to rewind history a little bit and get back to when Jacob left the land again but this time to go down to Egypt, not to go north back to the land of his fathers, but to go to Egypt, south and west. And he went into Egypt to be with Joseph and there spent a couple of centuries and now they've come out of that slavery in Egypt through the Exodus and the Passover, parted through the Red Sea, wandered around the wilderness for forty years while God provided for them and gave them everything that they needed and protected them from their enemies and their adversaries, and now He's brought them all the way to the threshold of the land of Canaan and is about ready to give them the land that He promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And all the children of Israel are there, and now the question is, with all of these enemies in front of us, all the fortified cities and the stone walls and the gates and the armed nations that we have to go in and to conquer, are we going to go into this land and be all by ourselves? Will we be forsaken? Or, now the question is, will God fulfill His promise to us and to our fathers? And that is where God says in Deuteronomy 31:6, “Be strong and courageous, do not be afraid or tremble at them [that is, your enemies], for the Lord your God is the one who goes with you. He will not fail you or forsake you.”
Deuteronomy 31:8 describes the same thing: “The Lord is the one who goes ahead of you; He will be with you. He will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.” Now that's Moses's last counsel to the nation of Israel before they go into the land. He's going to hand off the reins of that nation to Joshua, and then Moses is going to die and they're going to go into the land without this leader who has been with them for the last forty years. Now the context of the nation of Israel and Jacob and the original readers of this letter is very similar. Just as Yahweh had pledged His presence to those who would enter His land, so He has pledged His presence to those to whom He has given a kingdom. Remember chapter 12:28–29? “Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken. . .” Therefore, since they had received a land that God had promised to their forefathers, God is bringing them into it. “You can trust Me. I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
What about those who have received a spiritual kingdom we have not grabbed hold of yet? We're not standing on the threshold in the sense that we're on this side of a river and we have to pass through this and then go conquer the land. We're not on the threshold of a physical promise like that, but what about the spiritual promise that we have received a kingdom? Will we actually see that? Will we actually be able to enter in? Will we survive the hostility and the animosity of our enemies and our adversaries? Because they are many; they’re around us; they surround the righteous all day long. Are we going to be able to endure that? Yes, the promise of God is that He would be with us just as He was with the children of Israel to fulfill the promise that He made to them. So He will be with us and will fulfill the promise that He has made to us. Just as Israel faced enemies coming into the land, so we face enemies before we will walk into the promised land and receive that kingdom and step across the threshold, as it were, into God's glory. But the promise is the same. He will be with us and He will never ever forsake us. Just as Yahweh's promise to Israel was secured by His presence, so His promise to us is secured by His everlasting and unfailing presence.
Now notice in the passage what is not promised so that we are careful not to confuse what it is that we are being promised here. We don't want to understand God's promises in a way that is not intended, because then we will start to think that maybe He has not kept His promise to us. But notice what is not promised. We are not promised that nothing difficult will happen. We are not promised that no trial will afflict us. In fact, the previous chapter promises the opposite, doesn't it? God loves those whom He disciplines, and He disciplines all His sons. That's affliction; that is suffering; that is difficulties, trials, and tribulations. Those things are promised to us. So this is not a promise that we will not endure anything difficult or not endure any trial, that we will live a suffering-free life. We are not promised that we will not be persecuted or hated or mocked. We're not promised an easy life. We're not promised everything we want, everything we desire, everything we crave. We're not promised a life that is free from disappointment or discouragement.
But instead, we are promised that He will never leave us through all of those things. We're not promised a bridge over troubled waters, but we are promised that He will pull us through the waters if we can stand the tow. That's what we're promised. He will be with us through that, and He will never leave us. You may look forsaken to your enemies. You may look forsaken to everyone around you. You may feel forsaken, lonely, alone, in solitude, abandoned, and forgotten. You may feel that. But that is not true, because we don't live by our feelings. What you feel in the moment is irrelevant to what is true. What is true is that He will never leave us and that we are not forsaken. Though we may feel forsaken, though we may look forsaken, though our lives may give evidence to everyone who observes it that we are forsaken, He will never forsake us.
Jesus said to His disciples that they were to go into all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that He commanded them. And then He said to them, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20). That's our age. That's where we’re at. That's His promise to us. I'm with you always. Wherever you go, in every endeavor, Jesus is Immanuel, He is God with us, He has pledged Himself to us. All authority is His, and He has pledged His presence with us, and He cannot fail.
I want you to think for a moment—realize for a moment—that is the best promise that you could be given: His presence. What if He were to promise you everything you want in this life? Would that be a better or a lesser promise? That's a lesser promise because this life is going to come to an end. What if He promised you a whole bunch of stuff? How long does that stuff last? As long as stuff lasts. And then it's all burned up and it all goes away and they drop you in a pine box and put you in the ground and in less than a generation or two, you're forgotten. Eventually, even your kids will forget about you. This is your encouragement for the week.
But He has promised us that the worst thing that could happen to us will not happen to us. That's what this promise is. You will not be forsaken. That's the worst thing that can happen to you—to be forsaken. The worst thing that can happen to you is not that you would live a meager existence alone. It's not that you would be thrown into prison, that you would live and face hostility in this world. That's not the worst. The worst thing is not that you would have a life of affliction or difficulty or unending pain and weakness. The worst is not even that you would be abandoned by your family, by your spouse, by your children, by your friends, by your neighbors, by your acquaintances, by your business associates. The worst is not that you would go without everything that anybody else has. In fact, the worst that could happen to you is not that you would be stripped of everything you own and cast in a ditch somewhere to die cold, naked, and alone, forsaken by everybody else on the planet. That is not the worst thing that could happen to you. The worst thing that could happen to you is that God would leave you in your sin and then forsake you to your enemies, abandon you to your lusts, walk away from you in your need, and then to cast you into outer darkness, and then to pour out His wrath upon your head for your sin for all of eternity. That is the worst thing that can happen to you. That, He has promised, will never happen to you. That's good news! The worst thing that could happen to you, He has promised will never happen to you. That is that promise: I will never leave you, nor will I ever forsake you.
This is the greatest thing He could promise because He has promised us Himself. The guarantee, the security, that God will keep His every promise that He has made to us is the fact that He will keep this one promise to be with us forever. That's the guarantee of every other promise. He will never forsake us. That means that He can never forget what He has promised. He will never leave us or abandon us, which means He cannot leave us in the grave. He can never forget anything that He has said to us because to forget and to let even one promise that He has made fall to the ground unfulfilled is for Him to forsake or abandon us. He will not turn away from us, but everything that He has promised, He will deliver on. And all of those promises are secured by this one: “I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you” (Heb. 13:5).
That means that all of His attributes are with us. The loving, omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent, reigning, wise, gracious, eternal, and transcendent King, of all things, has promised His presence with us. And therefore, every attribute of God is on your side because when God promises His presence, it's not just some spiritual reality, that we do not fear. It is the promise that every attribute of deity now is employed for us, for our ultimate good. Spurgeon said this:
There is no attribute of God that can cease to be engaged for us. Is he mighty? He will show himself strong on behalf of those that trust him. Is he loving? Then with everlasting lovingkindness, he will have mercy upon us. Whatever attributes may compose the character of deity, every one of them to its fullest extent shall be engaged on our side.
Every attribute of deity is engaged on your side.
Now, you may say, “It doesn't feel like that, because I feel abandoned and forsaken right now.” I promise you that right now whatever any of us are going through, whatever difficulty, affliction, trial, tribulation, and temptation may be assaulting you—I promise you that every attribute of God right now, even right now, is working for your eternal good and glory. And this life is just a brief moment in the history of your existence, but I can promise you on the basis of Scripture that what rests ahead for us as believers is beyond our ability to comprehend. It will take us eons and ages to unfold the inheritance that is promised to us and that is secured for us and reserved for us in Heaven, Peter says, and you and I are then kept for that inheritance. Every attribute of God has secured that on your behalf and is moving you inexorably and unfailingly and inevitably toward that goal because that is His intention.
This is the promise of security: If you are in Christ, if you belong to Him and you have been purchased with His blood, then He has given you life in Him. He has given you His Holy Spirit as a pledge of the inheritance that is to come. He has taken you from the pit of death and given you life. He has taken you out from underneath His wrath and He has promised you nothing but everlasting bliss and contentment and joy and delight in the ages that are to come. He has adopted you into His family, you who once were far off and removed and alienated from the life of God that is in Christ Jesus. He has made you sons and daughters, and He has given you a seat at His table and made you a bride for His Son so that you now are pledged and betrothed to sit down at the marriage supper of the Lamb and to enjoy feasting and joy and rejoicing in His presence forevermore for all of eternity. That is what He has pledged to us. And He has given you a reward in that kingdom and promised you that until all of that is fulfilled, He will never leave you nor will He ever forsake you. And therefore, brethren, you are secure in your salvation. You know why? Because if you were to fall away, if He were to allow you to lose your salvation, it would require Him to forsake you and to abandon you for all of eternity, and that is the thing that He has promised He will never do.
Now, if you still want to cling to this idea that you can lose your salvation, here's what it would require. It would require you to walk away and turn away from that salvation and depart from Him. And you say, “Well, He's not abandoning me.” Oh, He would be if He let you do that, but He won't let you do that. He will keep you because for you to walk away and perish would require that He abandon you and forsake you. And that He has promised to never do.
This is an eternal promise. Never will I leave you or forsake you. How long does the “never” cover? That covers a long time. That means that if you were to live to be a hundred years old and you suffered through untold misery and difficulty for all one hundred years of your existence and you were to enjoy not a single blessing, not a single gift, not a single token of God's goodness and love in this life other than your salvation, and though you were to disappoint Him for all one hundred of those years, never living up to what He has called us to be, and even if you were to sin against Him and fail Him time and again, and though you might forget about Him from time to time, He will never forsake you or leave you for the entire existence of your life here.
And it means that in this life and in your death, He will never forsake you. He will not leave you in the grave. But in the resurrection, you will hear your name called in the resurrection and He will call you forth to life everlasting and He will give you a new body. And then you will enter into the new creation, and a hundred million millennia from now when this suffering is just a brief shadow in your memory, a hundred million millennia from now, your resurrection body will be just as powerful and glorious and disease- and sin- and broken downness–free as it can possibly be, as it was on the very first day of your resurrection. And that new creation will never wear out. Never ever! And God's people will dwell with Him forever because this has been God's intention from the beginning of creation—that His people will dwell with Him and He will dwell with them and He will be our God and we will be His people and He will never leave us or forsake us. And in that new creation, it doesn't matter how far out into the nether reaches you go in the new heavens and the new earth, He will be with you constantly. And the glorious part of that is that His presence and the reality of that will be as palpable to you and I as the temperature in this room, as the clothes that we are wearing, as the physical things that we now enjoy.
Now, that's the promise. And frankly, words fail me and the mind falters me to even begin to explain that. Because I think we could spend the rest of our lives just meditating upon that reality and what that means, both now and in the grave and in the resurrection and in a new creation, and all the promises that are to unfold, and our minds could never plumb the depths of that.
But let's move on now to the promise applied, and that's in verse 6. Contemplating all of those realities—I will never desert you nor will I ever forsake you—the author has in mind here not only a cure for discontentment and an encouragement for contentment and a cure for covetousness, but also the quotation in verse 6 as he applies it shows that he has in mind here also a cure for the fear of man and how that drives us to discontentment. Look at the quotation. This is from Psalm 118:6: “The Lord is for me; I will not fear; what can man do to me?” Now this is directly tied to the issue of contentment. His presence with us is a motivation for contentment, and this is how the author ties this in. Discontentment is the demand or the desire for what God has not given. Contentment is the satisfaction and delight in and submission to what God has given.
So now the question comes up in verse 5, what is it that God has given to us? God has given to us the promise of His very presence. So since that is what is promised to me, can I be content with that? Can I be satisfied with His presence and His promise to never forsake me? Can I be satisfied with that and allow my discontentment with other things to go away? In other words, can I bring my expectations down to what God has provided for me? He has given me His very presence, and therefore I have everything that I need. And the best thing that I could have is God Himself—all of His attributes, all that He has provided, His promise to never leave me or forsake me. And then when we begin to ponder the truth of God's presence and fix our hearts on that, then contentment begins to come back. But then we realize, yeah, I may not have this and that and this other thing, but here's what I do have: I have a promise from Yahweh Himself, by His name, that He will never leave me or forsake me and that a hundred million millennia from now, He will still be with me and still be lavishing His goodness upon us.
Spurgeon said this:
To be content with such things as we have should be especially easy to us, because we have so much to be thankful for, such constant communications from the great Benefactor, and so certain an assurance that he will withhold no good thing from those that walk uprightly. I am not speaking now of those who have houses and land and goods in abundance, for their [complaining is] discord indeed; but I speak of all Christians. This world is ours, and worlds to come. Earth is our lodge, and heaven our home. It ought to be easy for us to be contented since all things are ordered for our good. Arranged by our own dear Father's hand, his appointments ought not to be difficult for a loving child to approve.
I'm going to repeat that. Listen to that.
It ought to be easy for us to be contented since all things are ordered for our good. Arranged by our own dear Father's hand, his appointments ought not to be difficult for a loving child to approve. The trial of our faith will soon be over; a long life of affliction is but a pin's point of time. Be it ever so painful, we ought to be willing to bear the light affliction, which is but for a moment. We know that God loves us, for we feel his love shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy [Spirit]. Should not contentment be easy under such circumstances?
So what has been given to us? Everything. Every good thing. You don't possess all of that now, but every good thing has been given to you, every good thing has been pledged to you. And until He secures on that promise, He has promised you His presence. Never to leave you. Never to forsake you.
This is not only the fuel with which we fight the enemy of covetousness and feed the virtue of contentment, it is also the fuel that we need to face every enemy with courage. God's presence is our help, and this is verse 6: “The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid. What will man do to me?” That means that the author here is reflecting upon that passage, and he's saying there is grace for trials, there is patience in affliction, there is strength in temptation, there is courage that God provides in the midst of discouragement. Psalm 27:1:
1 The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the defense of my life; whom shall I dread?
2 When evildoers came upon me to devour my flesh, my adversaries and my enemies, they stumbled and fell.
3 Though a host encamp against me, my heart will not fear; though war arise against me, in spite of this I shall be confident. (Ps. 27:1–3 NASB)
There's courage in the midst of that promise, the promise that God will never leave us or forsake us. This allows us to face the enemies and the persecution of man with the confidence that we shall not be afraid, because what will man do to me?
This, I think, is the primary application for the original readers of this letter. They had endured the seizure of their property. Some of them were in prison. They had been reproached and slandered for the name of Christ. They had suffered at the hands of men. And the temptation in such circumstances is always to think to yourself, “If only I had more things, I would be more secure. If only I had more money, I would be more protected. If only I could secure these things out there, then I would have a hedge against the enemy and against all of his attacks.” But if the Lord is our presence, if the Lord is in our presence and He has promised to never leave us, then that itself is better than any security, money, or things.
Money does give us a sense of security. It's a false sense of security because it can go away like that. It could be hyper—everything you saved could be hyperinflated away in a matter of a week from now. And you could be wheeling in wheelbarrows full of cash to buy a loaf of bread. All of it can be taken from us in a heartbeat. But we deceive ourselves into thinking that if I only had more stuff, I would be more secure. That is a lie. If God is with us, then are you secure? Yeah, what will men do to me? Well, it turns out they can persecute you and afflict you and hate you and slander you and revile you and imprison you and even kill you. But the Lord has said He will never leave me nor forsake me. So abandoned and persecuted and hated and reviled and afflicted and slandered and imprisoned and killed? The Lord is with me through all of that, because He has pledged He will never leave us nor forsake us.
One last quote from Spurgeon. I should have just asked him to preach this sermon. Spurgeon said, “A child of God afraid! Why, there is nothing more contrary to his nature. If any would persecute you, look them in the face and bear it cheerfully. If they laugh at you, let them laugh; you can laugh when they shall howl. If any despise you, be content to be despised by fools, and to be misunderstood by madmen.” That's gold. That last sentence belongs—I was going to say it belongs on a pillow, but somebody took the last time I said that and put it on a pillow and I have two of them in my office. That sentence belongs—that sentence belongs written in the sky. There you go. Somebody pay to have it written in the sky. “Be content to be despised by fools, and to be misunderstood by madmen.” Because that is what the world does. They're insane. So yes, they revile us. But the Lord has promised to never forsake us or to leave us.
If covetousness is the insatiable craving for more, for more than we have, then it tells us the lie that there is something out there that can protect us from the things that we fear. We have nothing to fear because the One who is always with us tells us to fear nothing. We can fear men's disapproval, which is why we gain more stuff, why we acquire more stuff. We want to be thought highly of by men, we want other people to respect us, we want other people to admire us, we want other people to think that we're something, so we collect things so that other people look at us, and that's nothing more than a fear of man. That fear of man drives discontentment. To just acquire things, get more things, do more things, be more things. If I can do all of that, then people will respect me and love me. That fear of men drives and feeds discontentment and covetousness. The fear of men's hostility makes us think that we can be protected by the things that we have and so we pursue more.
But the truth is that God's presence with us and the promise of His faithfulness until He has secured every promise that He has given to us, that is enough and that is sufficient. So if I can mortify every sinful and covetous desire that militates against that and that drives me against that, then I can rest with contentment in the promise that He has given that He will never leave us or forsake us. This is the sword with which we wage our war against discontentment and covetousness. This is the fuel that feeds the fires of contentment. The Lord is with me. He has promised this. He will never leave us and He will never forsake us, and that is enough. And when I am satisfied with that, I am content.